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Endangered species
What’s a parent to do when junior
starts hearing gay as an insult?
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April 2701,1999
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2 0 0 9 N .Killingsw orth
That I just read yet another article about
someone getting killed, brutally, because of
being— that word— gay. It’s not something I
particularly want to tell my son or daughter
about. Soon after Matthew Shepard died, there
was a vigil held downtown in protest of the
killing and in honor of his lost life. Friends of
ours were going and wanted to know if we were
going too, the whole family. We didn’t. It
would have felt good to share that emotion
with others in a group setting, but we didn’t
because of the
children.
KINNARD
am often amazed at how early heterosexism
raises its ugly head in a persons life. Soci­
ety’s urge to dress baby boys in blue and
baby girls in pink is step one to creating and
supporting a dichotomy that says boys and girls
are opposite, distinct, and therefore, as in the
movies, bound to attract each other.
There is pressure, however, even in families
like ours where we’ve tried to keep the stereo­
types to a minimum— and to give ample evi­
dence by our differing styles of
“femaledom” that there is more
than one way to skin a cat or act
out a gender. There is pressure for
our son to be a boy’s boy, our
daughter
a girl with a capital G,
— l J
and definitely for them both to
turn out straight— not from us,
mind you. They can do whatever
they bloody well choose to do, so
long as there are grandchildren
involved. But I’ve been observing
the external pressures heating up as
they enter into all-day school and
peers become the number one
influence.
This comes up just now for sev­
eral reasons. One is that I recently
found out the word gay is being
bandied around the first-grade
classroom as a label in response to
some same-sex kissing going on
among the boys. 1 suppose 1 should
BY
be happy that they’re using gay and
BEREN not faggot or queer, but that could
DEMOTIER be a short-lived elation.
The second reason it comes up
is that there is an ongoing war between the
girls and the boys in the class. They are work­
ing at setting boundaries and demarcating their
differences. If the boys could pee a boundary
line across the classroom I’m sure they would.
The electricity that accompanies this gir!-boy
battle leads me to believe that
what I’ve read is true, that puberty
actually begins at 6. Perhaps this
explains the kissing as well.
All in all, I don’t mind that
our son is encamped with the
boys and hooting in delight at the
girls’ failure to penetrate their
fortress of masculinity. Or that he
is, along with his brethren, crying
with frustration when they are
bested by the opposition. But I do
mind being forced to explain to my son that
gay (which he thought vaguely was “something
about loving someone”), is not always viewed
positively by other people. That was really a
bummer.
There we were. The question finally raised,
and the parents he’s known and taken for
granted all his life suddenly have a label, and
now he knows that the word to describe our
relationship is a word some people use derisive­
ly-
What can a parent say? Here’s a label that
shouldn’t be bad, shouldn’t lead to hurt feelings,
but is being used to hurt. Telling our son that
kissing in school is inappropriate no matter
who’s involved is a start, but a chicken way out.
Telling him that we are gay and our friends are
gay and so many people in our lives are gay, is
another step. Giving him our take on being gay,
being lesbian, and how that is A-OK is certain­
ly called for. But this issue also brings us to the
brink of telling him a more painful truth.
I do mind being
forced to explain
to my son that
gay (which he
thought vaguely was "something about loving
someone"), is not always viewed positively by
other people. That was really a bummer.
Generally speaking, I’m so honest most par­
ents would blanche at the topics we discuss:
the Holocaust, slavery, capital punishment, sui­
cide, AIDS. But to stand in a crowd grown
cold from the murder of a young man, whose
photo would be pasted on signs, to have this
concrete example could lead them to the unde­
niable conclusion that their parents are part of
an endangered species. And we didn’t want to
do that to them.
I’m left to explain, as lightly as I can, that
gay is good and labeling bad, and that some
families have strong feelings about how others
live their lives. I can tell him what to do if
words are used against him. I can check in with
the teachers and hot-tail it down to the princi­
pal’s office to make sure she’s enforcing the
rules about derisive remarks in the school, but
mostly I have to take it as it comes and cross
my fingers.
And try very hard to hide that secretly, I’m
rooting for the girls.