Parents: Support Your Children

This seems to be something that a lot of parents fail at. I spend a lot of time with people who identify as LGBT to one degree or another, and they all receive different levels of support from their parents. I personally don’t receive much support from my parents. The atheists that I know also receive different levels of support from their parents. Many of the people I know were raised in secular families, so they have no issues, but this is not the case with all the people I know. Even some of the people who prefer not to label themselves aren’t always supported. As such, I know a lot of people whose love for their children is very much conditional. I find this very sad.

As a parent, you want what’s best for your children. When your children turn away from the beliefs that you hold, or when they do something that goes against your beliefs, it is understandable to be afraid for them. But abandoning your children, or neglecting them, or making them feel as though they can’t rely on you, is not a solution to this problem. Be afraid for your children if you must, but love them unconditionally regardless. Hurt your children as little as possible, even if you feel hurt by them. You are their roll model. You are the person that your child should be able to turn to in times of need. I don’t remember the last time I was able to rely on my parents for anything. And I know a lot of people who don’t have the support of their own parents.

As a result of my experiences and the experiences of those around me, I refuse to allow myself the possibility to love them conditionally. I want to be there for any children I have. I want to be the first person they turn to when they need support. If they choose to become theists, or they get into a lot of trouble (these are the only two things I can think of that would genuinely bother me), I’m not going to let that get in the way of my relationship with my children.

Just Thought I Should Remind You All About My Surveys

I haven’t done an update on my surveys in a while, so here it is. For those of you who don’t know about my surveys, I am trying to do a couple of independent studies for some future blog posts. The first study will be on Religious discrimination, and I will be focusing on how people view discrimination aimed at atheists vs. how they view it aimed at Christians. The second study will be on feminism’s reputation. Namely on how people perceive it’s reputation. Please help me out by doing and sharing my survey. It will be greatly appreciated. And for those of you who have already done my survey, please share it wherever you can. I would like to write those blog posts this summer.

Here is how I’m doing so far:
Religion Surveys:
This survey deals with various situations that may be considered discrimination towards Atheists:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=vvaqodd0equ2y21474850 – 4% complete
This survey deals with various situations that may be considered discrimination towards Christians:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=pi387nzvmo8dklc474867 – 2% complete
This survey looks at whether or not the respondent feels they have been discriminated against for their religion:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=3zolzpi3k1lwc7s470898 – 8% complete
This survey looks at whether or not people feel that Atheists are discriminated against:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=t2k9uo23mlnmklk470896 – 7% complete
This survey looks at whether or not people feel that Christians are discriminated against:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=85koff95iqwpme3470893 – 7% complete
Feminism Surveys:
Situations that may or may not be considered Feminist issues:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=xxiz033c05yo72v472614 – 3% complete
Are various Feminist causes helpful or hurtful for the Feminist movement?
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=i8d3kq6z73ems49471695 – 7% complete
How do you perceive Feminism?
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=4p48z0rwjwooxpf471689 – 7% complete
Does Feminist have a bad reputation?
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=r4t8nurh0tyxvqt470762 – 11% complete
Please help me out by doing my surveys, if you haven’t already, so that I can write my posts on the responses. And please share my surveys as well.

How Are My Surveys Going?

I haven’t done an update on my surveys in a while. Here is how I’m doing so far:
Religion Surveys:
This survey deals with various situations that may be considered discrimination towards Atheists:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=vvaqodd0equ2y21474850 – 2%
This survey deals with various situations that may be considered discrimination towards Christians:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=pi387nzvmo8dklc474867 – 2%
This survey looks at whether or not the respondent feels they have been discriminated against for their religion:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=3zolzpi3k1lwc7s470898 – 8%
This survey looks at whether or not people feel that Atheists are discriminated against:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=t2k9uo23mlnmklk470896 – 7%
This survey looks at whether or not people feel that Christians are discriminated against:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=85koff95iqwpme3470893 – 6%
Feminism Surveys:
Situations that may or may not be considered Feminist issues:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=xxiz033c05yo72v472614 – 2%
Are various Feminist causes helpful or hurtful for the Feminist movement?
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=i8d3kq6z73ems49471695 – 7%
How do you perceive Feminism?
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=4p48z0rwjwooxpf471689 – 6%
Does Feminist have a bad reputation?
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=r4t8nurh0tyxvqt470762 – 11%
Please help me out by doing my surveys, if you haven’t already, so that I can write my posts on the responses. And please share my surveys as well.

Family

Family is one of the most complicated things in life. In many ways, they can do no wrong. So long as you know they love you, you can ignore the little problems. But some times family…well, sometimes it’s tough to have them around.

I love my parents very much, and my step-dad too. I love my brother and I care about my step-brothers (though I don’t know them very well). I grew up very close with most of my extended family (there are a lot of them), and many many of my cousins are more like siblings. I have two aunts who were teenagers when I was born, so in many ways they are like siblings too. I’m glad to be so close to so many people, but I wish I were close to all of them. Unfortunately, some of my family members have isolated themselves for various reasons.

I love my family, they are relatively good people. They try to do the right thing, and they usually succeed. But I’m starting to feel myself pulling away from them. I try not to isolate myself from my family, but there is too much that I can’t tell them.

I have a very Catholic grandmother on my mom’s side. She is a wonderful woman. She is very loving and kind. She is one of those people that will welcome anybody. And, while I know she feels homosexuality is a sin, she has never once said anything bad about a member of the LGBT community. However, to my grandmother’s mind, a person has to believe in God to be good. She doesn’t care if they are Catholic, but they must be Christian. She believes that atheists are trying to ruin the country. Nothing would upset my grandmother more than finding out that I’m an atheist, so I don’t tell her. In fact, I don’t tell that side of my family. None of them are that religious, but they love to gossip. The last thing I want is for somebody other than myself to let slip that I’m an atheist. My grandma’s in her 80’s, so I figure I can tell my family after she’s gone. But it is painful to keep that part of myself from somebody I love.

My dad’s side knows I’m an atheist. They were never very religious, so they don’t care. However, they are very conservative. I can’t tell them I’m genderqueer. They wouldn’t understand. If they did, they would try to change me. They believe that gender and sex are the same thing, and they believe that the traditional gender roles should be upheld. Since my fiance is male, they wouldn’t care about the demisexuality part. As far as they’re concerned, I’m straight. They are also quite anti-feminist. I don’t keep that one to myself, but it seems that any conversations I have with them along those lines just turn into fights. In fact, I recently took my dad and brother off facebook for that very reason. They’re happy to push their views on me, but they aren’t willing to listen to my views. The same goes for my political views.

I do have one uncle on my dad’s side who is a conservative Christian. Like, Evangelical, homeschool your children, avoid all things secular, Jesus Camp Christian. He and his wife separated themselves from my family when I was about 6 when my aunt was pregnant with their first child. Apparently my uncle wanted my grandpa to make the family Christmas gathering about Jesus, but my grandpa wanted to keep Christmas about the family. They stopped visiting after that. As a result, I’ve never met my four cousins. My uncle and I tried to have a facebook relationship for a while, but it didn’t work out very well. He has terminal cancer, so I doubt there will be a chance to fix things. I’d love to meet my cousins, but, given how sheltered they are, and given their family’s views, I doubt they’d be so keen to meet me.

I have never told any of my family members about my abortion. My mom’s side would be against it and my dad’s side, while they would allow me to make the decision, would have wanted me to keep it. I wish I could have called my mom as soon as I found out I was pregnant, but that wasn’t an option for me. I had to make the decision without her.

All of the things I can’t talk about make it difficult to be close to my family. I try to visit everybody once a year, since I live quite far from everyone, but between not having money and feeling tense about saying the wrong thing and causing a fight, it’s hard to motivate myself to keep in contact with anyone. Like I said, families are complicated.

A Survey Update

I haven’t done an update on my surveys in a while. Here is how I’m doing so far:

Religion Surveys:
This survey deals with various situations that may be considered discrimination towards Atheists:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=vvaqodd0equ2y21474850 – 2%
This survey deals with various situations that may be considered discrimination towards Christians:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=pi387nzvmo8dklc474867 – 2%
This survey looks at whether or not the respondent feels they have been discriminated against for their religion:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=3zolzpi3k1lwc7s470898 – 8%
This survey looks at whether or not people feel that Atheists are discriminated against:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=t2k9uo23mlnmklk470896 – 7%
This survey looks at whether or not people feel that Christians are discriminated against:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=85koff95iqwpme3470893 – 6%

Feminism Surveys:
Situations that may or may not be considered Feminist issues:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=xxiz033c05yo72v472614 – 2%
Are various Feminist causes helpful or hurtful for the Feminist movement?
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=i8d3kq6z73ems49471695 – 7%
How do you perceive Feminism?
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=4p48z0rwjwooxpf471689 – 6%
Does Feminist have a bad reputation?
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=r4t8nurh0tyxvqt470762 – 11%

Please help me out by doing my surveys, if you haven’t already, so that I can write my posts on the responses. And please share my surveys as well.

What Do You Teach Your Kids About Religion?

I came across an article today about what people teach their kids about religion. So what are you (or will you) teaching your kids about religion?

I would like to teach my kids about the history and beliefs of the worlds major religions. I want them to know where the religions came from and when they were started, as well as the most prominent beliefs held by the religions followers. I want them to feel safe to talk about religion with their peers, and I want them to know about the possible beliefs that their peers may hold before they start school. I’d also like to teach them the religious myths from ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt as well as First Nations tribes. Possibly others as well, but it all depends on what we have time for. I loved hearing ancient myths as a kid, and I want my children to enjoy them as well.

Family

I’ve been thinking a lot about family lately. A lot has been changing for me, both good and bad, and it has me thinking a lot about what I want in the future. But it’s not just the future that I’ve been thinking about. I’ve also been thinking about social norms. My friends like to tease me because I, Hessian, am older than my partner, Withteeth, by three years. I’m 25 ad he is 22. He’s younger than my little brother. This doesn’t bother us, nor does it bother our friends. But it does go against social norms. Nobody would even think twice about it if were three years older than me. It seems odd. We’re both in our 20’s, we’re both at the seem stage in our life, and we’re both equally successful. So why do people feel the need to comment on our age difference?

We also get a lot of comments on our future goals. We are engaged, but I never got a ring. I don’t want a ring. We both view them as a scam. Most of our friends feel the same. We’ve had friends comment on our engagement in amusing ways. One friend made a comment about us expecting a toaster (we already have a perfectly good one, thank you) and said that “we’d get nothing and like it.” We find the comment amusing. We really don’t need anything, nor do we expect anything. We are getting married for the security and nothing more. We want to have children, so we want the legal protections. I’ve gotten asked about my “ring” already. And we’ve had comments about how marriage is over-rated. My brother is being harassed for a date by my extended family (there isn’t one yet). It’s funny to watch how people react to weddings. They are a legal contract, but we use them to symbolize our love. We want to have a ceremony for family more than anything, but we want to do it while avoiding all of the standard stereotypes. We are thinking of basing the wedding off of a traditional knighting ceremony because I disagree with so much of the tradition surrounding marriage. So what is it with people and weddings/engagements?

And finally, we get questioned a lot on the number of children that we want. We have decided that we want 6 altogether. I would give birth to 4 and we’d adopt two. People think that we are crazy for wanting so many. Our friends because we’d be contributing to overpopulation, and everybody else because it’s so unusual nowadays. We have two reasons for wanting so many: a) I want to adopt and b) we both want to pass on our genes. I also really like kids, and my partner is willing to go for that number because it will be financially plausible. Both of my parents have 5 siblings, and it is common for people in my family to have 3-5 kids, so these numbers don’t really seem odd to me. But it amuses me to see how many people’s jaws drop when we say that we want 6 kids. It’s almost as if it’s asocial taboo to say that you want more than two kids (and less than one).

Gender and Sexuality

I am a gender non-conforming demisexual. I have known that I don’t fit into the category of “girl” or “woman” for as long as I can remember. It never felt right. When I was younger I even wanted to be a boy. I hated being female. But I grew up in a family with strong beliefs about traditional gender roles. It didn’t take me very long to figure out that my feelings would have been seen as a problem, so I never told anyone. I also was never given the vocabulary necessary to express how and what I felt. It made my life very difficult. Luckily I was able to live my life as a tomboy with little pushback from my parents. I could live my life comfortably, and do the things that I wanted to do, so long as everybody perceived me as a tomboy. But that hasn’t really made things less difficult. It took me until I reached university to gain the vocabulary necessary to begin exploring my gender and learning about the various options out there. As such, I still have no clue what my gender is. This isn’t a problem because I feel that I need a label. It’s a problem because I am surrounded by people who have already given themselves labels, or accepted the label given to them by society. It is very lonely being the only person you know still searching for that label. Everybody else seems to have determined who they are, at least as far as gender is concerned, but all I know is what I am not.

I never really thought much about this until recently. I had no problem being the only one without a label. But getting pregnant made me think about the fact that I am a biological female. It had never really been so in my face before. The reproductive cycle is a sore spot for many gender non-conforming individuals, and I find myself in the position of wanting to actually give birth to children. As such, I am now thinking about how difficult it could be for me. Especially since pregnancy is so gendered in and of itself. Our society holds strong views on pregnancy and pregnant women. They will all be shoved in my face when I decide that I am ready to have my first child. It has me feeling a little weary.

Gender has been my biggest concern, but I have also been thinking about my sexuality. Demisexuality is generally considered a subset of asexuality. However, where asexuals have no sex drive, demisexuals do have a sex drive, but it is low and can be easily ignored. That is a simplistic explanation. Demisexuality is more complicated than that, but is not really the point of my post. It has been concerning me because Demisexuality is almost never discussed. Even in classes or workshops that are focusing on sexuality. Homosexuality and heterosexuality are usually the main focus. Bisexuality is almost always brought up. Pansexuality and omnisexuality are usually passing mentions. Even asexuality will be mentioned. But I have only heard Demisexuality brought up in one workshop that I have been to. This bothers me. It makes me feel as though I don’t have a place at the sexuality table. My partner volunteers at our university’s queer center, and I fit into the category of queer, but I don’t feel as though I belong there because my sexuality is largely ignored. I don’t feel as though I can actually call myself queer. My partner openly talks about how he is amused that he can say that he is in a queer relationship despite being a heterosexual cis man. I, however, view our relationship as completely heteronormative. Personally, I find that to be quite amusing.

I find that my personality is such that, with every judgement that society holds over my actions, I do the opposite of what is expected of me. I am female so I should like fashion and makeup. I couldn’t care less about my clothes: I wear what’s comfortable and rarely buy anything new. And I don’t wear makeup. I am masculine and like predominantly male activities so I should be a lesbian. Instead I don’t really care for sex, as a demisexual, and am equally attracted to men and women. I should be cis or trans. Instead I find myself somewhere in the middle. If I’m going to be gender non-conforming, then I should want to change my sex, and I should definitely prefer women. Instead I want to use my female body to produce babies and I intend to do so with the man that I plan to marry. I have long since come to the conclusion that societal expectations are largely just silly, but my inability to conform to them makes me frustrated. This is because I am at a higher risk of being mistreated by so obviously not conforming. I wish society would see these expectations as being as silly as I do. Maybe then we could create a more equal society where people are able to be themselves without fear.