Happy Pride Month - 2019

I think that’s this generation Sue. My kids don’t care. Which is great.

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@anon12657779 - I think it is great that you talk with your kids about this stuff. I am constantly learning from those younger than me (often teenagers) new ways of thinking.

In my family, we didn’t talk about sexuality. When my parents got divorced and my mother left to move in with a woman that she reconnected with from her army basic training days, I asked if they were in a relationship. The response was “we are operating under the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy” (they were both in the military). I was 16 or 17 and we never talked about it again and my mother continues to live her life in the closet and my feelings about it are complicated.

That impacted me and I never felt comfortable being out or open about my own sexuality. I never had any bisexual role models. Many people would either assume I was straight or a lesbian, depending on various factors at the time. The language often used of “switching teams” perpetuates these binaries, none of which apply to me. My life is lived in shades of gray, in many areas.

And from my own experiences, I always just seek to exist quietly. There are always parts of my life that I hold back - we still don’t have these conversations in my family. We might all go to a Pride parade together, but I have never talked to them about the women I date. I realise that’s on me - I am lucky, as I know they would be nonplussed. Yet I still haven’t done it. My approach has been to just quietly live how I live, without any fanfare.

Yet, in the last few years that has started to trouble me. Maybe this quietness is about internalised shame and embarrassment? Maybe I took a page from my mother’s playbook. Maybe it can help other young people trying to figure themselves out to see people like me being out and open about my life. I don’t know.

Even now, I have much to think about…

Oh and this morning I went to a local Pride event at the Audubon - “Gay Birding”. This is much more my speed as compared to a crowded parade. :slight_smile: :bird:
:rainbow::rainbow::rainbow:

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Happy pride month :blush::rainbow:

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My 13 year old daughter is the one that starts these conversations. They must cover it at school because she doesn’t treat it as anything untoward.
That’s what I mean when I say that this generation seem to not care. It’s just part of the norm to be what you want to be.
She seen her cousin go from being Tabitha to being Callum and her sister says she is gay.
So to her it’s part of life’s rich tapestry.
As to my eldest daughter, my and her mum’s view is that she has not had any sort of relationship at all. She will find whoever she finds, when she does.
When she first went to London Pride, I was worried about her, not because of what she was doing, but because it was not long after a spate of terrorist attacks in this country. And I feared that the parade may have been a target. But I think that was just my fatherly protectiveness. She was only 17. With Asperger’s.

As to me, I’ve had loads of mates who are gay, a couple have even hit on me :joy:. 2 of my best mates on a ship I was on were. I have never had any problems. Unless you count not wanting to hear a colleague regail us of his sexual encounters at the breakfast table as a problem, but then, I wouldn’t want to hear a straight persons tales either! Not in such graphic detail anyway! :joy::joy:
Unfortunately, that doesn’t hold true for a lot of people of my age. I still hear so much prejudice. The “narrative” that @SassyRocks was on about is, unfortunately, still very much here.
For someone like yourself, even though there was no “prejudice” in your family it was still “hush hush” so your own feelings of “internalised shame and embarrassment” must be as you say, “a page from your mother’s playbook”
I sincerely feel that, at least in this country" the next generation will see a better understanding and greater tolerance of an individual’s right to be who they desire.
Hope you have a happy Pride my friend!

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Everybody say LOVE :heart::orange_heart::yellow_heart::green_heart::blue_heart::purple_heart:

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