One of the worst things about the anti-gay movement is the sexualizing of human beings, and especially of children. Heterosexuality is accepted as the norm, homosexuality as a sexual perversion. The "sexual" in "homosexual" is emphasized, understood as activity, whereas in "heterosexual" it's the "hetero" that is emphasized and the "sexual" is waived. Heterosexual children are not viewed by default as sexual beings.
When a person, or a child, comes out as homosexual they are automatically categorized, by those infected with anti-gay thought, as a person characterized by sexual activity. They are viewed in a lascivious light, as might someone working as a pole dancer or Catholic priest.
This is especially harmful with children. Viewing an LGBT child as someone who has crossed over into imagined sexual activity allows some adults to withdraw their respect and protection from that child. This is something I have become acutely aware of as my own 13-year-old son has come out at his middle school.
Many well meaning adults charged with my child's protection look at me through a fog of incomprehension, not understanding why they cannot allow children to be called "faggot" in their classroom, or why they have to report each and every incidence of violence. It's as if they were saying to me, "But your child is gay!"
My son does not have a boyfriend, nor does he want one. He is not there yet. He is a child. He understands that his desire is for his own gender, just as some little girls understand that when they grow up they want to marry someone just like daddy. Coming out as gay, for my son, was not an invitation to be treated like someone "asking for it".
The religious right and social conservatives are making a grave error that may cause the marginalization of their organizations for decades to come. Stripped of their political power and moral authority, all that's left, all the world sees, is the perversion of their ideas - LGBT children as sexualized beings rather than human beings, and the smallness, meanness and cruelty that they preach.
Viewing LGBT children as sexualized beings instead of human beings requires the willing (though perhaps unconcious) act of recategorizing a human being, or human child, as a sexual object. This places the child at risk of being abused by other children and adults for whom the usual social boundaries no longer apply.
If we are talking about sin, recategorizing a human child as a sexual object is a SIN.
7 comments:
The recategorization of an LGBT child as a sexual object is all about dehumanization. Once a person has been dehumanized, the next logical step is to deny rights, shun, abuse and even kill that person. It's a very slippery slope.
Your son must be very courageous. Under what circumstances did he come out? Was it an essay, a speech, was he challenged to 'admit it? I hope this doesn't seem nosy or weird, but I work with teens and I am curious as to how the opportunity for such honesty came about in such an unlikely setting.
It was at a poetry reading at the school - he wrote a poem about it, but I think most of his close friends already knew.
Well said. The religious right's sexualization of LGBT-identified children is so maddening to me because they portray straight children as potential victims of gay male sexuality. If we let LGBT-identified people (but especially gay men) interact with straight children, they will necessarily indoctrinate "our children" into the "gay lifestyle". Which is kind of interesting, because it seems to be suggesting that homosexuality is more natural than heterosexuality. Why else would simply being in the presence of a gay man inspire a child to somehow "become" gay? Anyway, I guess once a child comes out, s/he is no longer worth protecting.
I'm assuming that you posted this because your son's teachers don't understand what's wrong with one child calling another "faggot", or one child inflicting violence upon another on the basis of his/her sexuality. And that is fucking disgusting. I don't care how well-meaning you are.
Miss Poppy, that was a great post. You hit the nail right on the head. Your son is very lucky to have such a great mom like you.
Is it any wonder? Go figure.
Read the book being distributed to some school kids in the US and tell me if you think it's appropriate and healthy for them to gain this kind of knowledge. ("Little Black Book-Queer in the 21st Century")
By the way, you don't have to be "anti-gay" to make the assertion that homosexuals have a natural affinity towards being promiscuous.
There are plenty of unbiased medical studies that clearly demonstrate the propensity homophiles have for indiscriminate sexual relations, as well as contracting far higher numbers of STD's than heteros.
I will be posting much of this documented information soon and urge you to have your child reconsider his choice of lifestyle.
A study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that homosexuals and bi-sexuals contracted potentially fatal ailments such as AIDS, anal cancer, tuberculosis and hepatitis disproportionately.
The U.S. National Institute of Health reports that the median age of death is less than 50 years for those involved in homosexuality."
http://www.massresistance.org/docs/info/kbase/
horror_stories.html
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