They may love and discuss LGBTQ adults in their life, but they imagine and believe their kids or the kids they know are straight and cisgender. Many parents think they say 'gay,' but they don’t do it often, and they never do when talking about their kids’ sexualities. It’s almost as if parents are just willfully creating a world where there is only one way to be and they project that onto their children. How they fine tune this ability at such a young age, my own bisexual brain can’t comprehend. From the way some adults talk, these kids always seem to know to make eyes at anyone who has a different set of genitals from their own. Toddlers are apparently major heterosexual flirts. I know, I know, this is all in good fun ― if your idea of “fun” is strategically forcing a sexual orientation on children before they can say “Dada” or “Mama.”Īnd it doesn’t stop when children become verbal. This “father of the bride-ing” business starts when infants from heterosexual families are brought home from the hospital in tiny onesies with slogans like “Daddy’s Girl” and “Sorry, boys! Daddy says no dating.” Kids assigned male at birth may end up in a “Sorry, girls! My heart belongs to mommy” or a “Boob Man” tiny tee. What is most disturbing about heterosexual grooming is how young a child is when it begins and how aggressively it is often carried out throughout the course of a child’s life.
#AM I GAY YAHOO ASNWERS FEELINGS PROFESSIONAL#
Yes, there remains a high statistical likelihood that your children will end up straight and cis, but they are way more likely to be LGBTQ than they are to be a doctor or a lawyer or a professional athlete, and plenty of folks are able to picture (and hope for) those futures for their kids. Even in the most liberal of households, most kids will be raised as straight until they come out as otherwise. They may love and discuss LGBTQ adults in their life, but they imagine and believe their kids, or the kids they know, are straight and cisgender.
Many parents think they say “gay,” but they don’t do it often, and they never do when talking about their kids’ sexualities. Of course, you can actively opt out, but that’s a conscious choice that takes a lot of work. Is it perhaps because you are so accustomed to being part of ― and promoting ― a multigenerational zealous and omnipresent offense for Team Straight without even noticing that you’re doing it? That’s because this problem is systemic and it’s a system straight and cisgender people benefit from and uphold. And, yah, perhaps applying the term “heterosexual grooming” to this practice sounds a bit harsh, but gay marriage is constantly likened to bestiality, so maybe we all just need a thicker skin, right?īefore everyone freaks out about any of this, let me take a moment to say “not all straight people.” But if you are a straight person who is feeling defensive, I suggest you explore that defensiveness. It not only sexualizes children but it does so in the context of family. But that’s not how straight society likes to play. And I believe young children can learn all about love and family and different family structures without needing to have it framed in ways that are overly sexual or romantic. That also goes for gender identity too ― I think it would be amazing if schools stopped teaching gender as an innate expression stemming from what is in one’s pants. A major premise of Florida’s recently passed “Don’t Say Gay” bill is that children should be sheltered from discussions of sexual orientation, and in many ways, I, a queer mom married to a woman, actually agree with this. One of the most amazing things about cisgender straight people is that most of them think they don’t have a sexual orientation or a gender identity. Well, it’s simple: I learned how from watching straight people enforce a sexual orientation on their children without ever saying “straight.” How am I attempting to raise my kids as homosexuals, you ask? (Photo: Jennifer A Smith via Getty Images) "At first I thought this heterophilia forced on kids was disgusting, until it gave me the fantastic idea that I could also raise my children with a preferred sexual orientation from the very beginning of their lives," the author writes.