Teaching Kindness

This week in my Family Relations class we discussed Same-Sex Attraction. Now, I must preface with me stating that I am a firm believer in traditional marriage. I do not believe that those who are gay were born that way, but made the choice to follow misunderstood signals they may have experienced. I say this because many go through a time where they might have been sexually abused, rejected by same-sex peers, or misread a nonspecific arousal in pre-adolescence. There have been studies about people that face same-sex attraction and several show that they were abused, bullied, or misinterpreted certain experiences. This is more common among males.

I am going to focus on the bullied by peers subject for this posting.

Now, I will explain why I say this is more common among males. When a girl dresses like a boy, what do we do? We think it's cute, and doesn't really seem out of the ordinary. When a boy does something like a girl, or wears something more feminine, what TYPICALLY do we do? We think, "What is wrong with him?" and typically try to change him. Now some parents would argue to say, "No, no, we accept them for who they want to be." Yes, very good, but what about their peers? They will think the same thing, "There is something wrong with this kid, and we shouldn't hang out with him because he is just like a girl." Even when they are five, they think something along these lines, and it continues to pre-adolescence. At that age the boy who seems more feminine might look at a guy and then think to themselves, "He is attractive...wait, what is wrong with me? Am I homosexual?" and they begin to doubt themselves. Now, it isn't a problem until they sexualize it and act on those thoughts or linger on them.

Now, think about in a logical sense, and some cases have shown this, when a male is rejected by other males, and sees himself then more as a female, he will become friends with more females, however, not knowing or understanding other males he gets curious and wants to know what is unknown to him, therefore leading him to have same-sex attraction, however, this is not sexualized, until the male might have an nonspecific arousal while going through puberty and mistaking it as being fully attracted to them. Therefore, they have misinterpreted this experience.

This is what a wise woman once said, "You can look at someone and think 'they are attractive' and it is okay, it is when you get 'heated' and I would say 'cool your jets.'" This quote means that you can say someone of the same or opposite sex is attractive and it is okay, but when you linger on it and have inappropriate thoughts that are sexual it is a problem.

Now, when it comes to being bullied, I feel that it needs to be stopped, how might we do this? BY TEACHING OUR CHILDREN. We tell our children to be kind to one another, but they will still have that tendency to be rude to the opposite sex and those who are different than them, even if they are the same sex. Therefore, I would try to explain to my child, and I advise you to do so as well, to be kind to those boys, or girls, who might be different than them, that you should still invite them to do things they like to do. Then the child who likes "girly" things doesn't feel rejected, and is given opportunities to learn things that are typical among boys, or visa versa.

I hope this makes sense, and I a know it is a touchy subject; I had a hard time writing this.