Seemingly meaningless interactions somehow have the inconvenient honour of having the most long-term impact imaginable. I was in sixth grade when I was first introduced to the words gay and lesbian, not by teachers or other adult figures in my life, but by my classmates. And it was clear from that first introduction that these were not nice words and that whatever they meant was probably not something I wanted to be.
Language is powerful. The way we speak (i.e., our intonations) communicates subliminally even when everything appears normal on the surface. I didn’t know what being gay or lesbian meant, but learning about these terms from my equally ignorant and excitable 10-year-old classmates would not have been my go-to source of knowledge if I had had a say. While I had access to the internet, which helped me fill in the blanks, the initial fear of potentially putting myself in the line of fire by mistakenly admitting to a queer identity never really left.
As I grew older and bolder, so did my classmates. Being queer was no longer a bad thing, at least not if you wanted to keep your social clout. I considered myself an ally, but beyond that, I was just another woke, straight teenager attending a private school. It wasn’t until 6 years after my initial, less-than-savoury introduction to queerness that I realised and admitted to myself that I was not nearly as straight as I thought I was.
Internalised homophobia is an insidious thing. I didn’t have an issue with queerness outside of myself, and so I believed that there was nothing to examine within myself. My childhood discomfort manifested as wilful ignorance and an unwillingness to look at the signs that would have made my queerness quite obvious. I mean, there is no straight explanation for my fixation on The Chronicles of Narnia’s Prince Caspian, the Avril Lavigne ‘Hot’ music video, and (weirdly enough) Cat Ranger from Power Rangers SPD.
Thankfully, I had sleepovers and curiosity-driven sexuality tests to fall back on. The scientific validity of the Kinsey scale and the test are highly debated – and I am not here to comment on its accuracy – but filling in that test and seeing the results changed my life, regardless. At 16, I was pretty comfortable in my own skin and had finally matured enough that the opinions of others didn’t bother me. So when I finally finished filling in all the questions, clicked on the results and saw the word bisexual staring at me in the face, I just felt a sort of calm acceptance. Sure, bisexuality is a spectrum, and it was far from a fifty-fifty split, but suddenly, I had a word I could and did identify with.
Also read: Educating School Students About the Importance of IDAHOBIT
Getting clarity on my sexuality was an important milestone for me. While I didn’t care about the implications of coming out, it did alter how people spoke about me behind my back. Bisexuality is, after all, one of the most misunderstood of all sexual orientations out there. Jokes were cracked, raising questions about whether or not I found any of my friends attractive as if queer people have no discernment whatsoever. But this time the possibility of being teased didn’t make me anxious. I was better equipped and more willing to engage in uncomfortable conversations if the need arose. After all, I finally knew there was nothing wrong with me.
Retrospectively, my relationship with my sexuality showed me that it’s necessary to have open conversations about things like gender and sexuality with kids at a young age. It’s easy to avoid uncomfortable discussions, cross your fingers and hope that the kids are smart enough to figure things out themselves, but that doesn’t make it the appropriate approach. Children are like sponges, a simple introduction to the concept, and they’ll run with it. Leave kids to their own devices, and they might jump to the worst conclusions and wreak havoc.
Also read: On Kids, Safety and Gendering: A Young Mother’s Thoughts About Raising a Child in a Regressive World
More importantly, check the language you use when speaking about these topics or any sensitive issue, for that matter. Words have power; something, I think, we forget. There is a reason why authors, journalists and editors spend hours on a single sentence because the wrong word alters the meaning altogether. This is the care with which we should approach spoken language as well. I write this in the hope that another kid doesn’t take a good sixteen years to come to terms with their own identity.
