Bisexuality and Mothers
I've been lazy about collecting quotes for my big planned "You Sound Like a Man" post, so instead I will write about my bisexuality.I know that there are people out there that are biphobic. In the gay community, in the straight community. After all, we're the bringers-of-disease, we're going to run off with a straight person and get married, we're promiscuous sluts that will cheat on you at the drop of a hat. If I were straight, I could give up 99.999999% of men and you'd never have to worry; if I were gay, 99.999999% of other women... but somehow, it eludes me - that capability to give up on 100% of all women and 99.999999% of all men (or vice versa).
I mean, it's just not possible.
...I know, intellectually, that people that believe this are out there. (One of the TO queer magazines recently had an article about it.) I'm pissed that it's out there, but - in some ways, selfishly - thankful that it's never really touched my life.
I figured out that I liked girls when I was about twelve. (I blame Sailor Moon.) Boys came shortly afterwards, and kinky after that (13, 14-ish). I had a pretty supportive online community that was made up mostly of other lesbian and bisexual girls, so there wasn't a lot of shaming going on. Overall, I was pretty comfortable with who I was, there.
I started coming out to friends around the same time - maybe a few months after figuring it out myself. I was prompted by two things: one, another friend coming out as bisexual, and two, having a massive crush on my best friend. My school friends were all supportive, too. In fact, I prompted a third friend of ours to come out (at least to me and the original comer-outer; I'm not sure if she ever told anyone else).
My best friend gently turned me down. (In fact, all through high school, best-friends-I-wanted-to-date was the norm. One was straight, one was bisexual but not interested in me at the right time [I was about a year too late], and one - the only guy - I dated for almost two years.)
I think the worst reaction that I got was a boy who went wide-eyed and pretended to back away from me in fear. I made fun of him, he figured out he was being an idiot, and that was pretty much the end of that. No other negative reactions, no slurs, no injury.
Family came next, in my mind: dad first, because I was always closer to dad. (It helped that my parents were divorced; dad got to shirk a lot of the nastier parts of being a parent, and so got a lot more of the affection. Even beyond that, though, we've always gotten along better.) This was a lot scarier than coming out to friends. Friends, you could always make more of; I only had my one dad. (Well, and my stepfather.)
He took it remarkably well, overall. Said, "Well, I've never been attracted to men, so I can't really tell you what it's like... but I still love you" (this was more in response to my fear, not 'I love you even though'.) He mentioned, briefly, that it might be a phase, but he didn't think it was likely.
Well, score. One parent out of three down (I didn't - don't - really care what my stepmother thinks.)
My mother... well, she was harder. I think at one point she must have found my love letter to my best friend, because she would bring it up at inappropriate times - say, in front of my extremely conservative grandmother ("why do you want to do a romantic horoscope? Is it for you and X?") or telling my sister that I was a lesbian.
This pissed me off a lot. Because it wasn't true. She was making assumptions about my sexuality without coming and talking to me about them. My mother - who had always been quite informative about sex - was suddenly being uncommunicative and talking about me behind my back, or throwing my words - words which she should have never seen, if she hadn't been snooping - in my face.
So I shut down. To this day, I haven't told my mother the truth; I've simply denied any untruths she utters, rather than correcting them. ("Your sister is a lesbian." "No, I'm not." Not: "Actually, I'm bisexual.") I figured - if she wants to know, really know, she'll ask.
This was compounded when - remember that boy that I mentioned earlier? The one I dated in high school (and first year university)? Well, he's bisexual too. And, after we broke up, he briefly dated a couple of guys. I mentioned this in passing to my sister - in front of my mother. "Are you saying he's gay?" "Well, he's bisexual."
Well, she nearly had kittens. For about a week afterward, in conversation, in e-mail - she told me he couldn't be bisexual, not if he hadn't had sex with boys.
Two things to note here: my mother was a virgin when she first married, and she was a sex-ed teacher for a while.
So I tried to point out to her the absolute ludicrousness of this position. We argued it in circles, round and round. No, she insisted: you had to have had sex with someone of the same sex to claim lesbianism/gayness or bisexuality. Despite the fact that straights didn't have to "prove" their sexuality.
She was especially angry that I'd told my sister that my ex was bi. After all, my sister was "only fifteen".
Not that I was 12 when I figured it out or anything. Not that my sex life - despite the fact that all my sexual experiences with girls have been less interesting than those with boys, and yet I still want to fuck girls - has confirmed what I knew at 12, 13, 14. I mean, it would be awful if my sister got the idea that being bisexual was normal, OK, good - maybe at a time when she would need to know that.
My sister knows, now. My mother? I'm probably going to wait until I'm officially moved out of her house, because I couldn't stand the heartache of passing her every day in the hall, or calling her for a pick-up, and hearing the underlying refrain of badwrongsinfulshamefulterribleawfulhorriblehowcouldyoubethisway?
It's the only real incidence of biphobia I've experienced - and it comes from my mother.
posted by Alex @ 11:06 AM
3 Comments:
Oy, gods. I fear I'd have pretty much the same reaction from my parents -- in addition to a huge load of Southern Baptist-you're going to hell- guilt. And frankly, it's just not worth it to me. My parents and I have a good relationship now, after an adolescence that wasn't easy on either of us. I've been out of their house almost as long as I was in it now, and I still haven't told them I'm bisexual.
I don't think I ever will, actually. My parents are weighted down by their religion and expectations. I don't think they'd really be able to understand or accept it. But, the freaky ironic thing is, because we're Southern, I could bring a girlfriend home and they'd never say a word. So long as we didn't start making out in front of them or declaring ourselves Girlfriends, they'd just pretend it didn't exist. We could live together for the rest of our lives, raise a family together if we wanted to, buy a home together, whatever. If we never actually announced we were a couple, they'd never bring it up. It's a very Southern ability, that pretending things don't really exist. Oh, they'd know, of course. They'd know and they just wouldn't say anything and that would be that.
And the thing is, they'd be lovely to her. They really would, but they'd never acknowledge the relationship as such. She'd be my best friend or my roommate, but they'd never be able to bring themselves to go a step further.
And you know, it all seems to boil down to sex for them. I mean, if we told them we weren't having sex, we were best friends and we loved each other and wanted to spend a life together, but we weren't fucking, well....they couldn't really object to that. It would only be the fucking they'd object to and really, how stupid is that?
So, I don't know. Mostly, I think my sexuality is private and I don't have an obligation to share it with people I don't want to. And knowing that my family couldn't handle it, it's not worth upsetting a prefectly good relationship to me.
Heh. I can sort of understand that - I saw it in action at my Italian somewhat-Catholic grandmother's place a few Christmases ago. My cousin brought her girlfriend over (although dense me didn't realize it at the time) and it was just "a friend of hers that couldn't be with her family for Christmas this year" (though technically it was Boxing Day).
Knowing that and looking back on it, I... honestly, I don't even know what words I'd use to describe it. It would be profoundly uncomfortable for me to have that sort of 'open secret'.
And the thing is, I think my mother would eventually get over it. It's just that initial year or so that I don't want to deal with.
And I think in some way, the sense of badwrong that I get is really her way of saying don't get yourself hurt; there are people out there that won't like you, will hurt you. The ironic part being that well, by turning sentiment B into sentiment A, she's the one doing the hurting.
Oh, I totally get that. I have a cousin who is gay. He's pretty damn stereotypically gay too, all femme and flamey. The whole family believed he was gay since he was a little boy, it was so obvious. Well, he came out to his parents a year or two ago. Totally broke his dad's heart, but he and his mother are sharing an apartment now, so I'm assuming she's okay with it.
Anyway, my mother and I were talking about it one day and I was being my typical liberal self :) All, well you know, so he's gay? So what? And she was "Yes, I know. I just don't want him to get hurt. I worry about how hard life is going to be for him."
So, I understand that a great deal of their criticisms come from a place of fear for the people they love. What they don't get is that life is only hard for us because people like THEM make it hard. They're the ones assuming LGBT people are deviant or freaks or doing something wrong. If that attitude were erased from the world, what would be left? A world were people could openly love whoever they love without fear of getting jumped or abused or rejected, that's what.
And yea, I don't know if I'd feel comfortable with such an open secret either. I figure they'd just eventually get over it, but who knows? I haven't had to really face that yet.
Post a Comment
<< Home