Just like straight children need to understand how to safely navigate their
coming of age and sexuality, so do LGBTQ children.
In high
school, I had a crush on
this ‘bad boy’ that took a liking to me. We weren’t
friends, but he’d come to check on me to make sure I was okay and I thought that
was nice of him, but that wasn’t exactly it. It was
something else.
I had no words
for my feelings so I ignored them, and then forgot about them.
If he’d been a
my girlfriend, I would’ve known immediately: I had a
crush. Boys liked girls, as far as I knew. The definition of a crush was that it was on a girl. That’s what my parents told me, what books told me, and what I
observed my peers doing at school.
I also knew it
from G-rated children’s movies that portray love between men and women as
magical, natural, and transformative.
High school me felt a little something for girls and I guess I was trying very, very hard to like them because I wanted to fit in. Everyone else in my grade has hormones surging through
their bodies making them interested in the opposite sex, whereas I had
stronger urges for the same sex.
I suppose
I knew that same-sex attraction existed, but it presented
as some kind of cancer that was
taking out men of the same-sex persuasion.
I didn’t know
that sexual orientation is a spectrum, so even if I was attracted to women a little, I might still like men more. I was 21 years old before I figured out that my feelings for the boy
was a crush.
I’m not alone
here. If you’re straight, giving children age appropriate information about
same-sex relationships, or the gender spectrum, may sound unnecessary. But when
we educate teens, we must remember that some of them will
grow up to be gay, bisexual, or transgender.
Just like
straight children need to understand how their bodies are changing, or what
their feelings mean, and how to safely navigate coming of age and sexuality, so
do LGBTQ children.
And we deserve to see their own possibilities as magical, natural, and
transformative, too.
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