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LGBTQIA+ Issues and Relationship Discussion
Is there more gender and sexual fluidity now among teen girls?
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Anonymous
To get really specific, is biromantic even the right term? I view romance as being interested in someone and that interest will eventually lead to intercourse. What the girls are doing is different. They love their girl friends in a different way than they will eventually love any partner. We lover our friends and children and spouses. While we say we love them, it is a different type of love for each, correct? The middle schoolers can say bisexual, pansexual for now because there are no other words to describe the love/attraction they are feeling. But for the vast majority of them, is it an accurate term? I would say no. |
Anonymous
That doesn’t stop PP from trying to politicize it. |
Anonymous
Probably 95% of the girls I grew up with identified as straight girls. Decades later, a number of them identify differently or are conflicted. It’s not easy to transition or come to terms with same-sex attraction in your 50s, especially if you grew up in a religious family in a small town. Idk why so many adults are so outraged by something that doesn’t affect them or their families directly. (Not saying this of you, OP.) |
Anonymous
I mean I think how I long friends/parents/children is distinct from tween romantic friendships which are in a lot of ways precursors to romantic and sexual relationships later in life? But of course others may have a different experience of that aspect of puberty. Terminology wise there’s a subset of people who like to separate out romantic attraction from sexual — there are adults who indentify as bi (or hetero or homo) romantic but asexual or bisexual but a romantic. The first case are people who want love/marriage/relationships but don’t actually enjoy or necessarily want sex although some are willing to go along with it to gain a romantic partnership. The latter are people who enjoy sex but aren’t interested in romance or real relationships. Obviously not every cares to get this specific in their definitions of identities but these are words and nuances that some people find useful. So I would say middle school girls who want couply things with other people but no sex could be termed bi/pan/homo/heteroromantic asexuals if they wanted. But as an adult who doesn’t like to get into too many specifics and generally sticks with “queer” I don’t see anything wrong with them preferring bisexual as an umbrella term for a few years then either exclusively dating men but still thinking of themselves as bisexual or re identifying themselves as straight or lesbian or any other shade of the rainbow that feels right to them. |
Anonymous
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It's never going to be possible to have a frank discussion about the explosion of identity terms and their sincerity on here.
I concur with the other PP that attraction is based on sex and whether or not you want to have sexual attraction with a certain gender. That is the core of attraction. It's incredibly hardwired into our bodies. But somehow we've created a whole range of new terms in an incredibly short period (just a few years? Most of us never heard of most of the terms being used today five years ago) and which dances around this basic fundamental truth by creating all these alternative "attractions" that have nothing to do with sex and I'm not sure why nor what for. But humanity hasn't changed. You think today's kids have different bodies and DNA than kids 20 years ago or 50 years ago or 500 years ago? No, they do not. Kids weren't confused either. But kids today are being told that these identities exist, so of course they're latching onto them. The irony is that most of these terms are genuine social constructs, not biological reality. |
Anonymous
| Yes, it's trendy and girls especially affirm it to fit in. |
Anonymous
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I am the OP and just want to thank the many of you who provided thoughtful comments or reflections. I am almost afraid to open up a discussion like this because everyone seems so polarized and this topic has become weaponized. But there have been many thoughtful responses here. So much to think about.
In my daughter's case, she says she's pansexual and queer, and I am just going to take that at face value. It's how she feels now. And like I said, it seems to be the same for many of her friends. This may be romantic teen girl feelings for one another, as some have pointed out, and she/they may eventually end up with a male partner. But at this stage, I am just going to let her define her own feelings and hope she continues to grow into someone who can determine what type of partner is best suited for her, male or female (or, I guess, somewhere on a gender continuum). |
Anonymous
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There’s a thread on this right now in the tweens and teens forum too.
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1039398.page |
Anonymous
True. This defines trendy, actually. |
Anonymous
I mean a lot of these feelings have existed (and had names/been documented in English — asexual has been in use since the 1960s and the concept has been documented since the 1860s) for ages. I think the difference in the last few years is that information has become more widely available to a younger audience and since tweens/teens are still figuring out everything about attraction they tend to get excited about all the options. On a personal note, I didn’t come across a bunch of the alternative sexuality words until my 20s and I think it’s a great thing that the kids who need those words don’t have to spend their entire teens secretly convinced they’re fundamentally broken like I did. If some other kids decide to identify as those sexualities temporarily, I fail to see the harm tbh. |
Anonymous
With a HUGE tie in by doctors and other ‘professionals’ benefiting financially from the lobbies. |
Anonymous
So kids are labeling themselves with various new gender terms because they don’t like labels? I would argue the opposite to be true. They love labels more than anything else. Teens are forming identities and want to define who they are. No one wants to be a boring cis-het. It’s better to choose a marginalized identity. |
Anonymous
Oh come on, the vast majority of kids still identify as cishet. It's by a huge margine, something like 80 or 90 percent. If your kids are some favor of queer then it's likely so are their friends so that's what you see. It's absolutely not the majority. |
Anonymous
Depends on the socio-economic class. And how much they care about being cool. |
Anonymous
| This is interesting. I have an Autistic, AFAB 14 year old (8th grade) who identifies as an agender lesbian. They definitely find comfort in finding an 'identity" that fits - but they feel very, very alone. They are in an Autism (inclusion) program at school and not one other kid identifies as gay or non-binary. We don't know of any other trans or non-binary kids in their school, and they've had to fight for people to respect their pronouns and even get their name right when we changed it in school records. They get made fun of. They had to fight for a gender neutral bathroom. So I hear this a lot, that it is a "trend" but that is far from our experience. In their extra-curricular activities it seems to be a bit more common (they've made one friend in acting class who is gay and recently identified as gender fluid), but otherwise they feel like some acceptance from certain peers but much like an outsider. |