agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Care and Feeding,

My younger child “Lisa” is 14. Lisa has always been very shy. She has anxiety. She is very nerdy. She likes board games and Dungeons and Dragons. She has worn glasses since she was a toddler. Her best friend from a young age, and her only friend in elementary school, was a boy named “Liam.” She has always been ambivalent about wearing skirts. All these traits are what my ex-wife Linda has used to conclude that Lisa is lesbian.

She decided this by the time Lisa was 8, and has been waiting for her to come out ever since. I found out about this about a year ago when Linda confided in me that she was worried about homophobic bullies when Lisa went to high school. Linda and I divorced when Lisa was 3 years old, but we have had an amicable co-parenting relationship since then. I have always had more time with the kids than her in our joint custody agreement; it’s just the reality of our jobs. I know that that has been a source of frustration for Linda in the past. About five years ago, Linda and her brother stopped talking to their homophobic family, and Linda left her old community at a more traditional church for a progressive LGBTQ+-friendly church, which my kids are also members of (voluntarily). What I didn’t realize at the time is that she did all this because she thought that Lisa was a lesbian.

Well, Lisa and Liam have been dating for the past four months. Lisa has told me in private that she is fairly sure that she is a straight cis girl (she compared her feelings to those of her close friends in the board game club at school who were LGBTQ+ in some way). Linda has been getting impatient. She has been dropping hints about how it’s time for Lisa to come out. She’s also been talking about how much she hopes Lisa isn’t straight because of all the sacrifices she’s made to provide a better home for a gay child. Lisa is frightened about what would happen if her mother found out about her dating life. She may have changed, but from what I remember of our married days she might take out her frustrations on Lisa emotionally. I understand that this isn’t really as serious as a lesbian teen who has a homophobic mother, but given I don’t know what to do in that situation either, any advice would be appreciated.

—Lots of L Names

Dear L Names,

I think you should be the one to talk to your ex about Lisa’s sexuality and her new relationship. Linda has held tight to her curiously-formed assumptions for a long time and on some level, seems to have made them part of her own identity. It is noble for her to want to create a safe space for a gay child; unfortunately, she didn’t actually confirm that she had one before making that her mission. Let Linda know that she hasn’t done anything wrong and that her heart was in the right place, but that she seems to have assigned something to Lisa that simply isn’t correct.

It’s awful to imagine her being so frustrated by her error that she somehow takes her feelings out on your daughter; hopefully, as you said, she’s changed since the marriage. However, be on guard for her reactions and be prepared to support Lisa if Linda starts acting out. Hopefully, Linda will realize her error and move forward with coming to terms with Lisa’s identity. I don’t know that Lisa absolutely needs to know about her mother’s assumption, but if you choose to discuss it with her, emphasize the fact that Linda believed that she was acting in her best interest. Wishing you the best.

—Jamilah

https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/08/daughter-dating-advice-care-and-feeding.html

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I have nothing insightful to say, but I only posted this because it reminded me of an anecdote from my mother's young childhood and young adulthood.

Apparently they had a long-time neighbor who was a shrink, and this man was convinced that one of his three sons was gay because, as a small child, the boy liked to play with stuffed animals.

As it turns out, one of the sons was gay - it just wasn't that one!

(This anecdote doesn't tell us whether or not Dear Old Dad was supportive or not, but if my mother and her family got to hear all about it, let's hope so.)

If her feelings are hurt by not getting a special prize after making such noble sacrifices, maybe it'll help to think of her kid as being one more friend, or at least one less problem, for those kids who are. I mean, would it have been okay to raise a homophobe as long as the kid didn't hate herself?

...oh look, it's my high school experience! I was a kid quite a lot like Lisa, except that we moved states when I was eleven, and essentially everyone around me through high school seems to have assumed I was a closeted baby lesbian and reacted accordingly. (I am pretty butch and was then, too.) My mother flipped out about it and spent a lot of time interrogating me about my gender presentation, but a lot of people acted quite a lot like Linda seems to have: delighted to try to coax me out of my little closet, determined to be affirmatively accepting, and making a definite effort to encourage me to be out to them.

The trouble was, I was asexual--and I'd found the word, gone "oh okay this is a perfectly good possibility," and settled happily into it. So I had literal years of people trying, with varying degrees of unsubtlety, to assure me that they would be a safe audience for "literally anything you have to say," while knowing explicitly that they had a clear idea in mind for what my sexuality was that was not at all what I was actually thinking and feeling.

As an adult, I'm still asexual, and still butch, and still have a perspective on and relationship to my queerness that isn't the same thing as the narrative that those well-meaning people in high school had in mind. Changing the box you assign people to and assuming they will fit neatly into your rigid categories isn't actually better when the rigid box you've assembled is 'gay' rather than 'straight.'

Whatever Lisa is and winds up feeling most comfortable with, she's at an age where external pressure in any direction is the opposite of helpful. I do think it's a good idea to talk to Linda without looping Lisa in, but I also rather wish the columnist had emphasized that taking the pressure off is the important point or provided some scripts that deter Linda without framing the whole thing as a binary outcome.

Oh, god, this. Everybody apparently thought I was gay (without telling me or mentioning that gay people existed), and I was just lucky to find a partner who could meet me on those terms. But these fucking assumptions are ridonk.

She’s also been talking about how much she hopes Lisa isn’t straight because of all the sacrifices she’s made to provide a better home for a gay child.

NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE

Needs glasses at an early age == lesbian? What?? Is this a real belief that people have?

Dear LW: Help prepare Linda by reframing the conversation. She sees cutting ties with homophobes and joining a community accepting of LGBT+ individuals as "sacrifices." These are good moves regardless of Lisa's sexuality! If you can get Linda to be happier with her own choices, hopefully she won't hold so many expectations for Lisa.

Exactly! He needs to tell Linda she’s done what she should do to hold true to better values and evolved herself, no matter Lisa’s sexual orientation. Now it’s time for her to stop living through Lisa and figure out why it’s so important to her that Lisa be lesbian . . . and that he’ll be friends with and care about her just the same no matter what answers about her own sexual orientation she feels describes her. This will be fun!!!!

None of the things Linda lists have anything to do with who one is sexually attracted to, and they're not even the kind of things that are stereotypically associated with specific attractions (because for whatever reason they've become ways for queer kids to bond). This is so weird. I can't help wondering whether it's just "ways my kid is different from me" and "different from me must mean queer," or possibly "ways my kid is like me" and "people thought I was queer." In any case, I suspect it's Linda who needs to deal with her own shit (given an evangelical upbringing, there's doubtless plenty) and realize that getting her own house in order will help her kid. (No, I'm not saying she's closeted, though that's one possibility. Just that she undoubtedly has stuff to unpack.)

"...I understand that this isn’t really as serious as a lesbian teen who has a homophobic mother..."

Speaking as a queer person, actually, this is pretty dang serious. It's someone who's (possibly prepared) to disapprove of Lisa's decisions, and guilt/shame/be obnoxious about it to the 9th degree. So: not equivalent, but not nothin', either.

Reasonably good advice by Jamilah, too. that's nice.

There is a significant overlap between

homphobic churches

and between

misogynist churches and

racist churches

so LW needed to get out of there regardless of whether her daughter was LGBT...

Yiiiiiikes.

As a cis bi femme, I am CREEPED OUT by this — the mother is way too invested in her daughter’s still-undeclared sexuality, and she has turned it into part of HER identity (“parent of a queer child”), in a very unhealthy way.

Like, I do see the good intent here — but I think she’s swung the pendulum from homophobia, PAST acceptance, and into a level of insistence that is drowning out her daughter’s voice and agency.

These are things that young people have to discover about themselves, without having ANY agenda pushed on them (compulsory heterosexuality OR assumptions based on interests/presentation in early childhood that aren’t some kind of crystal ball predicting future sexual/romantic/gender orientation.)

You would not guess, to look at me now, that I was a complete tomboy as a kid (I really hated the restrictions of femininity that were forced on me, I wanted to be able to take my shirt off when it was hot, play in the woods, catch every reptile and amphibian I could get my hands on, and had this whole “Hatchet/My Side of the Mountain” fantasy of running away to be a Lost Boy.)

Amusingly, my (dreadful) mother STILL hates my adult presentation (hyper-femme), because she thinks it’s too sexy and trashy, heh. Apparently, red lips, long nails, and cleavage-y swing dresses weren’t what she wanted, either. *shrug emoji*

I didn’t make any assumptions about my daughter, she picked clothes from the boys’ section for years, she’s still a jeans/leggings, boots, t-shirt person, with occasional ventures into hard-femme, and
I embrace both our similarities and differences.

I’m glad she felt safe sharing her own feelings about sexuality in high school, and was honored by that trust.

The mother in this letter really needs some therapy to deal with all of this pressure she’s putting on her kid, especially based on such weird assumptions — I really am concerned for a child who has to worry about admitting she is probably straight :/

For all her eagerness to embrace her daughter's perceived homosexuality, Linda is still very prejudiced.

I was also reminded of an Ab Fab episode in which Eddie hopes Saffy is gay because that would finally make her the interesting daughter she could be proud of and parade around.

I can't even.

(Why is it so hard to just accept your kids as they are?)

(Also, getting away from homophobia is its own reward! And kids don't owe you for the sacrifices you make! And and and *gurgle*)