"I'm trying to raise my kids as homosexuals"

quote:

---

"How am I attempting this? Well, it’s simple: I learned how from watching straight people enforce a sexual orientation on their kids without ever saying 'straight.'"

By
Allegra Hirschman

One of the most amazing things about cisgender straight people is that most of them think they don’t have a sexual orientation or a gender identity. A major premise of Florida’s recently passed “Don’t Say Gay” bill is that children should be sheltered from discussions of sexual orientation, and in many ways, I, a queer mom married to a woman, actually agree with this. That also goes for gender identity too ? I think it would be amazing if schools stopped teaching gender as an innate expression stemming from what is in one’s pants. And I believe young children can learn all about love and family and different family structures without needing to have it framed in ways that are overly sexual or romantic. But that’s not how straight society likes to play.

The ironic twist regarding this legislation is that mainstream straight culture enjoys aggressively (hetero)sexualizing young children in ways that, if LGBTQ people did it, we would be labeled perverts, extremists and child abusers. And yet heterosexual grooming ? a term I coined for this phenomenon ? is so constant and ubiquitous most people don’t even notice it.

What is heterosexual grooming?

It’s a set of practices and expectations based on a child’s assigned gender at birth, which promotes the formation of a romantic and possessive relationship between “opposite sex” children and their parents. As soon as these straight parents find out if they have a “penis baby” or a “vagina baby,” they seem to be obsessed with the idea of a romantic bond forming with the parent who has different genitals from the baby.

---