A Guide for Parents to be Sensitive to Their Child’s Sexuality
Based on the personal experience of coming out to my parents.
I was ten and a half years old. I had never heard the term ‘queer’, let alone known someone who was like that. After watching ‘3 Idiots’ for the fourth time, an unfamiliar word — ‘gay’ — landed on my ears, so I pulled out a thesaurus and flipped through the pages until I spotted it; at that tender age, I didn’t understand who a homosexual was.
Girls Like Girls Like Boys Do
During that same dreadful year, I had my first brush with ‘love’; she was eleven years older and about to get engaged within a few months. I was utterly convinced that she was meant for me. I used love calculators to estimate our compatibility and was thoroughly devastated when the result read only 9%. My classmates, in hushed whispers, called me a lesbian, yet another alien word. All I could gather was that it might be an insult. Troubled, I decided that I was not going to be a lesbian; as the eldest child of affluent parents, I learnt to feel outcasted long before I came to terms with what homosexuality was. I did my best to disassociate myself from my classmates’ notions, but that was just the beginning. A long list of women caught my fancy: the attractive cashier at the grocery store, a friend’s half-Italian classmate, Kate Beckinsale in Pearl Harbour, the Punjabi girl residing on the 5th floor, a random Instagram model who popped up on my feed, a cousin’s best friend, and an array of strangers.
It became increasingly difficult for me to explain my interest in women, even to myself. I couldn’t digest the fact that perhaps I was that dirty word which floated through the hallways of my school. It was hard to admit, and even harder to live with. Within the comfort of my house, I had to confront a nullifying silence, which left me convinced that nobody else in the world had the same sick longings as I did. But my closest coterie barely cared; they cheered on my often short-lived affections aimed at women and were my shoulder to cry upon, when the chronicles of an early-teen closeted-lesbian’s impossible conquests predictably met their doom.
Fast-forward to seven years later — gathering every last ounce of courage that I possessed, I came out to my parents. Upon uttering the three dreaded words, the usual, heartwarming “maybe it is just a phase” greeted me. A volley of acerbic arguments — the “You-are-most-definitely-straight” argument, the “You-will-invite-trouble” argument, and the “How-will-you-find-a-suitable-boy-if-you-keep-advertising-your-sexuality” argument embraced me with open arms.
In medias res, when I was sixteen, I stumbled upon a wonderful human being. Of all the classrooms in all the towns in all the world, she walked into mine. Everything about her screamed you-are-so-falling-for-her. I recall this day vividly — we were perched upon a sofa in the newly-renovated library, discussing all things irrelevant and inappropriate, when she rested her head upon my shoulder and said, “You might be pansexual”. Under my breath, I repeated after her, tasting the new word on my tongue, a strange kind of warmth spreading through my body. There was something oddly liberating about her acceptance.
When I told my parents that I was off the market, happily in love with the very same girl, it is an understatement if I say that all hell broke loose. The previous arguments were now cemented by threats to keep us apart and a round of slammed doors, bitter tears trickling from swollen eyes, raised voice, fists banging against walls, shrouded by rage and disappointment.
My parents are fundamentally good people. They are the poster children of the Indian Generation X small-towners, who grew up against a backdrop of sandy beaches and swaying coconut trees, packed their responsibilities into a suitcase and migrated to a cosmopolitan metropolis in the pursuit of happiness. Growing up, they were staunch believers of the idea that one day they will become far better, inclusive, and sensitive parents than their own.
In my opinion, I belong to a mostly liberal upper-middle-class family: in a house of two daughters, there has been not a single sexist remark or action; we’ve always been encouraged to chase our passions and to dream, the bigger the better; but even my parents are shackled to one of the most enduring and cruellest legacies of colonialism — heteronormativity, which remains the long undisputed cause of homophobia. To the land of Kama-Sutra, the colonisers brought authoritative rigidity, narrow-mindedness, and an archaic Victorian law.
Battling Parental Homophobia
So, what do you do when your father is a distastefully homophobic Hiram Lodge? And your mother is a somewhat outspoken but a largely meek Hermione Lodge, who tries to placate you with ill-placed ‘mija’s?
I distanced myself from the Lodges.
For roughly five months, I continued to marinate in my resentment. There were so many things that I wanted to tell my parents, but the words could barely escape my throat. I wanted to shake them by the shoulders, and chant, over and over, that they were wrong.
The one thing that I realised since the time that I came out was that parents are not perfect; at the end of the day, they are just human beings. Along every turn, I noticed that I was defending their actions: that is the mentality that they grew up with; he said it in a fit of anger; they will eventually accept me; there is no chance that my parents are homophobic. The sense of betrayal that spread through my body, when it dawned upon me that my father was unequivocal in what he said, is the one feeling that I cannot translate into words.
Non-acceptance, which either breeds homophobia or stems from it, is the bully on the block that can reduce a relationship to ashes. This was captured in S3E04 (“Finger in the Dyke”) of Orange is the New Black. One of the characters, Carrie “Big Boo” Black, is a forty-two-year-old lesbian. A flashback reveals that Big Boo and her mother are at loggerheads because the former is hard-butch, which does not go down well with her mother. Eventually, when her mother is on her deathbed — after much coaxing from her girlfriend — Boo goes to the hospital to see her. Upon being instructed by her father to changes into something more girly — for her mother’s sake — Boo utters the iconic words:
“I have fought for this too long… I refuse to be invisible, Daddy. Not for you, not for mom, not for anyone.”
After several unsuccessful attempts of immersing in mundane tasks to take my mind off the new-found bitterness which had made a home out of me, I came to terms with the fact that I had to look for a healthy outlet. The first step, I realised, is to stand your ground — you can like a person of any gender and it is nobody’s business to tell you otherwise. Secondly, build a support system — talk to your friends or any other trusted person — with whom you can have a frank conversation about your feelings. Personally, it has benefitted me tremendously once I started interacting with fellow queer teens; not only does that establish a sense of solidarity and safety, but it also emphasises upon the fact that you are not alone. The third and perhaps the toughest step depends upon the pre-coming-out-relationship that you share with your parents — do you want them to approve? If yes, then you have to address the elephant in the room, and reconvene conversations regarding your sexuality with your parents.
How Can Parents Help?
On a broad spectrum of familial reactions, one end represents Elio Perlman’s parents from Call Me By Your Name, who made Oliver feel like a part of their family — “almost like a son-in-law” — whereas the parents on the other end are like Oliver’s, who would have carted him off “to a correctional facility”. While the dream is to have as many parents migrating from one side of the reactionary scale to the other, the harsh reality is that a majority of them are scattered along either the middle or the unfavourable end.
If your first reaction to your child’s sexuality is to be shell-shocked, and if you can feel the words “what if it’s just a phase” slip off your tongue, stop right there. If you are at a loss when it comes to navigating dinner-table-discussions with them, you need to consult the wonderful world of Google. Use all available resources to explore your child’s identity, so you can fiercely stand by them as they conquer the world one demon at a time.
When the child you have cared for in your womb for 9 months and a further 10+ years comes out to you, the basic and crucial response is acceptance. Period. Throughout the turbulent journey out of the closet, they must have battled intense periods of self-doubt and anxiety with a massive amount of courage (take it from a lesbian); all they need is love. If you are the first person they come out to, they will imagine you as their safe-space. While showering, they must have envisioned the conversation that they will have with you when they tell you that they identify as queer and how you will hug your child and reassure them that you accept them for the reason that they are. Do not let your child down!
According to multiple studies, LGBTQIA+ teens are more likely to experience depression, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse and promiscuous behaviour, as compared to their straight counterparts. Every year, across the globe, thousands of queer kids become homeless just because their parents are unable to digest the existence of alternate sexualities; heteronormativity is so heavily ingrained in our heads that we are afraid of anything else blossoming in its place.
When your child decides to take that step and involve you in the conversation, you need to remember that the way you react to the news has a deep and lasting impact on their life — they will recall each time that they felt loved, accepted, and respected. On the other hand, if you invalidate, ridicule, or ignore them, you will become a misinformed homophobic parent, and one day you will walk into your child’s bedroom, wondering when you grew apart, while they will be watching Love, Simon hoping to have parents as understanding as Simon’s.
