For example, I have two siblings I was born Ohio I enjoy boys and girls.Ĭontinue reading: I Know What It’s Like to Be a Florida Teen Who Can’t Say Gay.
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If they don’t, the world is a series neutral facts that all carry the same weight.
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You must first teach them how to shame themselves. See, the thing about kids is that they don’t arrive with the shame built in. No judgments, arguments, nor justifications were required. And we ask ourselves, over and over again, if I’m in a long-term relationship with an opposite-sex partner, does the fact that I’m bisexual even really matter?īut when I answered my son’s question, I didn’t have to worry about any of that. When we are able to pass for straight, it is a worry that we might take up space in marginalized communities. We worry we aren’t queer enough to call ourselves queer. Our choice of romantic partner can often make us feel invisible. I am aware of many bisexuals who have been involved with people of different sexes. I’ll just sit over here with the straight people! Please don’t worry about me!” Whatever the cause, I kept quiet, even as I started to notice that my crushes were aimed at girls almost as often as boys.
It could have been my Midwestern instincts to settle into the path of least resistance that made me round myself down to heterosexual: “Ope! Don’t be bothered by my complex sexuality.
Or perhaps it was just the “straight-by default” assumption we put on kids that made me eager to grow into the space that had been cleared for me. It could have been my Catholic upbringing which prevented me from telling the truth about sexuality. Could I have just revealed my bisexuality at the age of 36, my first-grade self?Ĭontinue reading: The Bisexuality Pride Flag: What You Need to Know My son went back to watching his show, but I was struck by the enormity of what I’d just done. A dozen different answers flew through my brain, but the one that emerged from my lips was the simple truth: “Actually, when I was a teenager, I liked boys and girls.” He was 6 years old, too young to understand romantic urges, or crushes, or the way that these feelings turn your body into a magnet that’s constantly switching poles: attract, repel, attract, repel. He asked me, “Mom, when you were a teenager, were you boy-crazy?” He’d been watching TV a little cartoon girl was hiding from a little cartoon boy she had a crush on.
TIt was my son who heard it for the first time.