Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

is it the new trend for so many young people to say they're gay/bi etc?

112 replies

mrsfuzzy · 05/07/2016 12:30

now, i'm very liberal i don't care if someone is white, black, green, straight, bi, trans [you get the picture], and i think it's great that we are more tolerant as a society [for the best part] toward alternative life styles, but....according to my dd majority of her friends are bi/gay/trans etc, not that's a problem, but i'm curious is this a trend thing in recent times ? a few years ago more people were saying they were depressed, bi polar became the 'fashionable' condition to have, not always diagnosed, which was annoying to me personally as i have the condition and it's no picnic, so why do so many people like to wear 'badges' of what 'defines them ? is it attention seeking or something else ?

OP posts:
CousinViolent · 05/07/2016 17:11

I completely agree that it's progress and an entirely good thing. However - the labelling thing bothers me a bit. Last year my dd went through a very turbulent and difficult time, and finally confided to me, with great certainty, that she was asexual. I was absolutely astonished as she had a boyfriend at the time, and has always been quite sexually aware. I was completely supportive, but the more I read up on it, the more I was convinced the label didn't fit the girl I knew.

What bothers me is that the label was a complete red herring for the real issue, which is that she just wasn't ready for sex, and he wasn't the right boy. In a society where young women are supposed to be up for wild porn-star sex at the drop of a hat, it was easier for her to attach a tumblr label to it than be open with her (sexually active and adventurous) friends about just not wanting it.

CousinViolent · 05/07/2016 17:12

(Just read tabsicle's post above and can now appreciate the other side of the labelling issue!)

BakewellSliceAgain · 05/07/2016 17:17

Cousin you have touched on the issue that concerns me, that is that the so called norms are not what many of us consider the norms to be!

RobinsAreTerritorialFuckers · 05/07/2016 17:17

i shall still respond in the same way when someone says they're such and such, you don't need to explain do what makes you happy

I slightly feel uncomfortable with this. I know people mean well, but it comes across as a bit repressive, sometimes. If you are a teenager, and everything matters hugely to you as it often does at that age, you might have had to work up quite a lot of courage to tell someone this sort of thing. And you may have been finding it hard to say out loud.

So someone saying 'you don't need to explain' is very nice, but probably needs to be followed with 'but if you would like to talk about it, I'll listen' or something like that.

I teach 18-19 year olds, and a lot of them still say the commonest response to coming out is 'oh, you don't need to talk about it' or variations on that theme, which can make it feel as if it is attention-seeking to mention it, or to want to discuss it (as this thread OP shows is quite common).

It can make teenagers feel very isolated, I think.

FlyingElbows · 05/07/2016 17:34

I'm the mother of an 18 year old riding this wave. Teenagers are under immense pressure to be "ideal". Unfortunately at the moment "ideal" is imported completely from American pornography. The girls look like trainee porn Queens and the boys are all body hair free (fashionable face fuzz aside) and tango tanned like they've stepped out a gay porn movie, which is hilariously ironic. The kids who don't fit this ideal are "other". They're not normal, they don't fit, they're on the outside. In their parents era they'd just have been goths but they are the Tumbr generation and it's an all access race to be as "special" and "unlabelled" as you can be. In the pursuit of not being confined it is compulsory to stuff yourself into as many pigeon holes as possible. Just like the goths were all individual in exactly the same way teenagers now are all different in exactly the same way. It's just a modern version. We'll just ride it out and see where we end up and if it makes life a little bit easier for the genuinely gay kids then that's no bad thing.

Shesinfashion · 05/07/2016 18:07

My DP's niece is 23 and since she was 16 has dated boys/girls. She was a lesbian a few years back, then said she was straight, hooked up with the father of her son and is now gay again. Describes her partner of 2 months as "her wife". She's a very confused and unstable young woman though.

Tabsicle · 05/07/2016 19:02

Actually, I've been thinking about this some more. A friend of mine has a much younger half sister. When she was fifteen she defined as 'agender, demi-sexual, and homo-romantic'. What she meant was "I don't feel ready for sex but when I do I'll fancy girls and I'm not comfortable with hypersexual porn star femininity but saying that makes me feel stupid and dorky and weird and unsophisticated next to my friends. So I'll use these words and my choice feels cool and like a positive identity and I'm a teen and love labels".

She's now nineteen, and a lesbian. But those labels got her through sixth form a little easier, so go Tumblr!

DullUserName · 05/07/2016 19:07

One of my DCs is pan romantic assexual. They have a few queer friends. It's not a trend ... they're just confident that they can be themselves. Smile

Original poster
mrsfuzzy · 05/07/2016 19:16

robins have popped back before i sign off, what i should have said was i'm obviously there to listen for my dcs but i don't need to know about their friends situations when they come through the door and start discussing it in graphic detail among themselves, i really don't give a shit.

OP posts:
RobinsAreTerritorialFuckers · 05/07/2016 20:56

Fair enough - I do get that it can be really tedious, and there is such a thing as TMI!

I was just thinking about that as a blanket response, and I tried to put what I meant as carefully as I could, but probably didn't quite get it across. Sorry about that!

On a separate note - 'queer' really pisses me off. Especially when it's assumed this is a polite term everyone likes.

limon · 05/07/2016 21:05

Isn't it wonderful that young people can be completely open about who they are in a way people couldn't when I was young Smile

DullUserName · 05/07/2016 21:22

Robins "- 'queer' really pisses me off. "

My DC uses the term queer to describe themselves. It's their preferred label.

Each to their own.

RobinsAreTerritorialFuckers · 05/07/2016 21:27

That's what I was saying? Confused

I object to people assuming everyone likes the term. Not to individuals using it for themselves.

calamityjam · 05/07/2016 21:36

I don't give a shit if it's a transient feeling or a cool tendy phase. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that all people can live in a society that doesn't marginalise them for their feelings. My kids could be a different sexuality every day of the week for all I care as long as they are happy and don't face the vitriol that my gay family and friends received growing up.

lljkk · 06/07/2016 11:59

I am fine about a spectrum of sexuality & gender identity.
What I can't cope with is a label trying to make speshul every point along the spectrum. And then the expectation that anyone is supposed to remember what each label means.
Even when I was 15 I couldn't have kept track. Never mind now I'm an Old Fart.

Also, when the labels are SO IMPORTANT then they start to sound restrictive, not liberating. Presumably everyone is allowed to move around the spectrum as they see fit with no need to justify to anyone why. So why get so het up about Youneeq and precise labels? Argh.

Damselindestress · 06/07/2016 12:35

According to the Kinsey scale, sexual orientation is really a scale from heterosexuality to homosexuality, with the majority of people being somewhere in between rather than at either extreme. I think young people are just more comfortable expressing feelings of same sex attraction now it is more socially acceptable.

RobinsAreTerritorialFuckers · 06/07/2016 14:00

Kinsey was talking bollocks, though, to be fair.

DecaffCoffeeAndRollupsPlease · 06/07/2016 14:38

I don't agree that lgb is now lgbtq.

MrsJayy · 06/07/2016 14:56

Teens are all over the place if they are feeling bisexual this week then they live in a more tolerant time imo so they can express it so it is maybe not a trend iyswim. Dd is in her 20s her friend was called a poof queer and worse at school he came out almost the minute he left dd2s is 5 years younger her friend came out at 14 nobody batted an eye really so now kids are saying they are bi straight or purple easier that has to be a good thing sexuality isnt static

corythatwas · 06/07/2016 14:57

Interesting about the Davies study, Robins: I didn't know that but it sounds entirely plausible. Certainly matches what I have read in diaries and letter collections from that period.

SpidersFromMars · 06/07/2016 16:48

So I am a straight female with a male DP.

I think, using tumblr vocab, I'd be cisgender, female-presenting, demisexual, heteroromatic, and phallophillic? Aside from online dating, I'm not sure I see a need to introduce myself/"come out" this way.

RobinsAreTerritorialFuckers · 06/07/2016 17:32

Oh, that's fascinating cory. I've not read much of women's own writing but I can imagine.

My source was Karma Lochrie's brilliant book 'Heterosyncrasies,' which is mostly looking at much further back in history, but begins by questioning how people think about what is 'normal' and how ideas of 'the norm' are themselves quite a recent development. Fun stuff.

ThinBlueLine08 · 05/10/2021 07:51

There just kids with issues that will sort it out over time.

Balonzette · 05/10/2021 07:53

Yes it is.

LindaLooky · 05/10/2021 07:57

I think kids are more free to articulate their feelings. Looking back I was entirely sure whether I was straight. I insisted I was cos the alternative would be being ostracized. These days I'd be able to give a label to my stance and not be judged (or not so much it made my life hard). Its wonderful.