My 10 year old just told me he is gay

[Didifuckitup]

Did I fuck it up. I don’t know if I responded wrong.
This has come from nowhere. He hasn’t hit puberty yet. He’s so young. He’s had the usual little girlfriends at school and crushes on girls.
And like a bolt out of the blue told me today , mum I don’t know how to tell you this. I’m gay.

It came out of nowhere at all . He’s the most boy ish boy and totally unexpected.

Can you really know if you are gay as young as ten? He has had sex Ed type stuff lately at school and he said he “knows all about gay/bi and alllll the genders now.. “
I don’t know if those lessons have made him feel like he needs to “tick a box” or “fit” or if he’s just sure he’s gay.

I basically said, “ oh that’s fine, no biggie. It makes no difference to me and dad if you are gay or straight as long as you are confident and happy. You will hit puberty soon and hormones will be raging, and you will fancy all kinds of people. You may fancy girls down the line, or boys, or both. And don’t be confused by that if you do. It’s all normal . You are only ten and that’s really young , please don’t feel like you have to pick a sexuality at your age, these things will all figure themselves out in time”

And then I thought shit was that the wrong thing to say. I don’t know. He suffers with anxiety and a few other health issues and I don’t want to mess this up but maybe I already did. Can you know you are gay so young? Can these school chats confuse kids these days? Should I say anything else ?

Hope I haven’t confused him more

@FortunesFave

SarahAndQuack

How dare you call me homophobic!? You don't even know me. What I said is perfectly valid...and when DD came out we accepted it. However now that she's straight again, it's natural to assume she said she was gay in order to be fashionable.

She's not the only one either...MN is full of similar stories...kids coming out, going in, chopping and changing.

It's fashion without a doubt. And it DOES invalidate the kids who are actually gay!

If she thought she was straight then discovered she was gay would you think she was pretending to be straight to be fashionable?

I doubt anyone would pretend to be gay. Homophobia still exists, as you prove.

[quote SarahAndQuack]'Just a crush or whatever'.

Yes, he should definitely hide it from you if it's 'just a crush or whatever'.

There are also people wondering why two men in their 30s 'felt the need' to 'let out' their feelings. Some of those people did this: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/17/men-injured-in-homophobic-attack-in-birminghams-gay-village[/quote]
People on here are so good at twisting your words.
That’s not what I meant.
Jog on.

@SarahAndQuack

I expect so.

Or maybe the men who beat them up were given the message, when they were little boys, that there's no need to 'let it out' to anyone.

Seriously piss off. You are picking at everything and taking it All the wrong way. Very irritating

Please ignore any of the negatives comments that have been said and the nitpicking comments!

There is nothing wrong with what you said to your child or what you typed and even if there was something wrong with what you said and typed, you were saying it from a loving place and meant well! Your child will know this!

Don't stress about it, I think you did awesome and if your child brings the topic up again atleast you won't be caught off guard.

Your response was fine, and the important thing is your DS now knows he has his parents support. I think it would be worth finding out exactly what he has been taught in school though. I thought parents were generally made aware of sex education when it is being taught in primary school in case DC come home with any questions.

I am surprised posters are saying it was a text book response. I think it sounded really dismissive and also like you are more or less telling him he will grow out of it. I think if he brings it up again, some acceptance of what he is saying might be appropriate. I definitely knew that I liked boys when I was ten years old.

@Aprilx

I am surprised posters are saying it was a text book response. I think it sounded really dismissive and also like you are more or less telling him he will grow out of it. I think if he brings it up again, some acceptance of what he is saying might be appropriate. I definitely knew that I liked boys when I was ten years old.

I didn’t tell him that. I told Him not to be s confused if his feelings change back and forth between boys and girls as that’s normal? He may end up preferring girls boys or both and I wanted him to know that’s fine if things change when he hits puberty

Seriously piss off. You are picking at everything and taking it All the wrong way. Very irritating

I think you're showing your true colours here.

I have responded several times on this thread, taking a lot of time and care to consider your feelings and to acknowledge that you did a lot of things right for your DS, but also explaining why homophobia is so damaging. I did that because, like others on this thread, I really do know what it feels like, first hand, to have a parent say 'oh, I think I did really well didn't I?' when actually, what they said played right into homophobic tropes.

You've responded by getting angry, as if what's wrong is that not enough people told you how wonderful you were.

Look at the thread. If ego-massage is what you want, it's there in spades. You can listen to all those people telling you you are wonderful.

So why don't you?

Is it because, deep down, you know I have a point? I think so.

@SarahAndQuack

Seriously piss off. You are picking at everything and taking it All the wrong way. Very irritating

I think you're showing your true colours here.

I have responded several times on this thread, taking a lot of time and care to consider your feelings and to acknowledge that you did a lot of things right for your DS, but also explaining why homophobia is so damaging. I did that because, like others on this thread, I really do know what it feels like, first hand, to have a parent say 'oh, I think I did really well didn't I?' when actually, what they said played right into homophobic tropes.

You've responded by getting angry, as if what's wrong is that not enough people told you how wonderful you were.

Look at the thread. If ego-massage is what you want, it's there in spades. You can listen to all those people telling you you are wonderful.

So why don't you?

Is it because, deep down, you know I have a point? I think so.

😂 that is all.

I don’t think it’s automatically reproducing homophobic tropes to say that sexual orientation can change over time. The political narrative at the current time is that sexual orientation is fixed from birth; but that hasn’t always been the case, historically; and it certainly isn’t how everyone experiences their sexuality. Some people experience their sexual orientation as fixed, and some experience it as more fluid or changeable (this is true for me and lots of others I know).

I think it’s perfectly fine to say that he might change his mind or might not and that either is okay. And whereas sometimes the “it’s a phase” thing might be a “homophobic trope”, it doesn’t mean that what the OP has said makes her homophobic. Sexual orientation can go through “phases”; and not to acknowledge that is itself rigid and excluding (if I were a teenager I would say it was “biphobic”; but instead I just note that there are plenty of seeming “straight” people whose sexuality is not actually that straight either, and who might feel freer to identify as less straight if we had a more flexible understanding of sexual orientation, particularly bisexuality).

I don’t think it’s automatically reproducing homophobic tropes to say that sexual orientation can change over time.

No, but I don't think anyone has said it was.

What is homophobic is to say someone might 'choose' to be gay because it's 'fashionable'. Or that they might 'change their mind'.

The reason the phrase 'it's a phase' is so persistently associated with homophobia is because there's a very well-known theory that homosexuality is an immature form of sexuality, which most people experience as a 'phase' in early youth, but which some fail to progress beyond.

The reason that 'changing your mind' carries homophobic implications is that it presumes that sexuality is a conscious choice: you can choose to be gay, and you can choose to be straight. This is the rhetoric that gay conversion advocates adopt, when they insist people can 'change their minds'.

It is possible to acknowledge the complexity of sexuality without reinforcing homophobic tropes.

OP I think you did great. Well done.

@SarahAndQuack

I don’t think it’s automatically reproducing homophobic tropes to say that sexual orientation can change over time.

No, but I don't think anyone has said it was.

What is homophobic is to say someone might 'choose' to be gay because it's 'fashionable'. Or that they might 'change their mind'.

The reason the phrase 'it's a phase' is so persistently associated with homophobia is because there's a very well-known theory that homosexuality is an immature form of sexuality, which most people experience as a 'phase' in early youth, but which some fail to progress beyond.

The reason that 'changing your mind' carries homophobic implications is that it presumes that sexuality is a conscious choice: you can choose to be gay, and you can choose to be straight. This is the rhetoric that gay conversion advocates adopt, when they insist people can 'change their minds'.

It is possible to acknowledge the complexity of sexuality without reinforcing homophobic tropes.

Which well known theory are you thinking of? (Aside from general folk belief). I’m a cultural historian who works on the history of sexuality and there isn’t really any systematic theory of this, even in psychoanalysis which is actually very complex in terms of framing multiple theories of sexual orientation.

The contemporary orthodoxy of you can’t choose your sexuality isn’t intrinsically homophobic. If you thought that most people are essentially bisexual, or somewhere in the middle of a spectrum of sexual orientation, but that the social conditioning of patriarchy leads most people - especially women - to adopt heterosexuality as a compelled choice rather than an innate orientation, you might well believe that we could make different choices about our sexual orientation. As a woman who has been variously either lesbian or bisexual for long periods of my life, I also object to either the idea that I’m either “really” a lesbian who can’t escape the “comphet” (in the Tumblr terminology); or that I’m a deluded person who was “always” really bisexual.

The dogma in current LGBT+ circles is automatically and unthinkingly against whatever they perceive as “political lesbianism”. However, the history of the way we think about sexual orientation is complex and always political. Especially in Europe, where there has always been much more interest in universalist forms of gay activism and theory. In the US, the narrative of “orientation is inborn and any attempt to suggest otherwise is conversion therapy” has historically been much more successful because of the rights endowed under the constitution to “inalienable” qualities of the person. Any rights-based discourse in the US tends to adopt this stance because it is politically much more successful there (and the US discourse currently dominates here).

However, there are also long histories of alternative, non-identity-based models of sexuality and sexual orientation that also exist alongside that, which are obscured by the current obsession with identity, and which are in some respects more open and progressive. (They are not, either, allied with “conversion therapy”.) They are, however, out of fashion because they suggest that a lot of how we experience sexuality - as well as gender - is socially constructed and/or even coerced, in the case of heteronormativity. (And homophobes - as well as the patriarchy - actually find this a lot more threatening than the idea that sexual orientation is inbuilt and can’t be changed. Probably just one of the reasons why desire or drive or spectrum-based models of sexuality have been suppressed in recent years. The other being that if women did think they could choose to be lesbian or bisexual, with today’s reproductive technology they might just decide to…and patriarchy cannot have that! )

Sorry - my phone cut out a bit of text there randomly! Second para should start:

“The contemporary orthodoxy of you can’t choose your sexuality is just that, an orthodoxy: to say otherwise isn’t intrinsically homophobic.”

@irresistibleoverwhelm, to take your points in order:

Try Freud, Adler, Rado (with homosexuality as an injury to the child); try early modern English ideas of same-sex desire as a step on the way to maturity or (in the case of women) a greensickness that is a pathological condition. Look at more recent ideas of women's 'passionate friendships' that needed to mature into marriage. Look at conversion therapies in the US and the UK. You are right: I should have been clearer that there's not one unified theory of treating homosexuality as immature; there are many theories.

(Shit, sorry, should I pretend I'm not a cultural historian? I'm not really. I'm just employed in a university history department these days.)

I agree the rhetoric of choice might well change (I'm not wedded to it myself). But we are talking about a ten year old child. There is no reason not to affirm that child. It's perfectly possible to affirm a child's statement without feeling the need to give them a university-level lecture on sexuality. Just let them be!

It would be fine to say that sexuality is changeable, if we said it to everyone. But we don't. So every child who plucks up the courage to say they might be gay, risks hearing that they're not really gay. They're mistaken. Things might change. It's probably a phase. Meanwhile - don't mention it again!

A child who tells their parent they really like a child of the opposite sex? Why that's normal. Nothing to do with sexuality! Perfectly ok. Why would you comment on it, let them grow and develop without censure. It's sweet, enjoy it!

Those are two very different responses and we do need to think about the damage that's done.

I don’t think that what the OP said is anything like what you’re suggesting. I do think it sound like you are reading what she says through the filter of your own experience: I don’t get any sense that she hasn’t “affirmed” her child (which is an odd word to use, anyway: a ten year old doesn’t require his sexuality to be “affirmed”, as it isn’t an adult sexual identity anyway! Child sexuality is in the process of development at 10: even if he knows he is gay, he doesn’t have an adult sense of what that means at all as yet. If a child announces they’re straight - my 8 y o DD has in effect announced that to me - I don’t “affirm” that as her identity either! (I might personally be secretly disappointed she might not be a lesbian, but what I actually said to her was a version of what the OP said to her son — “that’s lovely dear, but when you grow up you can like men or women or both or change your mind later and that’s okay too.”

Should I have “affirmed” her sexual identity instead? (I thought I liked boys at 8: turns out I didn’t.) It sounds very much like double standards if you think different messages should go to a kid who announces they’re gay at 10 versus straight?

Myself, I would have wanted my parents to say what the OP said and not make any big deal out of it. I really didn’t get the sense from anything the OP said that her intention was to say “it’s a phase, don’t mention it again later.”

Early modern to modern ideas about same sex desire don’t at all treat homosexuality as necessarily immature; they don’t of course for a start have a conceptual model of sexuality that approaches our modern idea of it anyway. (As a historian, you know that constructions of sexuality were entirely different in earlier periods: some things only look homophobic if you read them back through a contemporary lens of identity).

Instead of reading these examples as constructing homosexuality as immature, don’t they look more like constructions in which people found opportunities for articulating the existence of same-sex desire within existing cultural narratives of religious and social norms, ie. you can normalise your same sex desire by reference to a Greek model in the early modern court or mid-nineteenth-century university; you can make it possible to visit your lover in her father’s house if it’s constructed as a “romantic friendship” of schoolmates before she ends up being married off; etc etc. And girls did meet each other at school: they were largely chaperoned as teenagers, and girls and boys lived in different social worlds, so same sex relationships when they did happen likely did begin young - and social norms and financial necessity made it likely they would have to take up heterosexual lives later (especially women). But there are also plenty of other historical examples of thinking about same-sex desire that don’t construct it as immature either.

I think that your response was fine. A kind, supportive and loving answer.

Sadly too many parents build up the barriers when their children come out. All of my 3, now adult, children are out. They can all tell terrible stories of friends’ parents who have, and still are, behaving appalingly.

As for the age. My children came out at 15-16. Like many post gcse and when starting 6th form college.

They say they knew in late junior school but kept it to themselves/didn’t quite understand.

Your answer was great, OP.

I think people can know their orientation pretty young. One friend says they knew they were gay by the time they were 7, and that they'd always felt "different" from their same sex friends in some way. Another didn't realise until they were in their 30s.

Hi OP

Just adding to the responses saying you have done great and eye rolling at the nitpicking.

It was obvious what you were talking about when describing a boyish boy. (Speaking as a reasonably boyish gay man!)

I don’t think saying that all things are possible dismisses this as just a phase and will send him back into the closet to endure some torturous teenage years. The overall message is one of love and support and anything is ok. This is what he will have heard and remember. The fact he told you this so early means he knew this anyway.

I think some of you may not be aware but currently in UK teen/youth culture it is very fashionable to be gay/bi/pan etc , and it’s important to acknowledge a child’s feelings whilst also not encouraging this ridiculous trend to label oneself.

And I think it’s poor form for a poster to assume that every child who says they are gay at age 10 definitely must be because they “knew from a young age”. Everyone is different.

Brilliant post irresistibleoverwhelm.

TrifleCat my child told me their friendship group at about 14 contained, one asexual, one gay person, one trans person, one bisexual and one straight person. It's possible in the long run that will all be true. But do those 14 or 15 year old girls really know at that age. I think there are trends at work.

Good response. I’m sure some people realise they’re same-sex attracted quite young. I was a secondary teacher for many years and realised that in every new Y7 year group there were one or two boys who were obviously gay - there was a reasonably accurately identifying set of behaviours that identified them. Lucking it was a supportive school community and many happily came out as they got older. This was 1990s onwards.

@TrifleCat

I think some of you may not be aware but currently in UK teen/youth culture it is very fashionable to be gay/bi/pan etc , and it’s important to acknowledge a child’s feelings whilst also not encouraging this ridiculous trend to label oneself.

And I think it’s poor form for a poster to assume that every child who says they are gay at age 10 definitely must be because they “knew from a young age”. Everyone is different.

FFS not this again. There's another thread here where a posters son came out to his friends and received homophobic comments.

TBH I don't think there is a perfect answer especially when you're put on the spot like that. As long as he knows you love and support him it'll all be fine, I think as parents we can really over think these things!

I told my mum I was a lesbian at 10 and she told me I wasn't and that I didn't even know what it meant. I told her I did and stormed off. I've been married to a man for 20 years, bicurious certainly but not a lesbian once puberty kicked in.

@irresistibleoverwhelm - why on earth do you think 'affirming' someone's expression of their sexuality has to do with adult sexual desire? That is a very peculiar way to interpret what I said.

And yes, I know there are plural ideas about sexuality in the past. That's not up for debate. The point is that you said there was no coherent theory of homosexuality as immature, and that is not true. It is pretty well known, as I have pointed out, and it's the idea of homosexuality as an immature phase of sexual development that has done damage in recent years/decades (not the idea of Greek love, or whatever else you might want to discuss).

There's nothing wrong with simply saying to a child 'yes, ok' without adding all the stuff about 'ooh I bet this is just a fashion and it's all new'. That is the damaging bit. You can see it in multiple posts - people are claiming it's recent and new to think you're gay at a young age. It patently isn't.