Mar 6th, 2006
Busted (Part Two): You SO have NOT read my book….
~~The conclusion to yesterday’s post~~
Probably if we changed the subject after I thank someone for telling me he loved my book, his bluff would succesfully pass. But usually the person keeps going, and shows his cards without knowing it. A very common example: “Oh, and it’s so great that you are heterosexual!” this person will say with a couple chummy nudges here for emphasis, “I mean, when those homophobes are like, ‘gay people recruit their children!’ I wanna be all, ‘oh yeah? Here’s a book that’s proves gay parents don’t make their kids gay!”
“Actually,” I begin, (since teachable moments are not just for straights,) “Parading around the heterosexual offspring as ‘proof’ against the recruitment theory is a really touchy subjects for those of us who come from queer parents. The heterosexual children are tokenized and pressured to declare our sexuality to the world even if we would prefer privacy, and the children who are gay feel like the dirty little secret and feel pressure to closet themselves so they don’t disappoint a community that is so quick to highlight their heterosexual kids. In effect, what we call ‘second generation‘ kids end up dealing with increased emotional distress coming out of the closet, because every queer person they know is talking about how much better it is when the children are straight.”
My mini-sermon to the good-thing-you’re-straight comment is typically met with a long stare and a few blinks, as the person takes in the information. A second or two later he utters something like: “God. That. Never. Occurred. To. Me.”
Well then, that can only mean one thing: You. Have. Not. Read. My. Book.
Still, I don’t want to put the person on the spot, even though he’s the one who put himself there. I usually toss him a gracious exit option, along the lines of: “Well it’s an important point that I was sure to include in the book, but I know there’s a lot to absorb in it.”
But the bluffing continues with a dismissive hand waving in the air: “Yes yes yes, I skimmed that page.”
“That page?” Still busted. The Sexual Orientation Question is significant enough in the queerspawn experience to devote not one page, but 55 pages — TWO of the eight chapters cover this. Of course I don’t expect anyone to retain the book. That would be silly. But there is no way you can walk away from reading Families Like Mine (or even just the table of contents) without knowing that praising me for my heterosexually is a big beef for me.
So save yourself the embarrassment and save me the need for me to rant on my blog. If you haven’t read my book, don’t fake it.
Count me as one who has not read your book — yet.
But obviously “your story” (”your” in the collective sense ;-) ) are those which are not told often enough. I guess I never thought of how many closets (or boxes?) queerspawn must find themselves in throughout their lives. LGBT folks (like me) often assume they know all there is to know about the implications of identity. Obviously not.
And I guess that’s the real problem perhaps: “implications of identity.” Good gawd!
So now, I have a book to go read…
Do read the book, Jim. You already have one important message: that queerspawn share many of the same questions of when to be out that GLBT folks do. In fact by the time they go to college, queerspawn may have had more experience with these questions than their glbt peers, having spent their entire childhood in a same sex family. Heterosexual queerspawn most often want to be accepted/welcomed as members of the GLBT community, not ejected when they leave the queer family nest.
An extended Italian family would never tell a child who left town to go to college, perhaps marrying a non-italian, “You’re not Italian anymore! You are not really one of us!’ Children growing up in the queer community may always want and deserve to have their identity validated.
[...] Another major flaw is that Drexler spends a lot of time assuring us that boys raised by moms won’t become “sissies” or be anything less than “all-boy.” She says “Current research suggests that many of these fears about boys not being sufficiently masculine when raised without a father in the home are groundless…I found that boys from less conventional families were ‘all-boy’ being raised in a predominantly female environment appeared to have no effect on their sense of themselves as male,” and “A good parent, whether mother or father, will enable a boy to develop to his full potential as a young man, as long as his individuality, his manliness [emphasis mine], his courage, and his developing conscience are respectfully and fully supported.” Again, this is good news for boys who are straight and being raised by moms, but also implies there’s something still not quite right about boys who are less “manly” or fall more towards the female side of the gender identity spectrum. Drexler does affirm that sexual orientation is innate and these boys will find their own way, whether gay or straight. She also found that the moms in her study made it clear to their sons that they could choose from whichever masculine and feminine characteristics appealed to them, and were more open in this regard than moms in traditional households. My sense is that if confronted directly about these issues, Drexler would agree there’s nothing wrong with being a “feminine” boy–but she’s gone on such a crusade to prove that lesbians and single moms can raise “masculine” boys that she comes across as saying they always will. (For counterbalance, read Abigail Garner’s incisive post on assuming heterosexuality among children of LGBT parents.) Drexler doesn’t seem blatantly homophobic, but she’s clearly writing this book to convince those who might be, and shies away from issues of sexuality and gender identity that might scare people. [...]
Don’t be such a priss. Just be glad someone was willing to pretend to read your book. That is as much attention as anyone deserves.
[...] Check back tomorrow for Busted (Part Two) [...]