My nephew is seven. The other night he announced that his
best friend’s big sister loves One Direction, but he and his best friend think
they’re gay. Translation: they hate their music.
I’m pretty sure he knew he’d made a mistake when I stopped
whatever I was doing and gave him my full attention.
“Do you know what gay means?”
He knew it was a trick question, but he also knew he
couldn’t back out now. So he told me:
“Gay means if you’re a boy you like boys and if you’re a
girl you like girls.”
“That’s right. And what does that have to do with hating One
Direction?”
Dead silence.
“So don’t call something gay if you don’t like it. You know
that’s not what gay means.”
It’s so easy for kids to pick up prejudices. When did gay
become such a casual insult anyway? When I was a kid nobody would have said it,
in case it backfired and people thought you were gay. But now it’s like it’s
come out the other side of the looking glass and it’s everywhere. That haircut?
Gay. That video game score? Gay. This homework assignment? Totally gay.
And don’t mistake this for harmless. It’s not the same
intolerance my generation grew up with, but it’s still intolerance, and it's still as fucking wrong.
My nephew’s a good kid. He’s a smart kid. He thought over
what I said for a while. Then he
said: “Aunty Lisa, you know those guys LMFAO?”
“Yes.”
“I like them. Do you want me to tell you what LMFAO stands
for?”
“No thanks.”
For the record, he did, but he whispered it.
I hope these are the moments that count. Not being told what
LMFAO stands for—I already knew that—but the other stuff. When the adults
around him call him on the things that are important, and try really hard to keep
a straight face when he asks you if it’s true what Mum told him: You have to be
over thirty or a rock star before you can say the word fuck.
Oh yeah, that’s absolutely true.
2 comments:
Good for you for calling him out on it! Kids hear it/say it so much they don't even register the implications of it. Which makes it such a sneaky kind of prejudice.
Oh he won't be making that mistake again!
He has enough positive gay role models in his life that this shouldn't have even been an issue, but at that age it's just using a cool word that his friends use, and not thinking about it. So it's the job of the adults in his life to nip it in the bud.
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