Have you or your children experienced discrimination/abuse over your sexual orientation?

[girlwiththegruffalotattoo]

If you are gay/lesbian, have your children ever been bullied at school about it?

Have you? If you're in a relationship have you ever had abuse on the street, or on the bus, or something?

If so, how did you deal with it?

I'm not LGBT but I just wanted to say that I teach my children to treat everyone the same and that you shouldn't have to deal with abuse from small minded individuals.

The way modern life is now, it's actually more rare to see a "stereotypical husband, wife, 2.4 children and Labrador family" so I hope that you don't have to deal with abuse.

I know that when I was at school if people were thought to be "different" they did get picked on. Some of it makes people stronger, a lot of it can really get to you.

I'd say take any crap from ignoramuses with a pinch of salt. Mentally Rise above it, put the nastiness in a imaginary box and burn it/throw it out. And report them , it's not legal to abuse people. Bullying, abuse etc should not be tolerated.

There's always the standing up to a bully option but it's best to be careful with this as you can get in trouble instead if the bully lies.

My child isn't at school yet, but I can honestly say I have never experienced any negativity, to my face, and as yet, about being a gay parent. I have very rarely experienced any negativity regarding my sexuality at all, and the few occasions I have have been when I've been around people who were drunk and idiots. Even that was years ago.

Having just said that, I realise that maybe I'm quite lucky, and that also on reflection it was only this weekend that I decided against holding hands with my partner in a town we happened to be in because of the staring. I find it really uncomfortable and embarrassing, whereas my partner just returns the stares with a cheery 'hello!' and a big smile, which either confuses or embarrasses the starer. As well as me. Not sure other than that how to deal with it I'm afraid, sorry to be bag all use. I sometimes just want to live my life instead of having to live it as a political statement.

I do think things are better in larger towns and cities. We live in a large city and have noticed before that staring does seem to be a common feature of our visits to smaller towns/cities. Hope you're not experiencing abuse or negativity op.

Not yet had any problems at school and dds are quite open about it. Having said that I'm not very sociable with the mums so I don't know if they would be off with me.
I've never had a problem in the street, but sometimes ex-P and I would drop holding hands if we thought we were coming across a group we would rather be discreet around. That doesn't happen often though as we live in London and people don't generally care.
We have been lucky I think.

Thanks for the replies. I haven't experienced any negativity, as I've only been in relationships with men so far. I've been questioning my sexuality for a long time now and am now in a place where I think I'm ready to say, I don't actually know what I am, but I'm definitely not straight! But I have a young daughter and I would worry about how my life would affect her. There's so much to think about right now, my head is just swimming!

There seems to be a few threads in this topic from mums in the same situation, might be worth a read if you haven't already. For what it's worth, I think things really have changed - I teach and am totally out to students at school and it could not be of less interest to them, which surprised me a lot initially. It just seems to be less of an issue than it was when I was at school, when it was definitely seen as weird. I think it's hard not to carry this with you so can understand your concerns.

That's great, MadTessa, I'm not sure why I'm worrying really, no-one I care about will have a problem so that's all that matter, really :)

I really hate to put a negative spin on this, but unfortunately, yes I have.

Me and my gf will get unwanted comments from men quite often if we're in a bar and having a kiss or something. I think mainly because we don't fit the stereotype, they think that we're showing each other affection for their pleasure or something. I've often wondered if it would be the same if we did fit the stereotype. God I hate stereotypes!

I have also had one encounter with a fuckwit of a 'man' who was a fair bit older than us, who told us we were disgusting for being in a restaurant and openly hold hands. He ended up yelling in my face, but not for long shall we say. He bloody well deserved it! I'm not going to be threatened.

Having said all that, overall its not been as bad as I thought it would be. I was in a straight relationship for 10 years before and so it was really scary when I met and fell in love with a woman.

I do worry about my dd getting teased because of my relationship, but so far so good. Moving soon though, so I'm hoping the area we move to is even more liberal and accepting.

Good luck op. I hope you and your daughter never receive any negativity, but if you do, remember that you are what you are and we're living in a much more accepting society these days and yeah we've still got a way to go, as I can certainly vouch for, but we're getting there.

I'm sorry you had that experience, 20something, it sounds horrendous. Good for you for standing up for yourself!

DP and I have used it occasionally, we were sitting quietly in an empty bandstand chatting while we watched the children on the playground. A group of yummy mummies rolled up and we're having annoying competitive conversations about their offspring. So we started snogging and got the bandstand to ourselves again. Last week, some old bloke whispered 'Can I watch?' as we walked past which was a bit ugh.

DSD gets bullied at school a fair bit, she's a tomboy who says she's bi at the moment, and DS's school seem to think I ought to be repressing his gender-variant behaviour more (he wears dresses to school) which I guess they probably put down to my orientation, but that's never quite voiced. I often get the impression that people are most anxious about us bringing up children who also appear to be Queer. But we are in a small town in Devon!