Comic: Homophobia and the weird double standards it creates about indecency with children
Trust me when I say that the existence and display of folks in the LGBTQ+ community is not what is messing up your kids.
by JeCorey Holder
Content Warning: This essay mentions pedophilia and childhood sexual abuse
On today’s episode of Straight People Seem to be Physically Incapable of Minding Their Basic Heterosexual Business, let’s talk about the highly selective ignorance folks seem to lean on in regards to exposing kids and babies to sexuality.
Tell me why the representation of LGBTQ+ people in the media, and apparently even our mere existence, is somehow a direct threat to a “blank slate” of a child, but jokes about hiring prostitutes for sons in order to “make them men” is considered the norm? This isn’t just a joke, actually. Apparently, it really happens. Adults really (attempt to) hire sex workers for teenage boys.
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Cis heterosexuals begin forcing the objectification of women on little boys as early as infancy, at a time when their sentence structure consists of no more than wet incoherent burbles. And yet, they deem wholesome, Suitable For Work LGBTQ+ content as “too mature” for young people to see. This falsehood has been spouted continuously, to the point where LGBTQ+ people well into adulthood have internalized this sentiment and feel that we have to hide ourselves for the comfort of The Straights.
It’s so strange to me, how straight people froth at the mouth at the mere thought of queer predators attacking their little ones—a harmful stereotype that paints queer folks as inherently immoral and sexually deviant—but they will force their children to be around and show affection to cishet relatives and family friends who make sexually inappropriate comments or, God forbid, inappropriately touch them.
While the LGBTQ+ community has its lurking predators—all communities do—homophobia obfuscates the heterosexual predators who prey on children right out in the open. Hell, cis heterosexuals are eager to believe the lie that pedophilia is a reprehensible package deal with LGBTQ+ identities, and yet they will defend this very same behavior from straight men and women as being “natural” or even light-hearted fun. The double standard is clear and absolutely ridiculous.
Trust me when I say that the existence and display of folks in the LGBTQ+ community is not what is messing up your kids. No matter what kind of backwards-ass, drastic measures that are taken to force queerness out of children, if they are not cis or straight, they simply will not be.
And these emotionally-stunted children will grow to either resent the ones who raised them in such toxic environments, or have their repression manifest itself through violence.
Many cis heterosexual parents are a lifetime of therapy waiting to happen, but we’re somehow the problem for simply existing? Okay.
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Gamer, geek, and social activist. JeCorey Holder has been weaving tapestries of shade and fury since the early 2000’s. Pro-LGBTQ, pro-black, and pro intersectional feminism, he is full of feelings and opinions that try to call out and tear down the oppressive status quo.