Gender is expression, the clothes you wear, etc. It is a spectrum of femininity, androgynous, and masculinity. There are people who won’t ever fit in our schemas of gender, thus it has to bend, thus there are unlimited options. My most in-depth, profound, empathizing memories of gender and sexuality were likely in middle school. First, this was when my dad would ask me to cook at home whenever our mom wasn’t there by 6pm. I remember the first time I ever made Mac n Cheese. I would also be asked (not really a question when your parents “ask” you to do something) to fold laundry (though my brother used to do it, that’s how our chores were split) and clean dishes. It seemed like, due to my gender, I was expected to do certain homely things and keep everything clean, typical stereotype women stuff.
Although my dad would tell me and my brother how to do things like changing tires or how to measure 2 by 4s to build a shed, my brother took the brunt end of the work. Always doing more than me, always expected to. My mom cooked and still does, my brother no longer does his own laundry, instead he helps my dad do everything he doesn’t want to do on his own, and my dad usually works with cars and the plumbing in our home. He likes to establish “necessary skills” in us young, tells us about basic appliances and how to fix them, where to find them, etc. But doesn’t build upon it, at least with me. Nowadays he’s always warning me about things; it seems more recently he’s viewed me as a woman, at least maturely. I think this because of increasing interactions (with or without my consent) with men.
In middle school my friends were all experimenting with their identities and it gave me pause, how do I view myself? What am I? Am I anything? My contentions to be the same, never question anything, resistant to change, always made my friends call me lame and I figured there was no harm. They would come out to me, tell me their experiences, and I realized there was nothing stopping me from dating another girl if I wanted, I literally could not mind. By the time I was 11 I was considering being LGBTQ. All my friends are and even though that was the case, it wasn’t pressuring, I have a lot of trans friends too. My closest friend today is a gay man. These connections I made were outside the realm of sexuality, that wasn’t what our friendship was, or is, it was kids maturing and growing, trying things out as all kids should. It couldn’t be more normal to me. I also knew I had homophobic parents, or at least, parents who didn’t talk about gay or lesbian people.
I kept that stuff to myself and hadn’t been in a relationship anyway, so it felt like no harm was done. As my friends got into relationships and we all got to high school, it became more prominent. Boundaries were discussed and I grew as a person too, I became more comfortable with myself, actually getting to know myself, what I was and wasn’t okay with. My horizons were expanded. To be gay or lesbian, or anything else, is to be a normal person, like anyone else. Expressing the human-est of human emotions: Curiosity and compassion. It is not something to be feared, it is not threatening. My parents came around as more of my friends grew into themselves, and I with them. I think they simply hadn’t met enough LGBTQ+ people, never got to know them, live with them, thus they simply were fearful of something they didn’t understand. With that said, there was no hate towards them for their identity or expression, even though I needed to remind them of names, sexualities, and pronouns from time to time, the effort they put in was very appreciated.
Although it isn’t a hot-button topic, we, as a family, are protective over our friends and those of minorities. I never felt held back by them, or looked down on, for my gender or sexuality even though I may not still feel confident about them. The world pressures us but I recall prom night my friend wearing a dress as a man, he got many compliments, when someone questioned him, we jumped to defend him. I would like to think because of my association with many LGBTQ+ friends, and straight ones alike, that my view on those types of people isn’t very skewed, but maybe it is. If I had more time to think about this, I’d likely have more to say about that. But, genuinely, I haven’t had a very biased view of those people in my younger, family oriented, years (we didn’t talk about much but as I got older it shifted) nor do I think of them differently than any other complex and unique person I could meet today. I would love if I was involved with more LGBTQ+ people.
