If I may rant for a moment...

I'm kind of in a bad mood at the moment, and I'd like to vent my frustration. I'm 30, it was a few months before I turned 30 that I finally started putting things together and realized that the reason I've never had crushes on guys isn't because I'm really picky and that if I just wait patiently God will send the right guy, it's that there's never going to be a "right guy" because I'm attracted to women. And yeah, I know all that about how some people take longer than others to figure out their sexuality, but I grew up in a world that was so anti-gay that it almost feels like my brain had to throw out several decades of baggage before it would even allow itself to consider the possibility of recognizing where my attraction actually lies and to pick up on what should have been obvious clues over the years. I'm just frustrated because I thought I had my life all planned out and this isn't the kind of monkey wrench that's supposed to get thrown into your plans at my age. :bang:

It's weird too, because my parents have always been far more egalitarian and progressive than many if not most of the people in the religious-right, ultra conservative, home schooling world that they chose to be a part of, to the point that they couldn't possibly imagine that the people around them were actually as backwards as they really were--it took me years of arguing the point with my mom before she conceded that I was right about how extreme a lot of these people really were and hadn't been blowing anything out of proportion. So, on one hand I grew up in this family that was telling me I could be anything I want to be, that there was no rush to get married and I could focus on career, where my mom bought my brothers Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls to go along with their trucks, my sister and I played with trucks as well as dolls, and nobody ever acted like it was odd that when my little brother would play with my cousin that was the same age, their playing with Barbies didn't stop with bowling with her Ken doll's head (which they both thought up and found hilarious), but actually playing Barbie stuff. On the other hand, I was part of this conservative right-wing activist world where pretty much everybody my family knew was somehow involved with the Christian Coalition, the American Family Association, or Operation Rescue (in retrospect, that "racist, sexist, anti-gay, born again bigots, go away" chant was a pretty accurate description of many of those folks), where my parents were on a first name basis or acquainted with a number of the era's big names in movement conservatism. It suffices to say that it wasn't until I was out of high school and went to work in department store retail to make money for college that I'd ever actually associated with any gay people as actual human beings and not ridiculous stereotypes.

Oh yeah, and add to that mix the fact that the whole "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" thing became a fad while I was in high school and college, where the message was sent that the spiritual thing to do is to wait patiently for the right guy and that you're supposed to "guard your heart" and getting crushes are silly and less-than-spiritual. So basically, I grew up in an environment where almost everybody I knew outside my family was really anti-gay, combined with parents who weren't the sort to fret that failure to conform to gender stereotypes was a sign that their kid might be gay and in need of fixing (thus, nobody planted the idea in my head by fretting over me smashing toy cars into things), and on top of that, instead of suspecting that not getting crushes on guys was abnormal, it meant I was super-spiritual and doing a great job at the whole "courtship/not dating" thing.

Anyway, that's my rant. I guess the thing that gets me the most is that all of those anti-gay activist types that I was around never stopped to consider that some of the kids who might be hearing those diatribes would grow up to be gay, and that no matter how much they may believe it's all bunk, those words are still in the back of their minds. And the thing that bothers me the most with the prospect of coming out isn't telling my family, it'll probably come as a shock but I'm sure they'll adjust (and my brother was in the wedding party for a same sex wedding, so I know if nothing else he'll serve as a voice of reason), it's that I know that all of these people from my childhood are going to talk and they're going to pity my parents. I don't care what those people think of me, they're horrible, small minded people, it's that if there's one thing I hate, it's pity because along with pity comes a feeling of superiority for oneself. I hate the idea that these horrible, small minded people with kids who have amounted to jack squat, after years of looking up to my parents for advice on things and putting my siblings and me on a pedestal as the model children who their children should aspire to be like, will suddenly decide my parents are worthy of pity because their highly educated daughter likes girls.

/End rant

 

Thanks everyone for the replies.

I guess what's getting to me at the moment is that I usually don't care what people think. One thing that I wouldn't change about my background is that activism, even if you no longer agree with the issues in question, tends to cause you to develop an activist mindset in your overall approach to life. So one side of me can say that I really, honestly don't care about what other people think, and that the only way to get full and equal rights is to be out there demanding them and forcing people to accept your existence.

The other side of me is still the teenager who was placed on a pedestal by other people as an example of the model homeschooler (it's just lovely when you know that people are telling their children to be like you), who hated it but at the same time couldn't figure out a way to rebel against it without falling into another cliché. I don't want to make myself sound like a basket case who's dealing with all sorts of unresolved childhood issues because I'm not, it's kind of strange for me because in going off to college and doing my own thing, living my life, traveling all over the world doing amazing things, that got filed away in the category of "things my teenage self worried about that adult me doesn't care about".

In a lot of ways, I don't understand why the whole thing is even bothering me so much. I don't believe it's a sin, I've supported gay rights, I can rattle off all sorts of feminist theory and talk about how we live in a heteronormative society and how "different" does not equal "defective", all that jazz, and yet despite all I know intellectually, it still bothers me and I know I need to move past that in order to move forward.