I was recently listening to a podcast about the Heaven's Gate cult and its members' mass suicide. For anybody living under a rock or who wasn't yet born in 1997 when this was all over the news, Heaven's Gate was an offshoot of Christianity that taught its followers that the cult's leader, Marshall Applewhite, was the second coming of Jesus. They believed that in order to get to "the next level" (heaven, if you will), spaceships would come to Earth and pick up the followers for a trip to celestial paradise. But then when the comet Hale-Bopp was discovered, Marshall Applewhite came to the conclusion that the spaceship that was to escort his followers to paradise was trailing the comet. It would not land, and the only way to board the ship was to "leave one's vehicle"-- one's body. That is, commit suicide, so that one's soul will be sent to the ship.
On March 26, 1997, one of the surviving members anonymously called the police to report the mass suicide (he came forward later about his identity). The next morning, the story was all over the news. The Heaven's Gate website had so much traffic that morning that people often had to keep hitting "refresh" several times before the page would load.
I was sixteen years old when this story was in the news, and I was simply floored by it. How could anybody believe that committing suicide would send their souls to a spaceship trailing a comet? I remember that my dad commented that it's too easy to lead people down a path, that it's how Hitler was successful in getting people to buy into the Nazi ideology. Now that I'm older and have read a bit about evolutionary psychology, I have a better understanding why. There is no limit to what people will believe if a charismatic leader knows which buttons to push. Scientists, such as Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins, have hypothesized that this tendency to believe what your parents, tribal elders, or some other authority figure tell you helped our ancestors survive in the African Savannah, a setting that was rife with predators, disease, and rival tribes who would fight with you over resources. People who were skeptical of things like, "Don't swim there. You could be eaten by a crocodile" were less likely to survive and reproduce. And these people's brains didn't differentiate between the aforementioned sound advice and something absurd, such as, "If you don't sacrifice an animal for the gods, there will be a terrible famine."
Evolution, of course, did not account for the fact that by 1997, a huge portion of the world would be living in houses, have plenty of food at their fingertips, and not be in situations where there would be predatory animals that could eat them. In 1997 (and in 2019, of course) the human mind still carried baggage of its evolutionary history. This inexorable drive to believe the absurd claims of a charismatic alpha male and to cave into peer pressure was alive and well. It is one of those things that makes us unique as a social species.
That's why it shocked me when I recently found out that one of the members of Heaven's Gate was autistic (and to clarify, he had left the group itself before the mass suicide, but still maintained the beliefs. When he learned about the suicide, he killed himself so he could join his friends on the ship). Autistic people are less likely to follow leaders, to cave into peer pressure, to do the social dances that most of us take for granted. In fact, many of them will just see these dances as utterly absurd and ridiculous. What, then, would drive an autistic person to join Heaven's Gate?, I wondered. But after thinking about it for about five minutes, I realized that in a way it did make sense that some autistic people might join a cult. They're the exception, not the rule, of course, and they probably join for different reasons than their neurotypical peers. And when I generated my hypothesis as to why, it just saddened me.
I can't speak for the guy who joined Heaven's Gate, and in case his family is reading this, I don't want to upset them by speculating about the guy's environment (and I don't want to name him either, even though it is of course easy enough to Google). But in general I can see what might lead someone on the spectrum down this destructive path. I can see it from examples in my own life.
Think about it: You go through your entire life hearing the same damned mantra from well-meaning but tragically misguided family, teachers, and peers, "You don't know how to interact with people." "You don't get it." "You're inappropriate." "You make people uncomfortable." And so forth. You try hard to figure out the social rules, but they are not written in stone and are subject to change upon context. You deal with unbelievable anxiety. You are unintentionally gaslit by the same people, who tell you that you misinterpret friendly teasing as bullying (even though you know damn well that it's bullying), that someone who said something bitingly personal and nasty was "just frustrated and wasn't trying to be mean" (but you knew damn well that he was), and who even dismiss egregious behavior by friends as normal. Your life consists of internalized psychological warfare, and eventually don't trust your own perception in regard to the most mundane, everyday things. It's when I consider this that I realize that yes, of course, a cult might seem like it makes sense to someone in that position.
In cults-- or even some sects of mainstream religion, for that matter-- the rules of social interaction are highly regulated: Don't use certain words; eat this, not that; eat this meal at this time and say these words before the meal; don't interact in a particular way with the opposite sex until you're married; have children by this age; and so on. Or in the case of Heaven's Gate, sex is evil, so sterilization is recommended. Again, I don't want to speculate about the autistic member of Heaven's Gate in particular. But many of us on the spectrum are asexual on top of all the other crap that makes our lives difficult. Imagine, too, being told that your lack of (or relative lack of) interest in dating, sex, or both is wrong, unhealthy, a mental illness, etc. Even if people don't tell you these things, you might feel left out if everyone you know is running off to get married and have kids. Join this group, and you won't feel left out when you're the only person who isn't passionately screwing somebody. Not only will you not only not be expected to get laid, you'll be expected not to get laid.
The more I thought about the aforementioned as possible factors that would make an autistic person join a cult, the more sense it made. Although a vulnerable autistic person is in a much better situation if they're coming of age in 2019, in 1997 the Heaven's Gate member was living in what I call the Final Decade of the Dark Ages for autistic people, an era in which to most people "autistic" meant you didn't talk, and "Asperger's" was a virtually non-existent word. Not to mention, it was also an era in which an autistic person's eccentricities and difficulties were dismissed as "behavioral problems". I am sure that a lot of people are tempted to say, "Oh, you know what? Autistic people are just more gullible." Yeah, okay. Some of them are, about things like a kid trying to screw with you by sarcastically saying, "You're soooo cool!" (stuff like that never got past me, however; my radar was always finely-tuned to such things). But in terms of believing cult leaders? No. A lot of neurotypical people join cults, and let's not forget that many neurotypical people believe in some of the more absurd claims of mainstream religion, such as that a 600-year-old man built an ark that could fit two of every animal species on the planet. So no, please don't try the "autistic people are more gullible" crap to explain away why they might join a cult.
Thinking about these things made me angry, angry enough to put my fist through a wall. It's only been in the past decade really that mainstream society is starting to see the hurt they've inadvertently caused autistic people even when they meant to help them. It's only now that they're seeing the anxiety they cause when they try to make autistic people adapt to the neurotypical world, but never vice-versa. The story about the autistic Heaven's Gate member is really heartbreaking, but in hindsight it's not surprising.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Friday, May 29, 2015
The Long Silence, Part 5: Getting Affirmation from My Parents
Besides the gender roles/expression issue, there were other ways I needed affirmation from my parents Most were in terms of the way I perceived and still continue to perceive certain situations. Let's look at a few:
1) There was the situation in which I told Mom that one of my non-camp friends, Jenna, was into Wicca. For some reason, Mom was always wary of Jenna (but oddly enough not the "friends" from middle school who had stabbed me in the back and ultimately ditched me), but Dad had liked her. Mom had never had a kind word for Jenna, saying that she "lived on the fringe" and was a "lost soul", and this was long before the Wicca incident. Mom's disapproval of Jenna haunted me for years. Sadly, Mom doesn't remember Jenna, so I have no idea what she thought she was seeing when she looked at her. As a teenager, this really confused me. I thought, well, Mom is an adult so she theoretically must know better, so why can't I see what Mom is seeing? Years later I told my parents that Jenna had understood me. Mom said, "Well, you probably never told me that." Well of course I didn't! What difference would that have made? It would have raised more questions than answers. Besides, how do you tell your own mother, who doesn't understand you in a very profound way, that a friend of yours does? I don't think it would have been taken seriously.
2) In terms of the Wicca incident, I didn't believe and still don't believe that, as far as religions go, Wicca is particularly dangerous. I have my own opinion in general of religion, but I won't go into it here. I think that if anything Wicca is among the least harmful religion, not necessarily because of the beliefs but simply because very few people follow it. Large herds are dangerous.
2) I still don't see what was wrong with my drawing violent Addams Family cartoons at age 11, as long as I didn't draw them in school (which I didn't). But my parents, Mom especially, were so damned sure that what I was doing was simply wrong and needed to be stopped.
4) Not voluntarily showing Mom any of my creative work (drawings and writing) until college because I did not know what to expect from her, whether or not she would blow up.
5) Thinking that people were fucking with me, while my parents (again, usually Mom) were skeptical. Even as an adult, I still say that I was right 99 times out of 100.
6) Not telling Mom about my crushes because I knew she'd bring my gender expression into it, saying, "If you would dress more feminine they wouldn't be so put off by you." And yes, when I did start confessing in my early 20s, that is pretty much how she reacted.
Recently, I discussed all these issues with my parents. In a real twist to the whole, "Mom was right" cliché, my parents have admitted that they were not just wrong, but profoundly wrong and made a lot of mistakes in the past. Mom said that I was right about Jenna, and she said this because now she finally listened to what I said about Jenna. Mom and Dad admitted that Mom probably freaked out about the Wicca incident because she knew nothing about Wicca, not because she was right and had adult experience that I didn't. They also have said they were wrong to prohibit me from drawing my cartoons during my Addams Family phase. They also said that they were usually wrong when they thought people weren't fucking with me when I knew they were. This was something I especially needed to hear from Mom; Dad generally was more able to see when people were fucking with me or screwing me over in some way.
Then Dad and I had this conversation, which was something I really needed:
Me: Dad, isn't it understandable that I didn't show Mom much of my writing and artwork until college because I never knew how to expect her to react?
Dad: Yes, absolutely.
Me: Isn't it understandable that I wouldn't tell Mom about the crushes I got because I knew she'd flip out and lecture me about my gender expression?
Dad: Yes, of course.
So how and when did things finally change? In 2009, at age 28, when I was visiting my family in Pennsylvania, Mom and I got into, yes, another fight about clothes. And it was a screaming fight. She was screaming, "I'm sick of your tears! For fifteen years I've been telling you what you need to do to make your life easier, but you won't listen!" I told her I was fed up with her treating me like I was a little kid, and she insisted she wasn't. We were in the car at the time, and as soon as we got home, Mom went upstairs, and I left the house to go for a walk. I was shaking, and I took out my cell phone to call my brother and to call my shrink. Neither were available. After about ten minutes, I heard a honk. I turned around, and there was Mom in the car. Very calmly, she told me to get in. I told her I'd only get in if she promised not to scream at me. She promised.
We drove around in silence. Mom apologized. She said she had just had an epiphany. She realized that she hadn't been treating me like an adult, and that she had been blind to the fact that I was an adult. She said that she had also been blind to the fact that my reality, even if different from hers, was real and not just some immature view of the world. We started of what became a series of conversations and my coming out-- as I've said in many posts, there's a lot of coming out with Asperger's-- that still continues to this day. I have been slowly telling her and Dad things that I haven't before. Even though I know now that Mom won't flip out-- that she can't flip out, because I'm an adult-- I still am gun shy about my idisyncracies. I have to have a talk with myself and remind myself that Mom and Dad have evolved, and that Mom won't scream if I have a thought that is odd or a perspective she doesn't agree with. In fact, their evolution sometimes seems too good to be true because, as I've said, there's that old "When I was a teenager I thought I knew everything" and "Mom was right" cliché. Besides, after decades-- formative decades-- of hearing that you are wrong about everything? This new affirmation still feels too good to be true. And sometimes I don't even know which of my parents' perspectives have changed and I have to check in with them on that.
For example, in 2011 I got interested in Dr. Jack Kevorkian, less because of his euthanasia work but more because of the brilliant man he was, a unique and fiercely independent man who taught himself several languages to fluency; a man who was a writer, an artist, a musician, an inventor, a historian, and a philosopher; and a man who I was (and am) near certain had Asperger's Syndrome. It had only been two years since Mom had her epiphany, so I was still a little gun shy about how she'd react to this interest. Fortunately, she didn't give it a second thought. Then when Dr. Kevorkian died, I had tears in my eyes. Because I was so used to getting feedback that my idiosyncratic feelings were wrong, I felt like I had to come up with excuses as to why I had tears in my eyes. But then after talking myself down, so to speak, I realized that my parents wouldn't freak out about it, and I decided that if they did that it was their problem not mine. I was 30 years old, and I shouldn't have to justify any of my feelings to them. In fact, once I showed my mother this video of Dr. Jack Kevorkian:
I pointed out the intensity of his facial expressions, saying, "This is one reason why I think he had Asperger's Syndrome." Mom said she wasn't sure if his expressions indicated anything about Asperger's, but she commented, "He's someone you can identify with in a lot of ways." And boy was that something I was glad to hear. Had I been interested in Dr. Kevorkian as a teenager, Mom would have freaked out, no question. But just little affirmative comments like that, which I wasn't used to hearing? I really needed that! It's nice to know, too, that I can draw pictures of Dr. Kevorkian, have all of his books, and have prints of his work hanging in my apartment without my parents wondering why.
When I got fired from my past two major jobs, Mom said things like, "You deserve better than life has given you." Years ago, she and Dad would have been up all night wondering where they'd failed as parents. Again, it's these little things, these little changes. They make not just my life easier but my relationship with my parents better.
One thing my parents tell me is that hindsight is 20/20. Except a lot of what I am telling them now that they say is me looking at the past with 20/20 hindsight (the ridiculousness of conformity=maturity, the absurdity of social roles based on your genitals, etc) is what I tried to tell them years ago at the time these things were happening. They just hadn't listened much.
I do feel better these days about my relationship with my parents, and some people might even think I should feel victorious that the world is beginning to affirm things I've been saying for years. But I don't feel victorious. Why? To quote Al Pacino as Dr. Jack Kevorkian in the biopic You Don't Know Jack, "This isn't a victory for me; it's just common sense!"
The Long Silence, Part 4: Needing Affirmation from my parents
I've always said that I probably would have had a much easier time handling the bullying I experienced in middle school as well as the other setbacks I experienced throughout my life had my parents affirmed me instead of telling me I needed to change.
I started to get affirmation at Camp Negev, the only place I had ever felt comfortable when I was a teenager. I remember that throughout the years I was there the kids in my age group told me that I was "refreshing" and that I was "strong". One of my fondest memories was in the summer of 1996 (age 15), when my friend and mentor, Jonas, and his girlfriend (now his wife), Netya were putting my bunk to bed. We were all talking, and somehow I started talking about the one day, just a few months prior, when I had reached an epiphany and summoned the strength to stand up to the kids who were bullying me. I remember saying things like, "I finally realized that it wasn't my fault." Everybody in the room listened, really listened. When I had tried to tell my parents about it when we were in yet another fight about the clothing issue, they didn't want to hear it. But everybody in the bunk at camp that night was impressed.
Netya was one of those who was impressed, so impressed that she Tributed me a couple days later. "Tributing" was a camp tradition where one person writes a Tribute to another person-- often in the form of a poem-- and reads it in front of the entire camp. Nobody knows who that person is until the very end of the Tribute. Then the person who receives the Tribute has to Tribute someone else. In the Tribute Netya commented on my independence-- my creativity, my weird sense of humor, and even dressing tomboyish-- in a positive way. I thought to myself, "Jonas and Netya appreciate me for who I am. So do the other kids in the group. Why not my own parents?" Well, imagine how hard it was for me to go home at the end of every summer. And by the way, I still have the Tribute. Fond memories, that.
And of course the following school year was a lot of the same old, same old. I wasn't being bullied (I was now in high school, and most of the kids who had been in my middle school were zoned for another high school), but my parents-- Mom especially (how many times can I say that?)-- were still hovering over me and trying to tweak me in terms of my gender identity and expression. They didn't seem to see the growth I'd experienced by being able to stand up to the bullies-- how could they? They had never let me tell the story. They had just kept cutting me off. Another problem was that they didn't seem to believe me when I told them that people at camp appreciated the fact that I was different, and admired me for not succumbing to peer pressure in terms of gender expression. They seemed to think that people were just telling me what I wanted to hear in order to avoid conflict.
And whenever I had an opinion about anything if my parents disagreed with it, they didn't treat it like a difference of opinion. They treated it like the opinion of someone who just didn't understand how the world works. This was especially true with gender roles, and Mom's statements on this issue were always punctuated with, "You will change your mind when you get older." In other words, what you're feeling isn't real, but rather just a phase that you should have outgrown long ago. When you'll older, you're realize that you need to conform or else there's something wrong with you." Well, that's what it felt like I was hearing.
It was horrible not to get this affirmation from my parents. It is cliché for an adult to say, "As a teenager I thought I knew everything and that my parents were wrong. Well, I realize now that they're right." But I knew that there were certain things I would never change my mind on-- ever. So what did it mean? Was I destined to change my mind and "grow up", falling into the trap that many people do when they conflate conformity-- particularly gender conformity-- with maturity? And what about the fact that I rarely felt like I could tell my parents anything? Well, my parents insisted they were "always there for me" and yet I couldn't tell them much, so did that mean I was the problem?
In the spring of 1998, Dad finally said something me that I had desperately needed to hear. It started with yet another day where I was in a battle with my parents over clothes. I blew up and screamed, "You won't let me be a tomboy! You just want me to fit into this narrow-minded mold you have set for me!" Later, Mom lectured me that "tomboy" was an inappropriate word to describe myself at age 17, that tomboys were "little girls who act like boys." I said something to the effect of, "I'm proud of who I am, and you just keep telling me I'm wrong!" The next day, Dad and I had a long talk about the whole tomboy issue. Loosely quoting Inherit the Wind (and confusing "gene" with "chromosome"), I said, "Yes, I have a second X gene. It's a gene. It's a determining gene, but it's not the only gene!" Dad listened, and said that I had made a valid point. He said, "You're right. We have been too restrictive on you." At the end of the conversation, I asked, "Mom says I'll change my mind about these things. Will I?" Dad said, "No, because it goes against everything you believe in." I don't think he knew how badly I needed to hear that.
It got better, but I had to wait another eleven years for that to happen. And that will be discussed in the next and final blog post.
I started to get affirmation at Camp Negev, the only place I had ever felt comfortable when I was a teenager. I remember that throughout the years I was there the kids in my age group told me that I was "refreshing" and that I was "strong". One of my fondest memories was in the summer of 1996 (age 15), when my friend and mentor, Jonas, and his girlfriend (now his wife), Netya were putting my bunk to bed. We were all talking, and somehow I started talking about the one day, just a few months prior, when I had reached an epiphany and summoned the strength to stand up to the kids who were bullying me. I remember saying things like, "I finally realized that it wasn't my fault." Everybody in the room listened, really listened. When I had tried to tell my parents about it when we were in yet another fight about the clothing issue, they didn't want to hear it. But everybody in the bunk at camp that night was impressed.
Netya was one of those who was impressed, so impressed that she Tributed me a couple days later. "Tributing" was a camp tradition where one person writes a Tribute to another person-- often in the form of a poem-- and reads it in front of the entire camp. Nobody knows who that person is until the very end of the Tribute. Then the person who receives the Tribute has to Tribute someone else. In the Tribute Netya commented on my independence-- my creativity, my weird sense of humor, and even dressing tomboyish-- in a positive way. I thought to myself, "Jonas and Netya appreciate me for who I am. So do the other kids in the group. Why not my own parents?" Well, imagine how hard it was for me to go home at the end of every summer. And by the way, I still have the Tribute. Fond memories, that.
And of course the following school year was a lot of the same old, same old. I wasn't being bullied (I was now in high school, and most of the kids who had been in my middle school were zoned for another high school), but my parents-- Mom especially (how many times can I say that?)-- were still hovering over me and trying to tweak me in terms of my gender identity and expression. They didn't seem to see the growth I'd experienced by being able to stand up to the bullies-- how could they? They had never let me tell the story. They had just kept cutting me off. Another problem was that they didn't seem to believe me when I told them that people at camp appreciated the fact that I was different, and admired me for not succumbing to peer pressure in terms of gender expression. They seemed to think that people were just telling me what I wanted to hear in order to avoid conflict.
And whenever I had an opinion about anything if my parents disagreed with it, they didn't treat it like a difference of opinion. They treated it like the opinion of someone who just didn't understand how the world works. This was especially true with gender roles, and Mom's statements on this issue were always punctuated with, "You will change your mind when you get older." In other words, what you're feeling isn't real, but rather just a phase that you should have outgrown long ago. When you'll older, you're realize that you need to conform or else there's something wrong with you." Well, that's what it felt like I was hearing.
It was horrible not to get this affirmation from my parents. It is cliché for an adult to say, "As a teenager I thought I knew everything and that my parents were wrong. Well, I realize now that they're right." But I knew that there were certain things I would never change my mind on-- ever. So what did it mean? Was I destined to change my mind and "grow up", falling into the trap that many people do when they conflate conformity-- particularly gender conformity-- with maturity? And what about the fact that I rarely felt like I could tell my parents anything? Well, my parents insisted they were "always there for me" and yet I couldn't tell them much, so did that mean I was the problem?
In the spring of 1998, Dad finally said something me that I had desperately needed to hear. It started with yet another day where I was in a battle with my parents over clothes. I blew up and screamed, "You won't let me be a tomboy! You just want me to fit into this narrow-minded mold you have set for me!" Later, Mom lectured me that "tomboy" was an inappropriate word to describe myself at age 17, that tomboys were "little girls who act like boys." I said something to the effect of, "I'm proud of who I am, and you just keep telling me I'm wrong!" The next day, Dad and I had a long talk about the whole tomboy issue. Loosely quoting Inherit the Wind (and confusing "gene" with "chromosome"), I said, "Yes, I have a second X gene. It's a gene. It's a determining gene, but it's not the only gene!" Dad listened, and said that I had made a valid point. He said, "You're right. We have been too restrictive on you." At the end of the conversation, I asked, "Mom says I'll change my mind about these things. Will I?" Dad said, "No, because it goes against everything you believe in." I don't think he knew how badly I needed to hear that.
It got better, but I had to wait another eleven years for that to happen. And that will be discussed in the next and final blog post.
The Long Silence, Part 3: Pushed Further into the Closet
Towards the end of my teenage years, I really began to feel that my home was not an emotionally safe place for me. In actions reminiscent of "love the sinner, hate the sin"(although religion had nothing to do with it), my parents, despite thinking they were helping me, drove me into a closet. This was especially true in terms of my mother. Like a religious person who thinks the "sin" of homosexuality is merely a superficial behavior-- divorced from core personality and identity-- that needs to be corrected, my parents seemed to think that a lot of what were core aspects about my personality and identity were superficial behaviors. Not only that, they thought they were marks of immaturity and signs of being unable to understand the real world.
A Tomboy in the Closet
I've mentioned in several other blogposts that I've always used the word "tomboy" to identify myself and my slightly lopsided gender identity, rather than in a tongue-in-cheek way that people usually do ("Oh, she likes to do woodwork. She's such a tomboy!"). But it seemed that my parents-- again, Mom especially-- were inordinately focused on this aspect about me. The way I wore my hair-- for almost 4 years, almost always in a ponytail because it was thick and made me look like a "bombshell", which was not me at all-- was a constant topic of conversation. Phrases I repeatedly heard were "Why can't you wear it down?", "You're the only girl who doesn't like looking pretty!", and the sarcastic "Fine! Cut your hair like a boy!" And what hurt was that I secretly did want to cut my hair in a tomboyish way, but I wasn't allowed, so pulling my hair back was the next best thing. How in the world could I talk to my parents about how I felt if Mom said such dismissive things about my insistence on not wearing my "bombshell" hair down?
Then there was the one time when Dad asked me to wear my hair down for him as a Father's Day present. That was just humiliating. Of course I didn't do it.
Pushed into the closet.
And then there was the clothing issue. I hated wearing shirts that were even slightly girly. I wore polo shirts, flannels, sweatshirts, T-shirts, and military fatigues. But my parents constantly commented on this, telling me that I was too old to dress like that. It made no sense to me that being androgynous was a sign of immaturity to them. When I tried to tell them that in some ways I felt more like a boy than a girl, they just told me I didn't understand how the real world works. They didn't hear a statement about who I was, but rather a statement coming from naivety and immaturity.
I repeatedly had nightmares about being forced to dress in what I call "boob-neckline" (low-cut) shirts. When I had to dress up for family occasions, I felt extremely uncomfortable. I looked in the mirror and didn't see myself. I saw someone wearing an elaborate disguise. It was even worse when my parents put me on display for each other and commented about how I was dressed. It usually went like this:
Mom: Doesn't she look great in that?
Dad: Yeah, she looks like a girl."
If my brother were there, forget it. He'd throw gas on the fire and add, "For once" to one or both of those statements.
Instead of the comments having their intended effect and encouraging me to dress the way they wanted me to, all I heard was, "The way you dress is wrong. I don't approve of your being a tomboy. This is what we want to see, and you'd better learn to like it."
Pushed further into the closet.
In fact, there was one time when I was eating at a restaurant with my family and we ran into one of my mother's high school students. The girl had long blonde hair, was wearing makeup, earrings, a boob-neckline shirt, and short shorts, revealing perfectly shaven legs. I remember at that moment thinking, "This is the kind of daughter Mom wants, and I can't give her that because it's not who I am."
When my brother graduated from high school, my mother submitted "To thine own self be true" as a comment for his yearbook graduation photo. I remember thinking, "Yeah, she can say that to him because the way he is naturally fits in with her expectations."
Pushed even further into the closet.
Asperger's Sexuality
I've mentioned in numerous blog posts that I rarely get crushes, but when they do they are very overwhelming and intense. Mercifully, my last one was seven years ago, and I've never been in a relationship (although I kissed one guy, and that was in summer 1999, age 18!). I got my first crush very late, just a few months before my fifteenth birthday. Prior to that, I would have embraced the word "asexual" had I heard of it. The problem was that I hadn't heard of it, and neither had Mom.
Figuring out my sexuality was another issue my mother seemed inordinately focused on. At the most random moments, Mom would ask me, often in a panicked voice that she unsuccessfully tried to disguise, "Do you have a crush? Have you ever had a crush? Do you like being around boys? Do you get a 'special feeling' around boys? Do you get crushes on girls?" Years later Mom told me that I was "insulted" when she asked me these questions, but really, I was just uncomfortable: she asked these questions frequently, at the most random moments, and in the most awkward ways. When I gave her an honest answer-- first "no" when I didn't have crushes, and then "yes" when I finally started getting them-- she just pressed further. It seemed that she was less interested in getting an honest answer than my telling her what she wanted to hear. If I were gay she would have been fine with it, but it also seemed she wouldn't rest until I told her what would have been lies. To get her to stop grilling me, I would have had to lie and say things like, "Yes, when I walk into a room full of boys (or girls), I'm overwhelmed at how cute all of them are." I wasn't like most girls. I didn't "get that special feeling" when I was around boys as a whole, but rather if there was one particular person whom I liked "in that way", which was rare.
I finally did open to Dad about my issue with obsessive crushes, right after I came back from my CIT summer at Camp Negev and had had my third obsessive crush. I remember very clearly telling him, "Don't tell Mom about this, because then she'll see it as yet another problem that I have that we have to focus on." Sadly, keeping that secret was my only option. And it probably spared me a lot of pain until the day eleven years later (more about that in Part 4), when Mom was finally ready to learn and accept the truth. How do I know? Around the same time I made the serious mistake of telling Mom that one of my friends was into Wicca. She freaked out. Years later, she told me that she doesn't remember this but had probably thought to herself, "Great, this is yet another problem that my daughter has."
In this regard, I was pushed further into the closet, at least in terms of Mom.
So who did affirm me? That is discussed in the next post.
A Tomboy in the Closet
I've mentioned in several other blogposts that I've always used the word "tomboy" to identify myself and my slightly lopsided gender identity, rather than in a tongue-in-cheek way that people usually do ("Oh, she likes to do woodwork. She's such a tomboy!"). But it seemed that my parents-- again, Mom especially-- were inordinately focused on this aspect about me. The way I wore my hair-- for almost 4 years, almost always in a ponytail because it was thick and made me look like a "bombshell", which was not me at all-- was a constant topic of conversation. Phrases I repeatedly heard were "Why can't you wear it down?", "You're the only girl who doesn't like looking pretty!", and the sarcastic "Fine! Cut your hair like a boy!" And what hurt was that I secretly did want to cut my hair in a tomboyish way, but I wasn't allowed, so pulling my hair back was the next best thing. How in the world could I talk to my parents about how I felt if Mom said such dismissive things about my insistence on not wearing my "bombshell" hair down?
Then there was the one time when Dad asked me to wear my hair down for him as a Father's Day present. That was just humiliating. Of course I didn't do it.
Pushed into the closet.
And then there was the clothing issue. I hated wearing shirts that were even slightly girly. I wore polo shirts, flannels, sweatshirts, T-shirts, and military fatigues. But my parents constantly commented on this, telling me that I was too old to dress like that. It made no sense to me that being androgynous was a sign of immaturity to them. When I tried to tell them that in some ways I felt more like a boy than a girl, they just told me I didn't understand how the real world works. They didn't hear a statement about who I was, but rather a statement coming from naivety and immaturity.
I repeatedly had nightmares about being forced to dress in what I call "boob-neckline" (low-cut) shirts. When I had to dress up for family occasions, I felt extremely uncomfortable. I looked in the mirror and didn't see myself. I saw someone wearing an elaborate disguise. It was even worse when my parents put me on display for each other and commented about how I was dressed. It usually went like this:
Mom: Doesn't she look great in that?
Dad: Yeah, she looks like a girl."
If my brother were there, forget it. He'd throw gas on the fire and add, "For once" to one or both of those statements.
Instead of the comments having their intended effect and encouraging me to dress the way they wanted me to, all I heard was, "The way you dress is wrong. I don't approve of your being a tomboy. This is what we want to see, and you'd better learn to like it."
Pushed further into the closet.
In fact, there was one time when I was eating at a restaurant with my family and we ran into one of my mother's high school students. The girl had long blonde hair, was wearing makeup, earrings, a boob-neckline shirt, and short shorts, revealing perfectly shaven legs. I remember at that moment thinking, "This is the kind of daughter Mom wants, and I can't give her that because it's not who I am."
When my brother graduated from high school, my mother submitted "To thine own self be true" as a comment for his yearbook graduation photo. I remember thinking, "Yeah, she can say that to him because the way he is naturally fits in with her expectations."
Pushed even further into the closet.
Asperger's Sexuality
I've mentioned in numerous blog posts that I rarely get crushes, but when they do they are very overwhelming and intense. Mercifully, my last one was seven years ago, and I've never been in a relationship (although I kissed one guy, and that was in summer 1999, age 18!). I got my first crush very late, just a few months before my fifteenth birthday. Prior to that, I would have embraced the word "asexual" had I heard of it. The problem was that I hadn't heard of it, and neither had Mom.
Figuring out my sexuality was another issue my mother seemed inordinately focused on. At the most random moments, Mom would ask me, often in a panicked voice that she unsuccessfully tried to disguise, "Do you have a crush? Have you ever had a crush? Do you like being around boys? Do you get a 'special feeling' around boys? Do you get crushes on girls?" Years later Mom told me that I was "insulted" when she asked me these questions, but really, I was just uncomfortable: she asked these questions frequently, at the most random moments, and in the most awkward ways. When I gave her an honest answer-- first "no" when I didn't have crushes, and then "yes" when I finally started getting them-- she just pressed further. It seemed that she was less interested in getting an honest answer than my telling her what she wanted to hear. If I were gay she would have been fine with it, but it also seemed she wouldn't rest until I told her what would have been lies. To get her to stop grilling me, I would have had to lie and say things like, "Yes, when I walk into a room full of boys (or girls), I'm overwhelmed at how cute all of them are." I wasn't like most girls. I didn't "get that special feeling" when I was around boys as a whole, but rather if there was one particular person whom I liked "in that way", which was rare.
I finally did open to Dad about my issue with obsessive crushes, right after I came back from my CIT summer at Camp Negev and had had my third obsessive crush. I remember very clearly telling him, "Don't tell Mom about this, because then she'll see it as yet another problem that I have that we have to focus on." Sadly, keeping that secret was my only option. And it probably spared me a lot of pain until the day eleven years later (more about that in Part 4), when Mom was finally ready to learn and accept the truth. How do I know? Around the same time I made the serious mistake of telling Mom that one of my friends was into Wicca. She freaked out. Years later, she told me that she doesn't remember this but had probably thought to herself, "Great, this is yet another problem that my daughter has."
In this regard, I was pushed further into the closet, at least in terms of Mom.
So who did affirm me? That is discussed in the next post.
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