The Life Of My Life

What truly surprised me as a worked my way through the survey questions, was the immediacy of the rebuttal to the entry “my sexual orientation is not clear to me.” Though a heterosexual in general practice, currently involved in a monogamous heterosexual relationship between cisgender individuals, I am not a stranger to displays of affection of what could be considered of the homosexual kind; never have I been involved in what I would define as a romantic relationship with another man, but I have been more intimate with my close male friends than what I have seen other be, sharing kisses of affection and friendly love without later engaging in more physical demonstrations of romantic love. Like all, I’d like to think, I am able to appreciate and express friendly love, valuing it greatly as a component of my social life, and not limiting the extent of such emotion to a particular gender; in the expression of this love, I find enjoyable the connection made by something as innocuous as a hug, but possibly because of my upbringing in Italy, I further appreciate the intimate kisses shared on

I was about to face my greatest challenge in my new life. How to fit in with people in middle school. Arriving in America was already hard to adjust, what more can it be with my school life. It was in August when my school started. I was already nervous, and I haven’t even step foot from this mysterious school that I’m about to spend 2 years of my life.

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.

The fifth grade school year ended very quickly, Mrs.Cullen retired, and my classmates and I moved on to the next chapter of our lifes, sixth grade. As the next school year arrived, I went about sixth grade the same way I had started about fifth grade, I had a ton of friends in my class, and I thought that sixth grade would be a walk in the park. My advisor was Mr.Ferry, and having to write about 1000 times I will not disrupt class, I finally began to approach sixth grade in a different way. In sixth grade I learned the importance of mindfulness, and doing what I loved from

Published by the Huffington Post, 20 year old Austin Fisher voices his process of coming out in his article entitled “The 3 Sides to my Coming Out Story”. I choose to analyze and reflect on this text for I believe it displays various situations and perceptions in response to one coming out. The author starts by explaining how he came to terms with himself. When Fisher was younger he idolized his brother’s bravery for announcing his homosexuality to the world. This planted a seed in Fisher’s mind that would not seem to stop growing. Though deep down he knew he was gay, he was not ready to admit it to himself or the outside world. Instead, Fisher suppressed his “gay side” and reinvented himself. He got a girlfriend and views “coming out” as overrated, for Fisher views it as unfair and unjust that because of his inherently “wrong” sexualtity he has to go through an emotional process of explaining who he is attracted to the people he loves.

When talking about gender I have to bring up sexual orientation. This is a time when more

Upon arrival, I was immediately surrounded by many diverse and intelligent individuals. Everyone was accepting toward people of different backgrounds, but I, on the other hand, was not so accepting toward myself and had a difficult time with becoming comfortable with my sexuality. Because I was not comfortable with myself, I found it difficult to be comfortable around people who were the same way as me. Fellow students and staff

Sex and gender play a big part in american society today and are often misconstrued. These two topics have become progressive as people are starting to express their gender and sexuality in ways other than what is and has been considered the norm. Many people believe that sexuality and gender are synonymous with one another. Gender is socially constructed while sex is biologically determined. In society’s past, Americans often strayed away from discussing controversial topics, but with the rise of different ways of addressing people, it is deemed more important to understand. Along with the blurred lines of gender and sex comes sexuality, who someone is attracted to sexually. When people stray from society’s heteronormative mindset, they are often faced with many more challenges than the average hetero man or woman. People often have the preconceived notion that if something does not concern them, then they should not be involved in it. A person who could be your neighbor, co worker, or even child, may have to deal with the troubles of people confusing their gender identity with their sex. While also facing challenges that deal with the sex of the person they choose to love. Learning the difference between gender and sexuality will open the eyes of many people and see how the two are different but relate to one another very much.

Steven Pedersen is currently a student attending Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and during our mutual time at this university I had the pleasure of meeting him in our English 202 class. Originally we didn’t have much interaction, but through the development of the course I was enlightened into more of the life of Steven. When tasked with writing a Sustained Inquiry Project I really got to peer into who Steven really was through his writings and personal interactions. Steven wanted to understand “How has questioning [his] sexuality throughout [his] life impacted [his] past, present, future and has it affected [him] as a person?” I personally think most people at some point in their lives have questions just like this and often have to seek or ignore finding the answer.

Not advocating one over the other as an open-minded individual, I remained indifferent towards the sentiment of sexual orientation as time has proceeded to evolve the social stigmatization enveloping one's sexual preference. As a young child, often overseen by a late family friend who I did not recognize was gay until after his departure, I did not conceptualize a severance between one's favored gender as a sexual partner and their own sexual identity. Never being one to distinguish one by labels or preconceived perceptions, I distanced myself from societal norms that most of the population seems to abide. By validating my impersonal attitudes concerning one's sexual orientation, I sustained my conscious

Growing up everyone is told that they are unique. “Be yourself,” “use your God-given talent,” and other expressions such as these impress the aforementioned narrative into our minds. Thus, when I was around thirteen years old, I thought my sexuality was just a part of me that only I had. I wanted to share this feature about myself; I wanted to take pride in it and show it off. Coming out to a close few friends showed positive and emotional responses. Riding on this high, I was ready to embrace myself in high school. Yet, my naivety took the best of me as I was going to an all male, religious high school. My sexuality has provided me with experiences that have and will continue to shape my life. These struggles, whether they are internal or external, have provided me with invaluable skills.

In my early twenties, I had come to terms with my sexuality and I called myself “gay.” From going to local clubs, I developed friendships with other gay men close to my age. There would always be incidents that we would discuss or sexual interest and, on occasion, someone would tell about their sexual encounter with someone. It was about this time in my sexual discovery that things were beginning to feel out of sorts. A group of four gay men would begin sharing stories of their sex lives and I wasn’t hearing about the kinds of sexual experiences that I wanted. When I was bold enough to tell a story about my sexual encounters, the men around me seemed to all have perplexed and disapproving looks on their faces. There would be an entire series of follow-up questions for me: Did you…? But, did he ever do that to you…? It became clear to me that what I wanted from a sexual partner was distinctly different from just about every gay man that I knew. Although I thought it was a bit odd, I wasn’t overly concerned with this disparity. Different people are attracted to different things and this particular group of gay men just wanted something different than me.

The first year, the time to prove myself had arrived. Classes, rooms, teachers, and some students were unfamiliar. Eventually, minutes melted into hours, hours to days, and days to weeks. It didn’t take long before my schedule was routine, something of second nature. Humor and happiness were found in the form of my advisory family, where school was transformed into something more than going through the same motions of day to day activity. By the closing point of sixth grade, I was having a hard time letting go of what I’d adapted to. “What’s wrong?” my dad asked when I was getting into the car after being picked up early on the last day. I explained how distressed I was that my first year of middle school exceeded my expectations, and that it had to come to an end. Although his outlook viewed my reason for sorrow as trivial, I didn’t.

I’ve come to identify with the masculinity of my gender and establish my sexual orientation as a hetereosexual individual during the earlier stages of my life. Because my older siblings, not to mention my parents, would discuss their sexual experiences in my presence, my curiosity was peaked. Thus, I began to explore my sexuality. During my pre-teenage years, I had already engaged in numerous sex related acts.

Upon entering this course, my understanding of human sexuality was decent; I was aware of certain aspects of sexuality such as being straight, gay, lesbian, queer, transgender, etc. Nevertheless, I did not realize how expansive sexuality is; it never occurred to me that sexual health, prostitution, marriage, rape, sex trafficking, divorce, families, etc., all fell under the umbrella of human sexuality. Books and essays such as Renee Hill’s Walk Together and David Shneer’s “Out of School” showcased the multiple facets of human sexuality and how terms like queer are not directly related to homosexuality. While sexuality and homosexuality are linked, frequently, people mistake them as being synonymous; before entering this class, I was searching for a definition of sexuality, and often in the thesaurus section of dictionary websites homosexuality and or sexual orientation was considered a synonym of sexuality. Formerly, I too would have agreed they were the same, however, after taking this course, I concluded that homosexuality is just one topic in the broad discussion of sexuality. My understanding of sexuality now is that it