On Teaching Acceptance (Or, No More Hiding...)

There's a thing I've been trying to talk about, and I don't know how. So I'm going to talk about me for a little while.

I learned what it meant to be gay in school.

It was maybe around 1996. I was about ten years old. We were in music class. It was December, and we were singing, “Deck the Halls.” One of the boys raised his hand and asked what, “gay apparel,” meant, not because he was curious, but because ten is the age when kids really start figuring out how to be snarky. The old-school nun behind the piano looked at him sharply and said, “In this song, it means happy. It also means something very inappropriate that we don’t talk about. But in this song, it means happy.”

I’d heard, “gay,” used the other way before, but not with enough context to understand what it meant. This was pre-Google, and I wasn't going to ask my parents, so I didn't really have a lot to go on. Now I knew – sort of. It meant something bad.

That’s how easy it is to plant an idea in the mind of a trusting child. I still get upset about it, about the months I spent genuinely believing it.

It was my older sister who eventually set me straight, as it were. Six years my senior, she’d often pick me up and bring me back to her high school if she had meetings and both of my parents were working too late to pick me up from extended care on time. We had a good relationship – I was never treated like a cumbersome little sister, never banished to a corner or told to stay away from her friends. I knew her friends, and liked them. One of them, I learned, was gay, and I whispered a question about him once. Maybe she didn’t know?

“Yeah,” she said firmly, “It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

That’s all it really took to reverse the damage that had been done.  I had wanted, since learning its true definition, to believe that being gay was fine, because it seemed a silly thing to think otherwise. It’s equally silly that I needed somebody else to give me permission to trust my own feelings about the matter, but I was ten. I’m willing to forgive kid me for not being better.

I was raised Catholic, and I received an exclusively Catholic education, from kindergarten right on through to college graduation. During this massive chunk of my life, I learned a lot. When I hit high school, my personal value system really started to form, and I was so lucky to have teachers who encouraged me to trust myself. A few of those teachers really stepped up and acted as mentors, patiently helping me navigate the challenges and curveballs that got thrown my way while I tried to carve out my path. They never judged. They always listened.

When I think of the eighteen year-old kid in her college dorm who had just experienced conscious feelings for a woman for the first time, I think of how much harder it could’ve been for her if she’d been born to a different family in a different city. I know it would’ve been harder if she’d had different teachers.

It was still hard. It would be another two years or so – two years of quiet denial and confusion – before I fully understood and accepted that I was bisexual. It would be another eight years before I said it out loud.

Full disclosure: my master plan was to only indulge the attraction I felt toward men so that I would just never have to talk about it. It was a really dumb plan. Like, it was always a dumb plan, because feelings are feelings and we should really just go with them, but it was especially dumb because wherever I fall on the wider and much debated spectrum, I’m for sure attracted to women more often. Not exclusively. But more often. If you're thinking of adopting a similar plan, maybe don't. Just some friendly advice.

Saying it out loud? Best ever. There was so much of me that I was holding back because ridiculous, paranoid closet logic told me that letting it out would let everyone know. You know how sometimes you’re playing hide and seek, and you’ve got the best hiding spot, but after a while you kind of just want to be found so that you can go back to having fun being loud and visible and a part of the world? That’s how I felt at the end of that gross and complicated decade.

I don’t know that I hid all that well. There were people who definitely knew, or suspected. Toward the end, the closet door was cracking like crazy, I was so sick of keeping it closed. But it was a punishing way to live all the same, and I want to go back to that me and let her know that it's all going to work out.

Once I did it and the initial wave of euphoria passed, I spent a lot of time being irritated with myself. It was upsetting to acknowledge that I spent such a long time denying a huge part of my identity, not because I thought it was wrong, but because I thought it was wrong for me. I had gotten so worried about what people would think that it felt like I had arrested my development – like I had wasted time in understanding myself, and was now behind everyone in the race to be a person.

People who were much younger than I was with much more to lose came out everyday. I felt like a coward and a hypocrite.

Last November, I got to see Rhea Butcher and Cameron Esposito live for the first time. I was a week off my first bike accident. I was tired, my ribs were kind of busted, and I needed the laughs. I got much more. Rhea and Cameron are stand-ups and fiancées. They talk about their lives without apology. Their sets touched me and made me happy in a way that I don’t think they could have if I hadn’t stepped up and taken ownership of who I am. Post-show, after receiving compliments from them on my tie (always makes me proud), I said, “Listen, I came out this year, and what you said – what you do – really means a lot.” I mean, I probably said it way worse than that because I was nervous and being nervous makes me a jackass, but that’s what I meant to say. And immediately, Cameron pulled me in for a hug, then looked me in the eye with a big smile and said, “Hey! You’re doing it!”

That stuck with me in a big way. I have no problem admitting that I repeat it to myself when I hit rougher patches, when I start to get mad at myself or do something that scares me. It was a nice thing for one stranger to say to another stranger because she knew, and I’m grateful for it.

The way we treat each other matters. The things we say to each other matter. Words carry weight, whether we want them to or not.

Ugly words have been thrown around recently by powerful people in my city. It’s upsetting, disturbing language designed to denounce and condemn. It can call itself whatever it wants, but that is what it is. And it is wrong.

These words, and worse, have existed for a long time. But now it feels like they’re in my home, in my safe space. I’ve been trying to write about it for weeks and I haven’t been able to. I get too angry to do it right.

I don’t know that this is doing it right.

So yeah, rather than talking about it, I decided to talk about me. Because there wasn’t some Divergent-y ceremony when I turned eighteen where I stood up in front of my peers and sliced my hand open over the bowl of bisexuality, making my choice. It’s who I’ve always been. I started writing stories when I was in grade school, guys. It is not that difficult to read between the lines and see that I was a little bi kid with gently romantic feelings for a pretty diverse range of people.

My parents didn’t get weird when I didn’t want to play with dolls and begged for a poster of Jennifer Love Hewitt to put above my dresser, where she remained for years, looking amazing. When I came out to them, they said okay, and kept right on loving me. I’m so, so lucky for all of that.

Despite what some of the textbooks and official party lines may have said, my teachers taught me to honor myself exactly as I was, because that was more than enough. I don’t know that I believe in a higher power – and I’m so happy in the not knowing, so don’t worry about me – but if I did, the one with that message is the one I’d get behind.

I’m a teacher now. I’ve had chances to be the mentor, advisor, and non-judgmental ear that my teachers were to me, and I hope that I’ve done even half as well as they did. Standing up and being myself – loving who and what I love, wearing what I wear, doing what I do – feels like a responsibility now as much as a right.

There is no rule, no word, no power that will make me go back to hiding any part of who I am, nor tell anybody else to do so.  

I will do my best to lead by example, because I’m in a position right now to do that. I will continue to try and be a good person, who surrounds herself with others who are trying to be good people.

“Good,” is not who you love or do not love. It is not who or if you marry, how or if you have kids, who or what you believe in. It’s not what you look like or where you came from.

It is how you are. To yourself. To others.

I will teach acceptance.

And I stand proudly with teachers and students and parents and people who are doing the same.

Hey. We’re doing it.

On Being Known (Or, Korra Feelings Forever)

I had to write about this.

I had to.

Before we begin, let me post an appropriate warning: this post will contain spoilers for the series finale of The Legend of Korra. Just one, really, but that "one" does happen to be the very last scene of the show. Now, here's the thing: I never spoil people with stuff. Not even when they ask me to. But this is too big. It's too important to me for me to be politely vague about the details.

I don't think your viewing experience will be ruined if you keep reading. But I understand wanting to stay 100% in the dark about something, so jump off now, if that's how you feel.

Okay.

So.

If you know me, then it's no secret that I love The Legend of Korra. Love it. I give it top priority at Comic-Con. I got up early every morning for a week to play the video game before work because that was the only time I could - and I am neither a huge gamer nor a morning person. My third tattoo is Naga, Korra's polar bear dog (also named my bike after her). I love it.

Korra is a character I felt a kinship with immediately. I would've killed to have had her around when I was growing up. As a kid, I had a very hard time connecting with the girls on the shows I watched. They were often outnumbered and overshadowed by the boys - boys who got to be the team leaders, the fiercest fighters, the most completely and complexly developed. I loved losing myself in fiction, but I resented being a girl for a very long time because none of the characters in the stuff I was consuming felt like me.

That changed, albeit gradually. For me, it started with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and kept going. It's still a process, though. I still have trouble fully finding myself in characters, and I still want to - that's not something that has changed for me between the ages of 8 and 28.

And that's part of why I connected with Korra so hard. Since the series began, she has been fierce and flawed and full of heart. She has defined her own femininity. She has grown and matured and struggled, and I could relate to it all, in my own way. It meant, and will forever mean, so much. As the end of the series approached, I was profoundly sad - while I knew I'd always have my Blu-rays (all the special features, guys), it felt like I was about to lose a friend. A kindred spirit.

But then the finale arrived. And whatever I was expecting, it was wildly eclipsed by what I actually got.

Korra began the series with a friendship that turned into a romance with a male character. She ended it with a friendship that turned into a romance with a female character.

I'm not a big, "shipper," - that is to say, I don't really attach myself to specific romantic couplings if I can help it. I try to surrender to the narrative when I watch or read something, at least on the first go around. But I had to admit, this particular lady-pairing (I'm standing by my use of this term, you're welcome) - initially something of a dark horse in the fandom, especially given that heterosexuality is pretty pervasive in American children's programming - was really fun to think about. As the series progressed, "dark horse," evolved into, "Wait...this seems like a legitimate thing." Just seeing two women with a close, healthy friendship was refreshing and wonderful, and possibility of getting more suddenly felt much closer than ever before.

Then, it happened. And it meant everything to me. It means everything to me. When people say, "Media representation matters," they are not lying. There is no denying it. I have not been able to stop smiling, to stop feeling so full and happy and...acknowledged...since watching. I was already pretty emotional about Korra's recent PTSD struggles, but this...this...I could never have imagined, when I started, that I would get this.

That series co-creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino both released statements obliterating any argument for a platonic or ambiguous reading of their final scenes by declaring that they were 100% romantic and that this end result had been their intent for quite some time, made a great thing even greater. That Konietzko included the line, "Despite what you might have heard, bisexual people are real!" in his statement, for me, made a greater thing the greatest.

As it happens, it was a similar feeling of acknowledgement that helped me finally come out at the beginning of this year. That came from The JV Club podcast (again, I will never shut up about it), which happens to be hosted by the voice of Korra, Janet Varney. She often acknowledges that some situations that arise in discussions would be similar (or different, depending) if the parties involved were gay or trans or bisexual, etc. To have my orientation, which is often erased or ridiculed (and we're not the only ones, I'm well aware), acknowledged and included so naturally and automatically finally helped me feel safe and ready.

To begin the year with a moment like that, and to end it with a moment like this - with a character I love on a show that I adore challenging heteronormativity in such a beautiful and authentic way just. Means. Everything. I feel known. I feel like this is an opportunity for so many people - older than me, younger than me, whatever - to see themselves or their friends or their families reflected back at them in the characters they love and identify with.

I'm so happy and hopeful and proud.

Note: I am not the boss of you, but Mike and Bryan's names in the body of this post link directly to their statements on their Tumblr pages, both of which are really quite incredible and which I highly recommend reading.