Time for another installment of Building Bridges, where we facilitate, then publish a conversation between two people in different life stages who have something with gender, sexuality and/or relationships in common. This time, our intergenerational pair is two women who have had their sexual orientation and identity shift for them during the course of their lives.
Amy, 24: I came out as a lesbian at 14 and was, as I call it, "a Professional Gay" for a long time. I interned for activist organizations, ran the GSA at my high school, got a scholarship from a local LGBT organization for my activism and went on to a women's college where I eventually became co-chair of the LGBT organization on campus. I was, as a friend once said "her definition of gay."
Looking back, I struggled with liking guys for a long time, which sounds so backwards in the way that people think of sexual orientation transitions. I felt a strong connection and loyalty to the LGBT community that I basically grew up in and was afraid that by liking guys I was betraying them. Eventually I started to wonder - if I was okay with dating people who identified as male, why was I not okay with all people who identified as male? I started "experimenting" with people-with-penises when I was 21 and started actively dating them when I graduated college at 22. I'm currently involved with a person-with-a-penis and we've been dating for almost a year now.
Candice, 39: I have been in a continuous committed relationship with the same (cis)man since I was 16. We've been legally married for something like 15 years (it all runs together at this point) and have an 8 year old son. Despite my first sexual experiences being with girls and the crushes I had on female friends, until I was in my early 20s I very strongly identified as straight. I think that the when & where of my childhood had a lot to do with that. Growing up in the 70s and 80s in a very Baptist city in the deep south meant that until I was in high school, I honestly wasn't even aware that people had anything other than hetero relationships. Even when I learned about homosexuality, I never considered identifying as gay, partly because I was strongly attracted to boys but also because to do so wouldn't have been safe, socially or physically. The only openly gay student at my high school was beaten up and bullied out of the school - talk about a powerful lesson in staying silent.
My sophomore year in college I started hanging out with a group of people that included most of the non-hetero students at the school. They were generally considered the "freaks" on campus, but they felt like home to me. For the first time I felt able to think of myself as something other than straight but I wasn't sure what exactly I WAS. I loved my boyfriend, I was attracted to girls...I started thinking I was bisexual because that seemed to fit best. Unfortunately, the lesbians I knew (and the gay men, to a lesser extent) were painfully scornful of bisexuality and although I privately identified as bi I was publicly silent on my exact orientation and simply presented myself as being in a relationship with a man.
Who I'm attracted to has changed several times in my adult life...I've had times where I was intensely interested in women and not at all in men (THAT makes a committed relationship with a man a challenge, let me tell you!) and times when I've been very into men and not particularly noticed women. My relationship with my husband has both affected and been affected by this in complicated ways. Currently, I am very much enjoying sex with a man while also "not-dating" a woman I consider my "not-girlfriend" and being very frustrated by the sex we are not having. (And yes, my husband knows this. Like I said, it gets complicated). At this point in my life I'm most comfortable identifying as queer - it's the only orientation that seems to offer enough room for the different ways I feel at different times and it has less personal baggage for me than "bisexual".
Amy: My social group is very hmm "non traditional" (aka not any different from anyone else, just more open about it) in regards to sexuality - kinky people, swingers, polyamorous, queer... the kind of people who go to sex education events for fun and lust a little after Tristan Taormino (whose book, Opening Up, is a fantastic one on open relationships. Minus the attempt at history in the introduction. My background's in history and that intro made me want to scream for proper citations.) I'm also in a non-monogamous relationship, but I know from talking to married folk that nonmonogamy is a different ball game when marriage and children are involved.
You noted your not-girlfriend and ongoing attractions outside of your marriage. Have you and your husband considered any of the various forms of non-monogamy?
Candice: Yes, absolutely. I'd say that at this point, we are tentatively poly...it is a long, tricky process renegotiating some of the most basic terms of such a long relationship. I have a much easier time with the idea of nonmonogamy, perhaps because there is no way that any one person can be both male & female & satisfy everything I want. I've also never thought that sex and love were necessarily always bound together...that idea never made sense to me. My husband is naturally monogamous so it's been a real challenge for him. I am incredibly grateful that he is willing to be flexible and work towards ways for both of us to have our needs met.
The not-girlfriend bit is because, although they are a poly couple, her husband isn't comfortable with her starting another relationship right now. Oh, ironic Universe, I shake my fist at you!
I wonder how it feels for you, Amy, to have access now to "heterosexual privilege." I know there are many times when it makes life less superficially complicated for me, even when I feel guilty about sliding through peoples' perceptions because of it. Does it make you mad when that happens? Does it sometimes feel like a relief (even if you don't think it should)? How has having a male partner affected how you move through everyday life?
Amy: On my OkCupid profile, one of the things I note is that I spent a good chunk of my life immersed in the queer community. That's part of my history and it's shaped how I approach relationships and life in general. I do not think I could date someone who did not have some form of "alternative sexuality literacy." Male, female or somewhere in between, they need to have had some interaction with the queer community and they need to be comfortable with their sexuality.
In my daily life, heterosexual privilege doesn't really come up - as noted, I tend to surround myself with people where sexuality is a very fluid thing and more tied up with actions than identities. I have noticed that because I no longer actively present as a soft-butch lesbian and because I am presenting as more femme, that the way other people interact with me - from bartenders to people at happy hours to men who hold the doors for me outside of office buildings - is different. Also, I haven't been sir'd in years. But that's more of a presenting thing than a who I'm dating thing. (I think I can provide an entertaining contrast picture somewhere, along with Venn diagrams. THERE COULD BE A FLASH PRESENTATION... only I'm not that motivated).
However, with family, I have embraced the heterosexual privilege of being open about my love life. My grandparents, who never met any of my girlfriends, will be meeting my boyfriend this fall. Being able to talk casually about someone who is such a large part of my life without having to filter them out or call them "my friend" is such a relief. It doesn't make me angry, it just makes me sad.
Do you think that you would have been out as bisexual if the members of the queer community you were exposed to had been more accepting of bisexuals?
Candice: I've thought about this question a LOT. I wish that I could say "Well, of COURSE," because that is who I want to have been. The honest answer, which I like a lot less, is "probably not."
I was painfully uncomfortable with myself on so many fronts back then...I don't think I could have overcome my own fear of being identified as "wrong" or "different" and been open about my sexuality. That said, I think that I would probably have worked through my issues with sexuality a lot faster if I'd been in a more supportive and accepting community. As it was, the community I was in certainly reinforced my belief that it was not safe to fully express who I was.
The first question I had reading your introduction post was how the LGBT community you were originally a part of reacted to you coming out as bisexual. You said that you were afraid that you would be betraying them by dating guys...did they see it that way as well, or was that more your own imagining?
Amy: I think that a lot of it was my own imagining, but it wasn't unjustified imagining. The group of lesbians that I used to hang out with in college and I have more or less fallen out of friendship - whether that's because of the natural order of growing up or because we didn't have anything in common besides liking women, I don't know.
I think I've actually had more trouble with the LGBT community about being bisexual and poly. I think that if I was bisexual but dating a woman, I'd still feel more... accepted, than the fact that I'm about to hit the year mark with a man and still open to dating women.
One of the largest fights I've ever gotten into (and this is including the dinner time arguments with my father, who thinks Rush Limbaugh is a liberal) was with a lesbian who informed me that she didn't think poly people should raise children. Her arguments were such that you could take out "poly" and replace it with "lesbian" and it would be the exact damned argument that is made against gay people raising children. The hypocrisy of her (and two other lesbians that chimed in) made me unspeakably angry.
How has growing up in a conservative Christian environment influenced your own relationship with religion?
Candice: My own family is very Christian (I swear every other relative I have is a minister) but also quite liberal so even though I was surrounded by churches that condemned anyone different, I was raised in Christianity that was loving and tolerant, if not always affirming. Although I'm not a Christian myself, I have great respect for the teachings of Christ and for the people who follow and live his teachings.
Which isn't to say that I don't carry scars from and bitterness towards the many many people who call themselves "Christian" but practice intolerance and hatred. I choose to think that most do so out of ignorance and indoctrination rather than informed choice (that's cheerier than thinking that so many people are just hateful), but I still avoid them. I try hard not to pre-judge people, but anyone calling themselves a Christian has some proving to do before I really trust them.
One of the things that is most difficult for me right now as I try to forge more connections in my local queer community is how many people make assumptions about my sexuality based solely on the fact that I am holding a man's hand or (more rarely, but it happens) the fact that I am fairly femme and wearing very traditional engagement & wedding rings. I often feel that if I were alone, or with female friends, or if I were more butch, I might be treated more as "one of us" from the outset, rather than having to explicitly say "I'm-married-to-a-man-but-that-doesn't-mean-I'm-straight" (it's kind of a one breath phrase for me now).
Do you find yourself having to work a little harder to be accepted as a part of the community now that you are partnered with a person-with-a-penis?
Amy: To be honest, I haven't been as active with the mainstream LGBT community so I can't really say that I have to work harder. The more general sex-positive community has been where I've focused things of late - and there's significant overlap with the queer community and the sex positive community. But because I'm not coming at it from a different angle I think that the queer community I interact with has different expectations of me which makes it so much easier for me to be partnered with a person-with-a-penis.
I had a hard time coming to terms with being bisexual - from the gays and lesbians who said that bisexuals were cheating, as it were - they they had it easy - to my own mother who seemed to be (relatively) okay with me being a lesbian but several times said things about bisexuals like, "Why can't they just choose?!"
On a different note, where'd you go to college? Do you think that if you had gone to a different college your sexuality would have been influenced? I went to a small Southern women's college - Hollins University in Roanoke, VA - that was a little bubble of liberal in a large sea of red. Having been out as a lesbian during the application process, I would not have gone to a particularly conservative institution, but I wonder sometimes if I would have ended up differently if I hadn't attended a liberal women's college.
Candice: I went to Transylvania University in Kentucky. It's a great school, academically, and I had an scholarship I couldn't say no to. When I was there, the student body was overwhelmingly white and upper/upper-middle class; over 80% of students pledged greek. A lot of my experiences there were great (I don't want to sound like I'm dissing the school) but as a whole it wasn't very tolerant of diversity.
I feel certain that a different school would have influenced my sexuality, or at least my expression of it. I desperately wanted to go to Oberlin University, which is radically liberal, and I have no doubt that had been able to afford it my experience would have been very different, if only because there would have been more than 10 openly queer people on campus.
I love the phrase "Professional Gay!" I know exactly what you mean by that. I'm wondering how you felt your role changed when you changed how you identified yourself. Did your focus in the various activist organizations change (i.e. did bi issues become more apparent or important to you once you identified as bi)? I imagine that if you saw yourself as "Professional Gay" you might have felt a bit lost when you let go of identifying as gay...did you? Or did you feel like letting that identity go freed you up to explore other ways of being in and presenting to the world?
Amy: I think that letting go of that identity freed me up to be more multi-faceted in how I present myself to the world. As I noted, I'm still active with the "sex positive" community (I do things like go to feminist conferences called Sex 2.0, which is an unconference in its third year that covers social media, feminism, and sex positive stuff), though I'm not really an activist any more. When I say that I mean... I am not in my face about it anymore. I just am who I am and I'm open about it, which is often its own form of activism because that's periodically a very difficult thing to do. Trying to actively change people's minds is too exhausting and generally ineffective. I used to say when I was a leader in the LGBT organization that the most effective form of activism that you can do is to be out and honest about yourself, whomever that is. The more people who know that you're queer [or whatever] the more they make the connection between "this cool person I know who happens to be queer" and LGBT/queer rights. It personalizes the issue for them, so it's more "If I vote against LGBT rights, that means that my friend Susie can't marry her partner of ten years, Mary" and less of an abstract "other."
Anyway, what I am saying is that I didn't lose anything. I was scared to let go of that identity, but I think that my personal activism just shifted a bit and I got to become a more interesting human being as a result. Because people who are Just Gay or Just Mormon or Just Goth or Just [insert any identity] are kind of boring.
As a queer parent in a heterosexual(ish) relationship, how do you think you'll handle your son's sexuality when he gets older?
Candice: My son and I already have amazingly open discussions about lots of aspects of sexuality. My mother and I still can't talk about sex, and I was determined not to repeat that dynamic with him, so I've talked to him about bodies & sex (at an age-appropriate level, of course) from the beginning. It seems perfectly logical to him that some people like the opposite sex and some like the same and he's very indignant that gay marriage isn't legal (it's adorable to hear him rant about it). He knows that he can ask me anything, and so far is comfortable doing so.
As for my own sexuality, it hasn't come up yet, but I'm sure that at some point it will. I doubt he will explicitly ask me, so sometime in the next couple of years I'll drop it into a conversation. I'm sure he'll have some questions about how it fits into my relationship with his dad, and I'll explain as far as I think is appropriate. I'm a little nervous about coming out to him but honestly I don't think it will be that big a deal to him.
We hear a lot about generational divides. What we hear less about are the bridges: how people of different generations can and do connect; how we can support and help one another and each offer the other things of great value. Just as often as a given experience, or even life as a whole, is different for people of one generation and those of another, there are also some things that are or have been the same, and all have our own wisdom to share, whatever our age may be.
People of different generations are not incapable of connecting or understanding each other, despite the way so much media can often make it sound that way, or the despite day-to-day frustrations and challenges we have probably all experienced with one another when trying to connect. To find out more about the series, or to volunteer to pair up, click here. To see other pieces in the series, click here.
We hear a lot about generational divides. What we hear much less about are the bridges: how people of different generations can and do connect; how we can support and help one another and each offer the other things of great value. Just as often as a given experience, or even life as a whole, is different for people of one generation and those of another, there are also some things that are or have been the same, and all have our own wisdom to share, whatever our age may be.
People of different generations are not incapable of connecting or understanding each other, despite the way so much media can often make it sound that way, or the despite day-to-day frustrations and challenges we have probably all experienced with one another when trying to connect.
Often I am asked to explain things about one generation to another, illustrating differences as well as common ground to each. I often find myself telling people of one age group how to try and better understand the other; making appeals for more empathy, more understanding and fewer assumptions on both sides. But what I really want to start seeing more of are people of all ages doing that with and for each other, without an intermediary like me speaking for them.
Anyone who knows even a little about me probably knows that at the times I think, "Gosh, I really wish there was...." about something, I often dive in shortly thereafter and do my best to make that thing happen. So, because I think people of all ages stand to benefit by connecting more often and more deeply, and think we can all benefit by seeing what some people can offer each other intergenerationally, I put a call out last week for this new series, asking for volunteers of different generations to step up with a shared issue, experience or identity related to sexuality to be matched and interview one another, allow me to observe via email, and then format and reprint those interviews here.
This piece today is the first of the series. I have enormous gratitude for the two women who participated, especially with an issue and experiences that can be so hard to talk about. Being allowed to read their conversation as it happened was pretty amazing, and I think in reading it yourself you'll find both of them and what they had to offer one another as awesome as I did. ~ Heather
Who's AAG in her own words? I am a 41-year-old cisgender woman. I identify as queer, which to me means that I like people of all genders, though in the past I've had long-term relationships only with men. I'm single, poly, and the mother of three children.
The abuse against me was committed by my father. It started when I was eight, as far as I can recall, and lasted about ten years. It consisted of fondling, pressuring me for more physical contact, and lots of verbal inappropriateness.
Who's Tien in her own words? I am 16 years old. I am mostly a straight A student and plan to become a child/adolescent psychologist specializing in sexual abuse. I also want to be a lawyer working as a state prosecutor in the child abuse unit. Recently this happened to me with a man who was over 10 years older than me and he was someone I trusted. He was also a family member, my cousin. He used manipulation and my trust to get what he wanted along with other forms of abuse that I didn't reconize at the time. This relationship lasted four months. It would have lasted longer but thankfully my mother and a counselor at school found out about it and reported him.
AAG: How have your friends and family members reacted to all of this? Are they in any way blaming you for what went on? If so, how do you handle this?
Tien: My friends support me. They listen to me when I am depressed or just need someone to talk to. My family members react differently from each other. The ones that directly know what happened support me whereas others who don't know the full information either hate/blame me or don't know how to react. I handle the blame by just not thinking about it since if they do not know the full information, how can they judge me?
AAG: How are you dealing with the emotions? Do you find yourself angry? Hurt? Missing whatever good parts of the relationship you had?
Tien: My emotions are random right now. Sometimes I am fine, then the next day I am depressed. When people found out about the relationship I was angry at myself because he was someone I thought I was in love with and I did not want him to get in trouble. I do not feel hurt, just confused since he is someone who should protect me but instead hurt me. I do not miss the good parts of the relationship, the good parts were essentially the talks we had together and when we went out to restaurants.
AAG: How do you relate to your cousin now? Do you still have to see him at family functions? How have his parents and/or siblings received the news of his abuse?
Tien: Right now if I saw him again I would probably slap him and tell him how much he hurt me. I am in the process of writing a letter to him stating just that. I would not be seeing him at family functions for a very long time, since not only did my mom report him, she pressed charges. From what he told me the last time I talked to him, his parents hate him. As for his siblings, I do not know how they reacted to the news. Do you feel betrayed by your father?
AAG: Very much so. Family abuse -- even if it only happens once! -- rips away the feeling of absolute safety and security a child should have.
Tien: Did you tell or want to tell someone what was happening to you? Was it difficult for you to tell, if you did?
AAG: I told my mother constantly that I didn't like my dad to have his hands all over me. She ignored me, minimized the abuse, and urged me to "be more loving" to him. I didn't tell any other adults then. Once I started dealing with the abuse (in my late-20s), I told a few close friends, then a few more, then more, to the point that nearly everyone in my life knows about it. I've written about abuse frequently on my blog. Every time I talk about it, people disclose their own abuse to me. Every time I talk about it, it gets a little easier. How did it feel when you first realized that your mom and the counselor were digging into your business? Were you angry? Hurt? Relieved?
Tien: With my school counselor, I told her about the relationship and I did not expect her to report him. My mom caught me trying to sneak out one night and started digging through my things. She found this story I wrote about the relationship, questioned me about it and I confessed everything. At first, I was angry at them for reporting him but later on when I figured out that he abused and manipulated me, I was relieved. How did you react when you figured out that your father was abusing you? Were you confused, angry?
AAG: I always knew what was happening was weird or odd or unusual, but I minimized it until I was in my late-20s and began thinking about starting a family of my own. It was only when I thought about how I'd protect my future children from my abuser that I realized that the abuse had affected me -- a lot.
Tien: Did you go into counseling? How did it help you?
AAG: I started counseling in my late-20s. I've continued it on-and-off since then, as I've felt it was necessary. It has helped enormously, but it's not easy. In some ways it would be easier to pretend like nothing happened, but I have to consider the safety of my children when they are around my parents. Are you receiving any counseling? Is it helping? Do you think you'll continue?
Tien: I used to receive counseling but had to stop because of my mom. It helped and when I am older I will continue counseling. How did family members react to what happened to you?
AAG: My mother reacted and continues to react very poorly. She will not believe that anything happened to me. She likes to believe that I was brainwashed by my counselor. There is also a religious component: They both think that because God has forgiven them, that I should forgive them too -- and a part of that should be letting them see their grandchildren unsupervised. That will never happen. How do you see this relationship affecting you in the future, like dating or raising children?
Tien: In the future, I plan to help children who has gone through the same things I did. I think that in dating, I will be more cautious and question things more. Also, I will have to tell them about the abuse to an extent because I have figured out some of my triggers which are things that he(my future boyfriend) might say or do. With my future children, I would talk to them about how adults should treat a child and that they could talk to me about anything. My parents did not tell me any of this.
AAG's words of wisdom and support for Tien: Here's what I wish I knew when I first started dealing with the abuse: Nothing, no part, not even a tiny bit of this is your fault. No matter what anyone else might tell you (or ask you), don't ever feel like you did something wrong.
Being a survivor of abuse is a permanent condition. No matter how hard you work on it in therapy, nothing's going to change that fact. I don't say this to depress you. I say it so that you won't beat yourself up when, after a long period of feeling so much better, you find yourself in a bad period again. It will gradually get better over time, but don't expect it to be a smooth progression without any setbacks.
Tien's words of wisdom and support for AAG: I would like to say that you sound like someone who has gone through a lot. I am sorry that your mom did not fully comprehend what your dad was doing to you. My advice to you is to keep continuing what you are doing, like you said it gets easier the more you talk about it.
I'm 17, and recently me and my boyfriend decided to have sex for the first time. My mum was out, but she came back early and we didn't hear her! She ended up walking in on us just before we were going to have sex. She went mad and started screaming at me, and it was a really bad situation. She really doesn't want me to have sex until I'm married. But I feel ready now, I don't want to wait! How can I make her see this? And also she's never going to trust me and him alone together now, how can I get around that?
I'm 21 and I have recently started going out with by first proper adult boyfriend - though I'd had sex a few times before, it had never been in a relationship that lasted very long or got very serious. I have really enjoyed getting close to my boyfriend and have looked forward to having a developed sexual relationship. However, as we began to have sex more often, it wasn't slow and careful like it was in the beginning and he started have sex with me in a way that I would consider 'fucking' rather than 'making love'. It's 'fast and hard', as they say. I know that makes me sound very passive, as if I don't contribute to how things happen - which I do if I choose to - but he seems to like it like that and I don't want to completely dominate how we have sex by saying that it must always be slow and gentle. He also has said that he finds it difficult to stay hard if he goes slowly.
For me, there seems to be a contradiction between how affectionate and caring he is with me usually (which he always is) and the way that he has sex with me. He enjoys and takes time over making me orgasm and is very loving. I asked him whether he saw that contradiction between that and the fucking and he said only that as long as it's in a loving relationship, couples can be rough with each other during sex and that it was normal.
I'm 20 years old, and the other day, I went to the gynecologist to have my first pelvic exam. Upon learning that I was a virgin, my gyn told me that she would be unable to perform an internal exam on me. Needless to say, I was kind of shocked, but later, I called a friend, and she told me that she had had the same experience. In her case, the nurse practitioner told her that performing an internal exam would be like her "paying to take away her virginity."
Now I'm not American, and in my culture, there is still a strong association between the hymen and virginity. What I wanted to know was if American gynecologists would balk at the idea of performing an internal examination on a virgin. Also, isn't it important to get a Pap smear done even if you aren't sexually active and probably haven't contracted HPV?
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