Spoiler So lately I’ve been think of what happened in my English class not too long ago, where we had to write a fake “dating profile” for homework. Weird homework, I know. Part of the template they gave us to do this asked us to state if we were looking for a man, a woman, or either. So, that left me with a decision to make since I wasn’t out to my English class. I wasn’t sure whether to lie, purposefully leave that part out, refuse to do the homework, purposefully “forget” it, say I was looking for friends on this site, or put the truth. There was an option to do the homework on a famous celebrity, but since no one else seemed to be doing that, I thought it’d look weird if I did. In the end, I decided to put the truth. Nothing was said about it (which I thought might happen since we upload our work online where the whole class can see and comment on each other’s work). It wasn’t that big a deal since I’m already partially out a college, I don’t talk about it much but sometimes it comes up and I don’t shy away from it if it does. Is it bad that I find it easier telling my friends about this than my family? It’s not like my parents are homophobic either, they’re not. Well…for the most part. I mean they can still say some ignorant stuff now and then, but they claim to be supportive of gay rights. Not at all supportive of trans rights, but that’s more of a slight annoyance of mine since that doesn’t affect me thankfully. They heavily rely on stereotypes a lot, thinking all lesbians are full on butch, and gay guys are completely feminine. They like making fun of camp gay men on TV, and my mum likes to make fun of camp gay guys she knows from work. It can be annoying how they talk about the gay community sometimes, I don’t get why they use “mincing” and “camp” as insults, and why they get annoyed at the amount of gay male presenters. I guess my parents (especially my dad) have always had rigid ideas of what a man “should” be. My dad sees toughness as a northern thing, and even though we live more in the midlands now, he still prides himself somewhat as being a “tough northerner”. My mum complains about feminine men and guys wearing makeup, yet she listens to QUEEN and Scissor sisters, so…I’m a bit lost on that one. :/ Spoiler They tend to switch between using either or “Your partner, he/she/they”, and “Your future husband will be…”. Depends on the day I guess, I think they think I’m straight, but occasionally use neutral terms just in case. I’ve come close to coming out to my parents before, but I’ve always choked. The closest I ever came to coming out was when my mum and I were practising German, she was testing me on my spoken assignment and the project was on my “ideal partner”. At one point, she paused and asked if my ideal partner was a he or a she. I didn’t say anything, so she just started using “he”. Then, there was one time I was filling out a work experience form with my mum, and a question on my sexuality came up, and she looked at me and said “straight?”, and I blinked at her, she put down straight and moved on with the form. I went back and changed it to “prefer not to say” at one point, and she didn’t say anything about it. I’ve told my dad about times where my reputation was ruined and when I was bullied, but I’ve always been vague on it and not mentioned why, or lied. I think my sister has some suspicions (apologises to me when she makes a gay joke, moved my sim in with another female sim one time) but still makes jokes about “secret boyfriends” and the like, just like my mum does. To add on some complications, all they know about my dating history is when I dated this gay guy, but they don’t know he was gay and that we weren’t really dating, although since I was only 11 when that happened they don’t really take that seriously anyway. I think one of my concerns about coming out to my parents would be that they might feel like they have to be overly PC around me, and I don’t want to seem like a disappointment even though they probably wouldn’t think I was anyway. I don’t want to become a joke as well, you know? I mean, I don’t mind the occasional joke about it but I want them to still see me for me, if you get what I mean. I don’t know if I’ll ever come out, and if I do when that will be. All I know is that I felt like writing about this, so….yeah.
Whoa! The homework story is outrageous. I've taught at the high-school, 2-year college, and university level and I have never heard of such a thing. And I am sure that it would be cause for severe reprimand, if not dismissal. Even the work experience form sounds dubious. If this is an anonymous survey, then yeah maybe OK. But I am sure you had to put your name on your English assignment. !@#$%^! Sorry to hear about it. Stay proud.
In the UK, it's quite common for work experience forms (and most forms in general for that matter) to have an anonymous statistics survey, in order to gather information about the kind of people applying for the role. The part where it asks what your orientation is isn't connected to your name at all. However, for my English homework you are correct- I did have to put my name on it. It wasn't like the teacher was going off curriculum, it was a set task that all the classes retaking English had to complete. It's annoying though, I don't think they thought that one through. Although they did say you could do one for a celebrity, so if anyone did complain they could always use that as an excuse. :dry:
