Family Reflection On Sexuality

Younger children usually have an easier time adjusting to a gay and lesbian parented home. They haven’t learned the social biases against gays and lesbians yet.” (Nighlad).

Social aspects of my life would teach me that being homosexual or bisexual was wrong, but others (while living in Palm Springs, Ca.) taught me that it was completely normal to have such sexual orientations. I have lived in California my whole life which has always had heavy, heated debates about allowing same sex marriages, allowing homosexuals in the military, and fighting for homosexual equality, so the history behind my state has made me grow up to be comfortable around gays even with the disturbing things I had been subjected to while I was growing up in Palm Springs. This class has now taught me many things I did not know about when it comes to the psychological aspects of being homosexual or bisexual, but I am still a heterosexual, and comfortable with it.

I grew up in Greenville South Carolina. Growing up in the south, I was always around people who are more traditional in viewpoints, especially when surrounding the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual/Transgender, Questioning, and more community. I went to a high school where no one hesitated to throw around extremely derogatory terms. I had friends who had expressed their feelings of not fitting into their biological sex, I felt bad for them because they lived in fear of people finding out and what their reactions might be. They constantly feared for their safety.

I knew it would be a challenging for my family to accept me being gay. Being the only gay male in the family was not as easy as it sounded in my head. I decided to wait for the “right time”. As years passed, it took a toll out of

In my college years, I started to realize that my perception of normality was not the same as everyone else. I’ve learn that people have their own way of lifestyle. Also, that the word “normal” is defined in several ways and not everyone has the same definition for it. Normative is a wide factor that includes many different variables to different people. What made me become more aware of homosexuality was the time I began to expand my social surroundings. In the environment I grew up in, there was a strict stigma towards homosexuals. I felt the pressure to believe in what everyone else around me believed in because I did not want to be considered as an outsider. Inclusion was important to me because feeling a part of a social group was crucial. It wasn’t until I began to stop caring about what my friends and family’s ideology about heterosexual marriage was when I broke free from my chain. The time I started my higher education career was time I met new people that changed my perception on diversity. I had the pleasure to met many people from different culture, religion, color, and sexual orientation. Acceptance for myself to be who I want to be became clear. My view of the world was changing. I was bided to the chain of ignorance because I lacked motivation to seek for the truth in the world around me. Through my college education, I met many homosexual individuals that influence my life. Majority of the time I discovered many commonalties I had with these individuals regardless of our sexual orientation. Although, the stereotype of homosexual does persist, it did not stop me from being open minded. I was ignorant before because I lack perception of homosexuals as normal individuals. I judge them as a whole because of what I have learned through my family’s cultural values, beliefs and

My sexuality has never been a struggle for me. My sexuality however was not a minority. In fact I did not experience a classmate being openly Bi-Sexual until my Freshman year. I grew up in a private christian church and school. Homosexuality was just not something anyone had ever brought up to me. I was treated the same way from my teachers as the next student was. Yes I had my fair share of bullying but that was not due to the sexual orientation I identified

I knew from the time I was 12 that I was attracted to females and not males. I grew up with 4 older brothers and just wanted to be one of the guys. I played sports and got dirty, unlike my sisters who danced and talked about boys. I remember over hearing my mom one day while watching a movie with a homosexual scene, how “gross and unnatural” that was. That pushed me even further into my closet. My parents were born and raised Catholics. My mom believed in a marriage between a man and a woman, and anything else was unnatural. She used to say that those were the poor choices people made. I focused my attention on school and sports and even got a job during high school just to keep me distracted and away from home. I figured the less I was around my family the less likely they would be to figure out my secret

I am proud to be a bisexual African American female with a passion for technology. Yet my journey has not been easy. For my mother, my sexuality was difficult to understand. Due to my strict Jamaican background, she not only misunderstood, but she fought with me. Uncovering my bisexuality was read as a war cry. This led her to try everything in her power to stop or revert this from happening. At one point, not even girls were allowed to sleep over. Her behavior felt dehumanizing and these feelings still resonate with me. I have learned that my mother's acceptance is something I will never have, whole-heartedly, due to her unchanged beliefs.

We see the judgement when a same sex couple is walking down the halls, with a smile on their face because they're happy. Being with the person that actually makes them smile. Some of the couples hide in the shadows or not even at school at all, because the looks they get when they do the same thing as heterosexual relationships, it’s a look of disgust and it shouldn’t be that way. Is it okay to judge a race, or even a sex. No and people have issues at this school about it, so how is it okay to do the same exact thing to another group of people. It’s

The majority of family on either side are heterosexual. I do have a niece who we think is a lesbian, however her dad has never said anything and I am not around her enough for that type of conversation to ever come up. I have learned from this project that this is a conversation that I have very little with my family. Last semester when we were talking about sexual identity I would talk with my parents about what I learned and mom was more comfortable with the topic than my dad was. He is pretty open-minded compared to those in his same generation, just every once in a while I can see biases come out of woodwork that he got from his parents.

I grew up in the suburban town of Brunswick, Ohio. Brunswick being a not-so diverse area with most of its citizens being Caucasian and have what some would consider having “old fashioned” values. I went to public school throughout my entire education. I had a typical family, consisting of a mother, a father and two sisters. Many would say nothing about my upbringing was “unique” or “diverse.” However, as surrounded by “typical” as I was, there is something different about the way I grew up. I had to adapt as a gay man in this, very conventional community. Throughout my life I was surrounded by the familiar man meets woman, they have children and start a family. Nobody in my family has ever been associated with the LGBT community and I do

Part of my discoveries in feminism led me to discover how traditional the adult view of sexuality and gender are. Parents are so unaccepting of LGBT+ children because they believe everything must have an order, and there is only one way to be human. The teenagers I have met do not see things this way. They are able to accept one another, often much better than their own parents are able to accept them. My parents know that I do not like to judge other people’s worth based on what gender they are or what gender they are attracted to, and this has gotten us into arguments. I do not let that tear me down. Accepting and understanding others is more important to me than being

I didn’t know what the word “gay” meant until late in my eighth grade school year. I simply had never heard the word before then. However, after being exposed in a basic way to the concept of queerness, my friend group and I started going to our school’s GSA. The GSA then stood for Gay-Straight Alliance but later we changed it to stand for Gender and Sexuality Alliance in an effort to be more inclusive. Back then, many of my friends didn’t actually identify as queer or part of the LGBT community, but that would change in the next few years. I also experienced that change, as it was that year that I discovered that I am pansexual, and then the next year that I discovered that I am agender. I was lucky enough to end up having a group of friends

"Before I arrived at Denmark State University, I thought I was lesbian. When I was sixteen years old, I expressed my feelings to my mother and she slapped the hell out of me. Rule number one, don't ever tell your homophobic parents that you're lesbian or bisexual. However, as it turns out, I wasn't lesbian at all. During my first days at DSU, I fell madly in love with every man. Literally. Of course, I grew out of my creepy crush stage, but I learned who I was as an individual. I was far from lesbian or bisexual. One of my friends in high school told me that you cannot force yourself to be attracted to a female if you are not truly lesbian or bisexual and at the time, I did not understand what she meant by that. Nevertheless, I found out that the whole "going gay" or "going lesbian" trend was extremely problematic and the lifestyle is most definitely not a choice. If you're gay, you're gay. You shouldn't be attracted to someone who is of the opposite sex AT ALL. Hence, if you were once attracted to males and now you declare yourself as a full out lesbian, you are dumb. Nobody chooses the lifestyle of being gay or lesbian. Also, they are not born that way either. They are who they are. Nobody had to tell us about being straight. I do not feel as if people have a right to tell people who they can and cannot marry or love. Even if we do not agree with it because of religion or "morals", it is not our place to limit the rights of other human

Otherwise, like Joe said, they will be made fun of, or even worse, get physically harmed. Often times we don’t view same-sex couples as being a minority because it doesn’t involve race, but the people who fall into that category are small population of our country. They are in minority to the amount of heterosexual couples there are in the United States. Being straight, I don’t fully understand what Joe feels. The advice I would offer Joe is to not believe what the people say. If people are calling you names and hurting you, just ignore it. If people want to go those lengths to hurt you, then they obviously have low self-esteem. If you believe the stereotypes that people say, then you are giving them something to believe that isn’t necessarily true. If you don’t believe in what they say, then don’t listen to them, because you know what it is like to be gay, they don’t. I say you should live your life happily and let them embarrass themselves because you are happy the way you