“No, my 10 year old son is not looking for a girlfriend. He likes boys.”
In the beginning of this semester, the school of our children sent home a list of extracurricular clubs available for students. Our younger son chose a board games club, our older son chose Zumba. He loves singing and dancing, and we were all happy.
As the semester passed, they both enjoyed their clubs, but the choice of the older one always received the same reaction, something like “He’s smart. I bet he’s the only boy there and he can choose the girl he wants.”
The first time this happened I was shocked, because I had never thought like that. In our family, we don’t exactly follow the gender roles. My husband is the one that stays home and cooks. We have three sons and what they want to do is simply what they want to do. We accept them. It doesn’t matter if it’s not “male like”. We asked our older boy if being the only boy there made him uncomfortable, he said “No” and that was it.
But people’s reactions bothered me. My older son is gay. Yes, he’s only 10, but he identifies himself as gay since he was 7. So this idea that he was there only for the girls bothered me. For years, we’ve been dealing with a good number of shocked reactions for our son’s sexual orientation, but I never stop being bothered by people assuming that my son’s straight. At some point, I got so bothered that I started to correct people.
“No”, I say, “he’s not interested in girls. He’s gay. He says that girls are his friends.” So the reaction is “Oh, really? How does he know that? He’s so young…” These people don’t see the contradiction in their words. They assumed my son was straight and wanted to be with girls, but he’s too young to know he likes boys. Assumptions are dangerous. This, in particular, implies that is something wrong with my son, and there isn’t. He should be exactly who he is.
I remember my first crush. He was a friend of my uncle. I think I was 6 or 7 and I used to follow him everywhere. It wasn’t sexual. I just knew I wanted to be around him. I see how my son blushes when he talks about a boy he likes. He’s discovering what he likes, like I did. Before gay kids had the opportunity to be raised in a non homophobic environment and with out people in their lives, their crushes that to be kept as a secret. But my son doesn’t have a secret.
I think that it’s important to speak up, correct people when they assume my son is straight. I have to say “No, this doesn’t apply to my son.”
Because kids don’t become gay by magic when they hit puberty. Sexual orientation is something deeper. It’s something that has nothing to do with sex, but with love and attraction. And it’s beautiful. That’s nothing wrong with it.
Cartoonist Josh C Lyman Loses All His Art In Austin Break-In – Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movie, TV News
Cartoonist Josh C Lyman, a full time illustrator working the convention circuit across the USA, has a tale of woe to share with Bleeding Cool and its readers. I flew back from Phoenix Fan Fest this past weekend to my apartment in Austin; and exhausted from the aforementioned, I decided I would take a nap… Read more »Well, that sucks for the poor fellow. If anyone is offered the art shown above, you might want to take particular note of the person offering it to you.
I have met him and been table neighbors with him. Awesome guy who did not deserve this.
I was re-watching The Avengers recently and something occurred to me that I hadn’t thought of before.
You know how people have criticized Joss Whedon’s characterization of Cap? They felt he was written too brusque, too harsh and unlikable for such a charismatic character.
Well, I just realized that those scenes were all written as a counterpoint to the deleted Steve Rogers scenes that were originally meant to frame the movie.
From the beginning of TS the scenes we see feature Cap, not Steve. Sure, Steve is the one frustratedly destroying punching bags, but then Fury shows up to talk to “Cap” and that’s the last we really see of Steve Rogers. When he’s meeting Coulson, Bruce, and Natasha, he’s Cap. When he’s fighting with Loki, when he’s sniping at Tony, all the way to the end of the movie, he’s Captain America. There’s little glimpses of Steve sass – “it seems to run on some kind of electricity” – but Cap does have a sense of humor, he just doesn’t allow himself to falter or show weakness. And in this instance, that comes off as kind of prickly or dour and overbearing.
But think back to the deleted scenes. Those were just Steve. Steve Rogers alone, drifting around New York. Moodily sketching in a café, riding the subway seemingly separate, not really a part of the world around him . Those scenes had a sense of melancholy, showing him not really acclimating to what he’d lost or the future he found himself in. Of course he threw himself into Captaining full force – it’s the one thing he knows he can do.
Since these scenes were meant to be Steve’s real introduction to the TS audience, it’s no wonder that the Cap scenes that made the cut make him seem a little one-note and martinet-ish. They were written to offset the “softer side of Steve” the audience had already met. We were supposed to empathize with Steve from the beginning, but thanks to the cutting room floor, we didn’t get to really see that guy – just Cap being Cap.
So basically Whedon wrote a more balanced Steve Rogers into the film, but sort of sabotaged his characterization when the framing of the film changed direction in editing. And I agree that the original script would probably have come off a bit too maudlin for a big summer action movie. But some of those scenes really should have been worked into the finished film somehow, just for Steve Rogers’ sake.
Because the reason a lot of people weren’t so enthused or impressed with Captain America in The Avengers is because they were never really introduced to Steve Rogers at all.
Amazing Grace/Loch Lomond [x]
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
can you imagine if twitter existed in the 1800s
abe lincoln tweeting shit like “wow this play sucks just shoot me”
too soon
HE WAS SHOT IN 1865