The People Behind My Eyes

Gay v Straight: Guilt v Fear: Up v Down
Addressing this issue is not just difficult but anxiety provoking. I want to hide my head in the sand and not address this. Part of me realizes that my biggest fear is men and how I was raised to view them as predators and seekers of violence and indulgences. I just don’t want to do this right now.
AussieFriday, October 07, 2005 - 9:22 PM
FEAR OF MEN
First of all, the amount of gay people in my family is astounding. Two of my 3 aunts are bi-sexual, my mother is a closet bi-sexual, and one cousin is just lesbian while another is bi-sexual. My brother is openly gay. I think my sister may be the only straight one among us. As far as extended family goes, the gay count goes up as you go further back.

When I was a kid my mother use to ask me if I was gay. I remember it always coming up. She always asked me that, even at like age 6. She hounded me about it clear up into high school. It got exhausting. She was always talking about women like dirt. She says women are petty and that we are jealous creatures that aren’t to be trusted. She says that men don’t respect women that they have penetrated. She said it like penetration somehow meant the woman was no longer any good or of any worth at all, like maybe she had been shamed and marked as an outcast. Like maybe everyone could see her shame like a scarlet letter on her chest. When I think about it I can see a girl in my head walking with a load of laundry with her head down, her eyes to the floor so no one can see that she let herself be defiled. Her shame was her fault because she gave into him and LET him defile her and LET him reduce her to nothing. God I hate that woman!

My mother’s ideas of how men view women were drilled into us. She told us to look in the mirror each morning and say 29x, “Men are dogs.” She wasn’t kidding. We said this every morning “men are dogs.”

I remember my brother being hounded about it at age 3. When he was 3 she hounded him about being gay. How is a 3 year old of any sexual preference at all?

If there was a guy at school that I liked I was mocked mercilessly. The woman was worse than any schoolgirl could be. She poked fun at us and used phrases like, “are you supposed to be going with this boy” or “is he SUPPOSED TO BE your boyfriend?” like he really wasn’t but she would humor me and say he was. You know how people say, “he’s SUPPOSED to be a Christian? And you know by the way they say it that they mean the person really isn’t Christian at all? That’s how she says, “SUPPOSED TO BE your boyfriend.” I still believe had this woman shut her mouth once I’d maybe not split as many times. Stupid, stupid woman!

Sleeping next to her wasn’t pleasant because it meant waking next to her. She’d tell me that I masturbate in my sleep and that she watched me do it. My sister and I slept in her bed until around the 7th grade. We did everything in her room. We ate dinner, did homework, watched TV, were abused and studied the Bible on her bed. We lived in her bedroom much of the time.

I say that I was raised to be gay because the pressure to hate men was so strong. Being gay had its drawbacks too because she would tell me about how wrong it is. She didn’t believe I hellfire either so I never heard that aspect of it, but she said she would love me no matter what, “even if I was gay.” LOL. She said I could be a drug addict; a prostitute or even gay and she would still love me.

Fear for men was something that she drove home with graphic depictions of abuse and descriptions of men overpowering women. She told us about how men don’t like women that are overweight. She said men wouldn’t like my sister and myself because our hair wasn’t long anymore. She said that we didn’t fit in with black people or white people and we were outcasts. We didn’t have a chance in hell with men according to her. And don’t get me started about blowjobs cause this woman thinks those are the worst things in the world and you never get your dignity back after that.

My mother’s problems with sex were not based on religion practiced at that time. She based it on her own ideas of what she felt men are and what she felt they were capable of. She disgusted me thoroughly. She would talk so nasty and with such detail that I’d feel sick. She’d look at me and say, “I can’t tell if I’m disgusting you or turning you on.” I have an answer to that question now, “Fuck you.” I’d like to see her try to touch me now, that fucking bitch would die!

GUILT for being sexually attracted to men
When she talked about sex with my father, which she did often, she talked about how she didn’t enjoy it as if enjoying sex with a man was low and something to be ashamed of.
(This is the part where it would not do you any good to be sympathetic to her L.H. I don’t care if her generation believed enjoying sex was wrong or not. It would only harm our working relationship for you to ever give her the benefit of the doubt or excuse her behavior because of a generations inability to communicate. You did this today with Mrs.R* and it didn’t go over well. You’re supposed to be on my side remember?)

I just skipped out. I have no idea what I was going to say next. My mind is blank now.
Me