For Goodness Sex (16 page)

If this seems confusing to you, why not ask your child about it? Today’s younger generation usually has a better handle on all this. They see gender and sexual orientation as more fluid and less restrictive. Besides, they’d love any opportunity to be
your
teacher. So even if you
do
understand all this, why not play dumb and let your child explain it to you anyway? It might be an “in” to other conversations.

At this point we should clarify an essential point about the relationship between sexual orientation and gender. They are not the same thing, and knowing someone’s
gender
identity and
gender
expression does not necessarily mean that you know that person’s
sexual
orientation.
Oftentimes assumptions are made about a person’s sexual orientation based on his or her gender identity and expression. But it’s unfair and disrespectful to assume, for example, that your son whose gender expression is masculine is attracted to women and therefore heterosexual. And just because your daughter’s gender expression is masculine doesn’t mean she’s a lesbian. There’s only one way to be certain about someone’s sexual orientation. You have to ask them! You see, sexual orientation is an
internally applied label
. No one can assign a sexual orientation to another person, and the only valid sexual orientation labels are the ones we give ourselves. And that’s why it’s so important to teach our kids—all of them—about sexual orientation. We can’t truly know who they are until they tell us, and
they
can’t know it until they have the chance to learn about it and think about it.

One of the shortcomings of many sexuality education classes today is that they often don’t give enough, if any, attention to heterosexuality. This robs heterosexual kids of the chance to think about their own journeys and experiences with sexual and romantic attractions. It also creates the false idea for heterosexuals that sexual orientation is about “other” people (nonheterosexuals). My students are always intrigued when I present sexual orientation in a way that’s inclusive of heterosexuality. It’s a typical Aha! moment, when they consider something they’ve missed before. They see themselves connected to the content we’re studying in a whole new way. I recall one heterosexual student remarking, “I never knew I had a sexual orientation! I thought it was only something gay people had!” Of course there are also students who
have
thought about this before and are surprised when their friends see it as a moment of discovery. In both cases, kids are more ready to engage with the topic, which will lead them to better understanding themselves. It’s a total win-win.

For your child, discovering his or her sexual orientation may be a lifelong, evolving process, or perhaps it’ll be a quick and easy one. It’s important that we give young people the space to talk about their own sexual orientation without judgment, and to help them understand that they don’t have to fit into any one label, if that’s something they are struggling with. We also need to remind them to extend that courtesy to the other kids around them. This can help stem the tide of bullying around gender and sexual orientation that is happening in too many schools today. Kids of every identity and orientation can be harassed because of assumptions and judgments based on an inaccurate or incomplete understanding of sexual orientation. Talking about this is one of the ways we make schools safer for all kids! Remind them that the label we apply to ourselves today may remain true throughout the rest of our lives, or as our understanding of ourselves changes, that label might change as well. While some young people might stick to commonly understood labels like heterosexual (straight), homosexual (gay/lesbian), and bisexual (bi), there are plenty of others, such as pansexual or omnisexual (attracted to all gender identities and expressions), asexual (having little or no natural sexual or romantic attraction to anyone), demisexual (developing sexual or romantic attraction only after establishing a strong emotional connection), MSM (man having sex with men but not identifying as gay or bisexual), and WSW (woman having sex with women but not identifying as lesbian or bisexual).

Transgender is often listed as a sexual orientation, but that isn’t exactly accurate. Transgender is a label used by people whose gender identity (their internal sense of themselves) and their bodies are somehow in conflict. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a person is “trapped in the wrong body.” It just means that a person’s physical body and internal sense of identity don’t match in some way. Some transgender people will alter their physical appearance to bring it more in line with their internal sense of self. This may be reflected in anything from clothing and hairstyle choices to chemically altering one’s body with hormones to surgically altering one’s body. Some transgender people will alter their pronoun usage, choosing one that best reflects their sense of themselves. Some transgender people don’t do any of these things.

Finally, an orientation label that some young people are using today is “questioning.” This means exactly what it says, that a person is in the process of figuring out her or his orientation. It doesn’t exclude any answer nor does it imply any answer. It’s tricky to say what a questioning kid will look like. Some may experiment with sexual and romantic activity with boys or girls or both; others will refrain from any such activity until they feel surer of their own identity. Just like any fundamental question about life, some of us ask it loudly and others prefer a quieter approach. The important thing to note is that most of the kids I’ve known who identify as questioning aren’t anxious about that label. It can be a relief because it means they don’t have to apply a label right now and they’re open to taking their time to see what label emerges.

It is not uncommon for my students to talk to me about their sexual orientation, especially if they are feeling confused. A ninth-grade girl in ripped jeans and rock band T-shirt came into my classroom one day and asked if we could talk.

“I want to figure out if I’m bi or not,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Well,” I said, “I’m not the one who can tell you that, but I’m happy to talk with you and listen to your thoughts.”

She told me she had been in love with a boy and had a somewhat sexual but definitely romantic relationship with him all during eighth grade. The relationship included making out and some touching of each other’s genitals (she burst into peals of laughter when I called that petting). They made a mutual decision to break up upon entering high school. Now she was finding herself sexually and romantically attracted to boys but also to some of her female friends. She knew that what she felt for her eighth-grade boyfriend was real, and she felt sure that these new feelings for girls were real too.

“I’m OK with being bi or even lesbian, if that’s what I really am,” she said. “I just want to be sure before I go telling people that. So, how do I know?”

“Do you think either the label bisexual or lesbian feels like it fits you right now?” I asked.

“Probably bisexual, if anything,” she said.

“Is being bisexual an OK thing according to your values?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Whatever I am is OK, and I know it’ll be OK with my parents and my friends. I’ve talked to my parents about this, and they suggested I come talk to you. I’m not freaked out or anything, Mr. V. I’m just trying to figure it out.”

“I can see you’re not freaked out, and I’m really glad you’ve talked with your parents and they don’t seem freaked out. I heard a possible answer to your question in what you just said. You’re trying to figure it out. That seems to be the most appropriate way to describe your orientation right now. You’re clearly open to whatever answer is going to emerge, but I don’t hear a clear answer now. Do you?”

“No,” she said. “So what am I? Bi-curious? Confused?”

“I wouldn’t say you’re confused; you don’t sound confused to me. You sound like you’re in a process of discovery. When we’re in that kind of process, I think the best we can do is stay open to the possibilities and see what truth emerges over time. If you feel you need to give yourself a label, you also have to be OK with the idea that it’s a ‘for-now’ label. It may shift—or it may not. You need more data. How about ‘questioning’? Does that fit?”

“No, because for me it’s not a wide-open question; it’s more of a fine-tuning. What if I said right now I feel bisexual?”

“Great. I think the most important thing is the ‘right now.’ Whatever answer you give to yourself and others has to acknowledge that all this is a process and you’re interested in finding out what’s right for you.”

This young woman was more open and at ease than other kids who have come to see me, but I think she provides a great example of how understanding one’s own sexual orientation is a lot easier when adults are committed to helping young people find the truth about themselves rather than forcing a label on them. Some kids know the truth about themselves right from the start. Others need time and experience to figure it out. Some people change the label that they use to describe their orientation as they go through life. That’s not because their orientation has changed; it’s because their understanding or awareness of their orientation changed. The process of discovering one’s orientation must be open and patient in order to ultimately be successful. The truth will emerge in its own time. So how do we, as adults, help kids facilitate a process like that? There are lots of ways, and they’re all pretty simple.

First, check your own assumptions about a child’s sexual orientation. You may have a preference for your child’s orientation. You may have a value system that makes only some orientations acceptable. That’s all fine, as long as you also realize that you (or I or the school or the religious organization or the government) are
not
in charge of creating your child’s sexual orientation.
Orientations aren’t created; they’re discovered. And holding that in our minds and hearts is the first way we can help young people.

Second, check your language for assumptions about sexual orientation. Imagine yourself saying to your young child, “Someday you’ll fall in love with a sweetheart, and it’ll be wonderful!” Go further and say, “Boys and girls can be sweethearts, or boys and boys can be sweethearts, or girls and girls can be sweethearts. Sweethearts are people who love each other and want to make a family together.” Can you get in the habit of asking children (and even adults for that matter), “Do you have a sweetheart?” versus asking a girl, “Do you have a boyfriend?” or a boy, “Do you have a girlfriend?” When one of my friends was a teenager, his mother asked him, “When you finally bring a date home for me to meet, is it going to be a girl, or a boy, or what?” My friend matter-of-factly said, “a boy.” His mom said, “OK,” and that was it. No drama, no long discussion—just a simple question with a simple answer. Our use of language is a way to signal respect and acceptance for all orientations, including the one waiting to be discovered in one’s own child.

Third, allow your child (and yourself) to see varied examples of sexual orientation in media, literature, and life. This, of course, should be age appropriate. There are a whole host of children’s books, adolescents’ novels, and television shows these days that include nonheterosexual characters. There are any number of news events, commercials, and magazine articles that reference people with diverse sexual orientations. There are so many important historical figures who were not heterosexual. Don’t be afraid to make that known, and make that just one of many pieces of information you share about the historical figure. It’s just as disrespectful to isolate people’s sexual orientation as the
only
important thing about them as it is to dismiss their sexual orientation as having no value to what makes them who they are.

Coming Out

C
oming out is the process of acknowledging to oneself and then to others one’s sexual orientation. Because I teach an integrated approach to this topic, I think coming out as a heterosexual is just as worthy of attention as any other coming-out experience. Not only do I think it is valuable in itself for heterosexuals to consider their own coming out, but I believe it helps them better understand the coming-out experiences of those who aren’t heterosexual. I also believe that straight parents who have a child coming out as something other than heterosexual will be better prepared if they’ve thought about their own experiences in this area.

I grew up in a generation for whom coming out as something other than heterosexual was a significant life event. For many of us, it was traumatic and fraught with anxiety, but ultimately transformative in a positive way. For my heterosexual friends, coming out often seemed pretty effortless—so much so that they barely registered it. For many young people today, no matter what their sexual orientation, coming out is more as it was for my heterosexual friends than as it was for me. That isn’t to say that some young people—of all sexual orientations—still have a difficult coming-out experience, but as societal attitudes toward nonheterosexuals become more accepting and as nonheterosexual orientations are more apparent in mainstream culture, the process of coming out is changing for everyone.

Coming out is a two-step process. We come out to ourselves first and then to others. At some point, we become aware of our sexual and romantic attractions and realize that they are directed (oriented) toward a particular gender or genders. We internalize that realization, integrate it into our conception of ourselves, and then, at some point and in some way, we make that piece of ourselves known to others. It is the interplay between our own feelings and actions and the perceptions and reactions of those around us that shape our coming-out experiences. This is different from simply assuming one’s sexual orientation. Because we live in a largely heteronormative society, heterosexuality is assumed. We might even say people are presumed heterosexual until proved otherwise. It is, however, the self-recognition and self-definition of our romantic and sexual attractions that makes a coming-out experience.