Hey! Quick!

[conuly]

I'm in the thankless pits of replying to the twits on the NYTimes.

One sensitive guy left this comment: "All the sensitivity training in the world is not going to help the kid who shows up to a second grade soccer game with two same sex parents from getting some heat. Kids aren't stupid... It's just not normal."

Isn't he sweet? And caring?

So I'm dying dying DYING to post that link that was on metaquotes ages ago, like a few years, about the poster on the bus when some kids were talking about "YOU LIKE BOYS!" and another one piped up that his uncle likes boys and HE gives me COOKIES and they were all very gay-friendly little kids?

You remember the one, right? It was uber-adorable. SO cute.

Gimme the link? Please?

Comments

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Mr. Sensitivity, alas, is probably right.

O'course, kids will also rag on each other for having a mother who is fat, a father who is bald, or anyone at all in the family with bad teeth/glasses/no dress sense/etc.

Life is like that sometimes.

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

Without understanding, necessarily, what they're on about -- it's just going after differences. More general xenophobia than homophobia, I think. I remember kids trading "gay" and "lesbian" as insults in grade school without exactly knowing what those things meant, or (more importantly) not actually ascribing homosexuality to the target -- it was just something they'd heard and were reusing.

But yes, kids will go after pretty much anything that presents itself, if they feel like tearing another kid down.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Hell, when I was in grade school "gay" still meant merry and madcap. I never encountered the word "lesbian" until I was much, much older.

But yes, we must be careful not to read too much into the usual childish enforcement of conformity. :)

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

yeah, I agree for the most part... not that we shouldn't try and change this. I think the real problem was the way he put it-- that kids would "be smart enough" to know that gay is "not normal," which makes it sound automatically bad. Seriously, kids will make fun of anything different-- "good" or "bad." But we /can/ change that by bringing up kids to be aware that "normal" covers a wide range.