The assumption of heterosexuality might seem incredibly harmless, because it’s so pervasive and it’s “the norm.”
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I remember being a queer kid and not knowing what that meant. I didn’t have a word for how I felt, and I didn’t hear the adults in my life talking about my experience.
My parents would make comments about when I would be old enough to date boys, and I wondered, What if I wanted to date girls? When I played with boys, there were jokes about how maybe we would get married someday, ha ha. No one ever made those jokes when my girl friends were over. “Playing house” always entailed a mom and a dad, never two moms.
This was all very confusing to me because, while I liked boys well enough, I knew that I also liked girls.
I wondered what it would be like to kiss the girl in my English class, the one with the long, dark hair. I got butterflies in my stomach around one of my fellow cheerleaders. And I could imagine a future where I settled down and made a life with someone that wasn’t a man.
It wasn’t until college that I found out what bisexuality was and, later, that queerness existed. It was then that my feelings made sense and things about my childhood began to fall into place. I often think about the shame and confusion and stuffing-down of feelings that I dealt with in my childhood and teenage years and what it might have been like if I had felt free to talk about what I was really feeling.
Now that I’m a parent myself, I think about it even more. Everywhere I turn, heterosexuality is the assumption, the expectation. There are jokes about my daughter — who is 2 — one day “dating” my friend’s son, Jack. People make comments about how much boys will love her when she is older, they look at my husband to let him know he’s “in trouble.”
And aside from how problematic it is to sexualize children, these actions also presume that my child will grow up to be straight.
I have no way to know who my child will love (or even if she will want to pursue romantic relationships or have a life partner — let alone whether she will be married and/or monogamous). And, as harmless as it may seem, writing an “Open Letter To My Future Daughter-In-Law,” for example, is anything but. Because even if we know in our hearts as parents that we will love our kid no matter what, they don’t know that.
What our children hear, when we presume their heterosexuality, is that we expect them to be a certain thing and that we will be disappointed if they fail to meet that expectation. What our kids hear is that something is wrong with them if they are not the thing we think they are or want them to be.
The message that they internalize is that if they are not straight, then they are not OK.
Of course, these may not be the messages we intend to send our kids, but this is ultimately what we say when we make assumptions about the gender of their future partner(s). This is why I choose my words carefully when I discuss potential romantic entanglements. I always say “partner” or “dating.” If someone else makes a joke about my daughter having a boyfriend one day, I always make sure to add, “or girlfriend!” In our home, I try to make sure I talk about options beyond the gender binary, too, because not everyone is a “boyfriend” or a “girlfriend.”
I want my child to be able to self-determine. What that means to me is that they know they have options besides the “default” one that’s plastered all over their TV screens, and that they always know that. I don’t want them to discover that I’m OK with their queerness only after they do tons of soul-searching, research, and crying, and ultimately come out to me. I want them to know before any of that happens.
The assumption of heterosexuality might seem incredibly harmless, because it’s so pervasive and it’s “the norm.”
But it’s actually hurting our children. LGBTQ teens have the highest rates of suicide,homelessness, and substance abuse. It’s not enough for us to accept them for who they are after the fact — if we are to be the kind of parents who provide unconditional love and support, that has to start from the beginning.
So when I think about my daughter’s future life, I never project my own expectations or desires onto it. Maybe she’ll have a husband, maybe she’ll have a wife, maybe she’ll have a partner. Maybe she’ll have more than one of some of those things.
Any and all of those options are OK, and I’m always going to make sure that she knows it.
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This story by Britni de la Cretaz originally appeared on Ravishly, a feminist news+culture website.
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Sorry Pope. you’ve missed the point of this completely. Of course the majority of the world is hetero. But a significant population is not. The authors point is to point out that comments are made from that assumptive point of view when the comments don’t even need to be made in the first place. Why in the world are we talking about 3 year old kids getting hitched in the first place. Question the point to be made. To make the parents feel good about raising a pretty girl or boy.? Then say so if you must make a comment… Read more »
Good point to be made. I know this first hand as I had a very close family member who was lesbian, and knew it from early childhood. I was the only one that she had to talk to, and it was only that closeness that allowed her to even speak of it (well, I actually told her before she was willing to accept it). Everything stated in this article has been discussed with us, every doubt, every fear, every bit of confusion and every question. This is the type of conversation I seek to read here while I slog through… Read more »
I do think the approach your taking is the most rational, reasonable and logical response, since you’re coming from the perspective of first giving unconditional love and acceptance to your child. That and keeping the adult in her able to exercise her own free will, plus knowing what we know about the human sexual continuum that is more comprehensive than this OR that. It is both AND. Now I happen to be hetero. Same sex attraction is just simply not there for me. On the other hand I’m also willing to incorporate aspects of both genders into my thinking and… Read more »
This is ridiculous. Congratulations on conflating expectation with coersion. That’s a mighty broad brush you’re painting with there, where’d you get it? Let me guess, you stole it from the conservative Christian crazies, right? Just because I assume that my kids will be hetero doesn’t make me some weird abusive jerk and it doesn’t mean that I’m trying to send my kids off to don’t-be-gay summer camp. Fun fact: most people in the world are hetero, or at the very least bisexual otherwise we shouldn’t have an overpopulation problem in the third world. Assuming that your kid will want to… Read more »