on being socialized straight
Mar. 13th, 2023 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
in_seclusion Been thinking a lot about recent developments and realizations in between starting a new job. It's been an interesting journey to say the least.
Previously I wondered if I was socialized as straight -- and during a two-hour phone call with my trauma counselor (BLESS HER) she and I both came to the conclusion (me, realization) that I was. It's tough to look back and wonder what happened, or realize the boxes I placed myself into for the feelings of safety and security.
It's tough to be a lesbian woman in the Philippines; I wouldn't know what it was like growing up for people that realized it early, but for me as someone who realized it in her 30s -- it's hard because you realize the kind of things you miss out on, the love and the joy you deny yourself, the internalized homophobia you have to fight, the representation you don't have, the paths that were never shown to you.
When I was growing up, the only representations of being lesbian was a butch woman who wanted to pass as a man, or a super feminine lady. But I wasn't either one. i was just some punk ass kid that thought girls were pretty, but knocked it off as just a girlcrush. I remember being made aware of the treatment of gays and lesbians in the Philippines -- over the years the treatment of gay men has "improved" as long as you follow a standard norm for gay men. But for lesbians, I don't know if it has. In some ways, being lesbian is a betrayal of the basic social contract for women in a way that it isn't for men -- the Philippines is still very conservative, with the social expectation that a girl will grow into a woman, marry a man, and have and raise children. Then she'll be a mother as well as a career woman if she so chooses, but her primary identity is expected to be mother. A man is allowed to be many things, but a woman is a mother first and foremost.
All my life I have known I have never wanted to be a mother, and that men were too cruel and too much trouble to bother with.
But I was raised a good Catholic girl (lol) in a conservative society, who was told repeatedly not to rock the boat. I already did all the time, and gave my mother especially a lot of grief for how different I was. And yet I could not bring myself to face it, probably because I could take off my clothes and go back to Sunday dress, but I can't take off who I am. It felt like a bridge too far.
There are many reasons why I chose the path of least resistance in my 20s: I am a child of divorced parents in an extremely conservative Catholic country where divorce is still not recognized in the year of our lord 2023, and when my mum divorced my dad, well, let's just say family was not there the way I wish they were. The Church is especially unforgiving towards the children of divorcees -- I remember sitting in a pew in a small Church where the priest said that children of divorcees as well as LGBTQ people are all going straight to hell. I was maybe 15 years old, crawling out of my skin wishing I could run away. Later on my exorcist priest apologized on behalf of the Church for all she has done to me and said that I am a child of God for everything, and the Church was in the wrong, and I forgave her, but the scars run deep and I will never forget.
I was also the only goth kid in my high school, not conventionally pretty, into Japanese pop and rock in the early aughts, and a massive Lord of the Rings nerd. In my teens being different was my shield; no one could hurt me if I already knew what they would say. But it does get tiring, and by the time I hit my 20s, I was exhausted from fighting for myself. Sometimes the path of least resistance is the one that brings us respite at a moment of great exhaustion.
My cousin always said, don't regret what you did to survive. And I sacrificed my sense of self if it meant I could stay alive.
I did the whole thing -- dated men and fell in love with two men back in my 20s (2010 and 2012, respectively), but as I told my therapist, it didn't feel whole. There was always a place I couldn't access even with the one I loved most. When he left I was devastated because it felt like failure, like I didn't pass a test. I remember thinking, I'm doomed, this is the end of the world, because I'll never find someone I could love like I loved him. Now I know the grief at the loss stemmed from loving him, yes, but also because I would no longer have a shield from the rest of the world. But a shield from what? I could never find the answer to that.
When I lost him, it was in such a painful, traumatic way that I feared love, that I thought I was cursed. I couldn't date anyone for years after that. But reflecting on it over the last week, I realize now why I didn't get what I wanted with all my heart back then. He and I were talking of dating long-term. It was ripped apart from me by death and distance, and it broke me in a way that took years to rebuild. I spent a decade asking myself why that happened to me, why that happened to him -- and now I know. If it happened then who knows, maybe I would have married him, and spent the rest of my life hiding from myself, never realizing my own truth, just completing the cycle, never quite happy, maybe content, maybe, I don't know. In the end, the universe said no. And it's only now that I realize the gift that was the parting, after years of all that unfathomable pain. (He's happily married now with a child I would never have given him. I only ever wish for his continued happiness.)
The thing I never told my friends was that love always felt like a chokehold, a burden, a chain around my neck. It brought me some joy yes, but it brought me a lot of suffering and confusion as well. Relationships were transactional to me: what can you give me in terms of financial stability before I can consider being with you? My friends have told me that's fucked up, but that's how it always was for me dating men. It always felt like I am selling myself to this person, to this life, so it might as well be worth it. Even with the two I loved most it was the same thing, and I never understood how people could feel so euphoric all the time. I was joyful because a person I liked liked me back, that I was desired by someone, and there was that feeling of relief, that guarantee almost, that someone could love me even if I always felt like I couldn't love them the way I wanted to. It always felt like a play, like a farce. I told my therapist, perhaps that's one reason why it felt difficult for me to accept myself -- because to acknowledge that the love I gave was transactional, that my relationships were transactional. That I was doing that which I swore I would never do, that I was fucked in the head. It's not a nice realization, but I also know now that I did it to survive.
So much of relationships have always felt like a game to me, because I realize now that it was a game I had to play and I had to win. I wasn't told there was any other way. I didn't grow up with visual media; television was strictly regulated and limited because I had to concentrate on my studies, so all I had growing up were books. In the 90s there were no books to explain that there's another path available -- especially not here in the Philippines.
There are multiple social contracts here, enshrined in culture and held sacred by the Church. Of these, the expectations on a woman are the ones held most sacred above all: a girl is born to be the support of the mother, to help raise the family, to grow up and marry a good, God-fearing man, and then have children, and complete the cycle.
My family of overachievers also added another one, which is basically all of that and be a successful career woman. It was never too much to ask for; it was only what was ever expected.
As a teenager, I always felt this sense of impending doom. I once read an interviewer with a girl from Harajuku who would dress in old Shibuya street fashion who said they go crazy now because when they enter the workforce, their lives are essentially over. And that's how it felt then. At some point in my 20s, I would have to find someone to settle down with, to settle for, and to live my life with them. I longed to love and to be loved of course, but with it was this constant anxiety, that I would be left for something I couldn't control. That my love would never be enough. So I drowned myself in work and used it as an excuse to never date or to go on a few terrible ones, and rose to the top of my company and made my parents and my family proud.
Tell me how it felt to walk on water, did you get your wish? I did. But it still felt so empty, so hollow. After I got what they wanted for me, the waves of exhaustion came more and more frequently, this tidal wave of emptiness and constant loneliness, longing for something I didn't know eating me inside. It was so bad that on some days, I couldn't get out of bed, and I didn't understand. I have everything that was expected of me, except the relationship and the family. What else is there to do, what else is there to give?
I came out as bisexual to myself and some friends in 2020. I thought that was enough. I thought everything would make sense. But it still didn't. Instead it felt like the next two years were a fight to keep myself restrained, to keep myself in check. And then earlier this year, everything changed.
It's been two or three weeks of constant reflecting. I've figured out that I've probably always been lesbian, since I was a teenager -- I had a crush on a girl in college but dismissed it as a girlcrush and said I'm straight. I've always liked women more than men, but couldn't fathom a life where that could be a possibility for me. And besides, the social environment always said it's normal. After all, social conventions were much more forgiving towards women. It's normal that women find other women pretty, right? The guys that I liked were all waify, Asian twinks, and people asked if they were gay so often. But they were straight guys, so. Okay one came out as queer a few years ago, happy for him always! Maybe that was a sign. I don't know. But thinking about it -- I have never wanted to be seen by men, their validation only something I sought like currency to throw in the face of all those that called me ugly growing up. But to be seen by women, to be seen by the girl I like -- that's a whole other thing in its entirety. I felt so strange in my twenties at my absolute lack of desire to be intimate with my exes and exhausted that I would have to pretend that was something I wanted -- it felt strange in my mouth, in my body, the performance like a coil around me that continued to strangle me everytime I had to play that part. I figured I was just a weirdo, or ace. But everyone looked at me strange, and for the life of me I couldn't understand why. But now I know. It turns out I'm just lesbian.
It is hard not to be harsh on myself, and I've spent the weekend processing it and learning to forgive myself. I didn't know of any other way to survive, I didn't know of any other path or choice I had. I only learned of queer joy in 2011 or 2012 when I went to pride with a bunch of metalheads because my officemate was a gay metalhead and looked at me and said "okay you're coming with me." I went as an ally, but maybe he knew something I didn't back then. It was a simple march, smaller than the recent crowds, but I remember being happy there, the sense of alien relief being with newfound friends and all these people I didn't know, in a place where to be yourself was cause for defiant joy. I went with my best friend every year after around 2011? because pride, more than anything, was a place that gave me comfort, gave me hope, gave me a feeling of joy that I couldn't communicate or describe.
I told my best friend, being here gives me courage to be myself, because if everyone here can live their lives proudly as themselves despite what society throws at them, then I have no excuse as a straight girl. Despite the crowds, the distance, the exhaustion -- pride gave me that sense of belonging that I couldn't quite communicate. Now I know why: it was because it was there that I learned of a different kind of joy, a kind of world and life I didn't know existed, a world where I could feasibly be myself. It was a place that asked me to fight for everyone, but I think at the heart of it Pride is a place that asked me to fight for myself too. It was a place that welcomed me to find the strength to do so, showing me the kind of joy that I could have for myself once I could fight again. At the time I was still too tired to fight for myself, but it did show me a life that I could lead one day.
Though people might say it was cruel to deny myself love and joy and cowardly to walk the path of least resistance, what people don't know is that if I fought for myself any longer is I would have not made it to 30. It wasn't safe for me to be who I was growing up -- my father back then would not have been as accepting as he was two days ago, my mother would not have known how to deal with it. And all this time I was trying to find emotional stability in a broken environment, in a home and world where financial stability had been taken away and was being rebuilt, and emotional stability was scarce. There just wasn't enough time, energy, resources. It was just too much, constantly, all the time. I never felt beautiful, never felt comfortable in my skin, never felt whole. Never felt anything. It was existing to say I was existing, going through the motions. All I knew was I had to do what was expected of me, everyday, until I die.
But now that I have come out to myself, to my family, and to some of my friends -- I feel freer in a way I have not felt. it hasn't been all highs. I have spent days and nights in tears, grappling what this realization means to me as a person, means to me as a person in Society, how it will change relationships, in fear of judgment of others -- but I also for once, feel calm and settled. I haven't had an anxiety attack since I started this journey; I feel calmer and less burdened. So many things in the past make sense now. For once I don't feel like a weirdo. I have explanations to unanswered questions. I have brain space to think about the future. I can now imagine a life that I can live for myself, where I am whole, and happy, and free.
My mentor said that I learned to play the games of men, became a little bit of what I hated, and in the end used it to destroy them. I learned about currencies and social contracts, and all my life I have learned to play these games and use them to my advantage. I now recognize these as games I played for survival, currencies I used to get a leg up, to protect myself in. I wondered if I had to learn these games, these currencies, to use the malleability of my identity because I was a woman in a military-adjacent industry, sharpening knives at all times. My softness and femininity were weapons there, but I was shaped into someone hardened too. Now I realize I've always been playing these games ever since I was young to hide myself, to make sure I was never found out. And now that I've accepted myself I no longer have the desire to play these games of men. I just want to be me.
It's international women's month, and i've been thinking about that a lot even as i review and understand my own sexuality. I was socialized straight, and I suspect there are a lot more women like me too. I hope that one day the expectation on women won't be so one-note, that women will be allowed to determine who we are, unburdened from the many expectations placed upon us. I hope there will be one day where compulsory heterosexuality is not the expectation in places like my home country. I hope for many things, but I hope we -- all women can be free.
Previously I wondered if I was socialized as straight -- and during a two-hour phone call with my trauma counselor (BLESS HER) she and I both came to the conclusion (me, realization) that I was. It's tough to look back and wonder what happened, or realize the boxes I placed myself into for the feelings of safety and security.
It's tough to be a lesbian woman in the Philippines; I wouldn't know what it was like growing up for people that realized it early, but for me as someone who realized it in her 30s -- it's hard because you realize the kind of things you miss out on, the love and the joy you deny yourself, the internalized homophobia you have to fight, the representation you don't have, the paths that were never shown to you.
When I was growing up, the only representations of being lesbian was a butch woman who wanted to pass as a man, or a super feminine lady. But I wasn't either one. i was just some punk ass kid that thought girls were pretty, but knocked it off as just a girlcrush. I remember being made aware of the treatment of gays and lesbians in the Philippines -- over the years the treatment of gay men has "improved" as long as you follow a standard norm for gay men. But for lesbians, I don't know if it has. In some ways, being lesbian is a betrayal of the basic social contract for women in a way that it isn't for men -- the Philippines is still very conservative, with the social expectation that a girl will grow into a woman, marry a man, and have and raise children. Then she'll be a mother as well as a career woman if she so chooses, but her primary identity is expected to be mother. A man is allowed to be many things, but a woman is a mother first and foremost.
All my life I have known I have never wanted to be a mother, and that men were too cruel and too much trouble to bother with.
But I was raised a good Catholic girl (lol) in a conservative society, who was told repeatedly not to rock the boat. I already did all the time, and gave my mother especially a lot of grief for how different I was. And yet I could not bring myself to face it, probably because I could take off my clothes and go back to Sunday dress, but I can't take off who I am. It felt like a bridge too far.
There are many reasons why I chose the path of least resistance in my 20s: I am a child of divorced parents in an extremely conservative Catholic country where divorce is still not recognized in the year of our lord 2023, and when my mum divorced my dad, well, let's just say family was not there the way I wish they were. The Church is especially unforgiving towards the children of divorcees -- I remember sitting in a pew in a small Church where the priest said that children of divorcees as well as LGBTQ people are all going straight to hell. I was maybe 15 years old, crawling out of my skin wishing I could run away. Later on my exorcist priest apologized on behalf of the Church for all she has done to me and said that I am a child of God for everything, and the Church was in the wrong, and I forgave her, but the scars run deep and I will never forget.
I was also the only goth kid in my high school, not conventionally pretty, into Japanese pop and rock in the early aughts, and a massive Lord of the Rings nerd. In my teens being different was my shield; no one could hurt me if I already knew what they would say. But it does get tiring, and by the time I hit my 20s, I was exhausted from fighting for myself. Sometimes the path of least resistance is the one that brings us respite at a moment of great exhaustion.
My cousin always said, don't regret what you did to survive. And I sacrificed my sense of self if it meant I could stay alive.
I did the whole thing -- dated men and fell in love with two men back in my 20s (2010 and 2012, respectively), but as I told my therapist, it didn't feel whole. There was always a place I couldn't access even with the one I loved most. When he left I was devastated because it felt like failure, like I didn't pass a test. I remember thinking, I'm doomed, this is the end of the world, because I'll never find someone I could love like I loved him. Now I know the grief at the loss stemmed from loving him, yes, but also because I would no longer have a shield from the rest of the world. But a shield from what? I could never find the answer to that.
When I lost him, it was in such a painful, traumatic way that I feared love, that I thought I was cursed. I couldn't date anyone for years after that. But reflecting on it over the last week, I realize now why I didn't get what I wanted with all my heart back then. He and I were talking of dating long-term. It was ripped apart from me by death and distance, and it broke me in a way that took years to rebuild. I spent a decade asking myself why that happened to me, why that happened to him -- and now I know. If it happened then who knows, maybe I would have married him, and spent the rest of my life hiding from myself, never realizing my own truth, just completing the cycle, never quite happy, maybe content, maybe, I don't know. In the end, the universe said no. And it's only now that I realize the gift that was the parting, after years of all that unfathomable pain. (He's happily married now with a child I would never have given him. I only ever wish for his continued happiness.)
The thing I never told my friends was that love always felt like a chokehold, a burden, a chain around my neck. It brought me some joy yes, but it brought me a lot of suffering and confusion as well. Relationships were transactional to me: what can you give me in terms of financial stability before I can consider being with you? My friends have told me that's fucked up, but that's how it always was for me dating men. It always felt like I am selling myself to this person, to this life, so it might as well be worth it. Even with the two I loved most it was the same thing, and I never understood how people could feel so euphoric all the time. I was joyful because a person I liked liked me back, that I was desired by someone, and there was that feeling of relief, that guarantee almost, that someone could love me even if I always felt like I couldn't love them the way I wanted to. It always felt like a play, like a farce. I told my therapist, perhaps that's one reason why it felt difficult for me to accept myself -- because to acknowledge that the love I gave was transactional, that my relationships were transactional. That I was doing that which I swore I would never do, that I was fucked in the head. It's not a nice realization, but I also know now that I did it to survive.
So much of relationships have always felt like a game to me, because I realize now that it was a game I had to play and I had to win. I wasn't told there was any other way. I didn't grow up with visual media; television was strictly regulated and limited because I had to concentrate on my studies, so all I had growing up were books. In the 90s there were no books to explain that there's another path available -- especially not here in the Philippines.
There are multiple social contracts here, enshrined in culture and held sacred by the Church. Of these, the expectations on a woman are the ones held most sacred above all: a girl is born to be the support of the mother, to help raise the family, to grow up and marry a good, God-fearing man, and then have children, and complete the cycle.
My family of overachievers also added another one, which is basically all of that and be a successful career woman. It was never too much to ask for; it was only what was ever expected.
As a teenager, I always felt this sense of impending doom. I once read an interviewer with a girl from Harajuku who would dress in old Shibuya street fashion who said they go crazy now because when they enter the workforce, their lives are essentially over. And that's how it felt then. At some point in my 20s, I would have to find someone to settle down with, to settle for, and to live my life with them. I longed to love and to be loved of course, but with it was this constant anxiety, that I would be left for something I couldn't control. That my love would never be enough. So I drowned myself in work and used it as an excuse to never date or to go on a few terrible ones, and rose to the top of my company and made my parents and my family proud.
Tell me how it felt to walk on water, did you get your wish? I did. But it still felt so empty, so hollow. After I got what they wanted for me, the waves of exhaustion came more and more frequently, this tidal wave of emptiness and constant loneliness, longing for something I didn't know eating me inside. It was so bad that on some days, I couldn't get out of bed, and I didn't understand. I have everything that was expected of me, except the relationship and the family. What else is there to do, what else is there to give?
I came out as bisexual to myself and some friends in 2020. I thought that was enough. I thought everything would make sense. But it still didn't. Instead it felt like the next two years were a fight to keep myself restrained, to keep myself in check. And then earlier this year, everything changed.
It's been two or three weeks of constant reflecting. I've figured out that I've probably always been lesbian, since I was a teenager -- I had a crush on a girl in college but dismissed it as a girlcrush and said I'm straight. I've always liked women more than men, but couldn't fathom a life where that could be a possibility for me. And besides, the social environment always said it's normal. After all, social conventions were much more forgiving towards women. It's normal that women find other women pretty, right? The guys that I liked were all waify, Asian twinks, and people asked if they were gay so often. But they were straight guys, so. Okay one came out as queer a few years ago, happy for him always! Maybe that was a sign. I don't know. But thinking about it -- I have never wanted to be seen by men, their validation only something I sought like currency to throw in the face of all those that called me ugly growing up. But to be seen by women, to be seen by the girl I like -- that's a whole other thing in its entirety. I felt so strange in my twenties at my absolute lack of desire to be intimate with my exes and exhausted that I would have to pretend that was something I wanted -- it felt strange in my mouth, in my body, the performance like a coil around me that continued to strangle me everytime I had to play that part. I figured I was just a weirdo, or ace. But everyone looked at me strange, and for the life of me I couldn't understand why. But now I know. It turns out I'm just lesbian.
It is hard not to be harsh on myself, and I've spent the weekend processing it and learning to forgive myself. I didn't know of any other way to survive, I didn't know of any other path or choice I had. I only learned of queer joy in 2011 or 2012 when I went to pride with a bunch of metalheads because my officemate was a gay metalhead and looked at me and said "okay you're coming with me." I went as an ally, but maybe he knew something I didn't back then. It was a simple march, smaller than the recent crowds, but I remember being happy there, the sense of alien relief being with newfound friends and all these people I didn't know, in a place where to be yourself was cause for defiant joy. I went with my best friend every year after around 2011? because pride, more than anything, was a place that gave me comfort, gave me hope, gave me a feeling of joy that I couldn't communicate or describe.
I told my best friend, being here gives me courage to be myself, because if everyone here can live their lives proudly as themselves despite what society throws at them, then I have no excuse as a straight girl. Despite the crowds, the distance, the exhaustion -- pride gave me that sense of belonging that I couldn't quite communicate. Now I know why: it was because it was there that I learned of a different kind of joy, a kind of world and life I didn't know existed, a world where I could feasibly be myself. It was a place that asked me to fight for everyone, but I think at the heart of it Pride is a place that asked me to fight for myself too. It was a place that welcomed me to find the strength to do so, showing me the kind of joy that I could have for myself once I could fight again. At the time I was still too tired to fight for myself, but it did show me a life that I could lead one day.
Though people might say it was cruel to deny myself love and joy and cowardly to walk the path of least resistance, what people don't know is that if I fought for myself any longer is I would have not made it to 30. It wasn't safe for me to be who I was growing up -- my father back then would not have been as accepting as he was two days ago, my mother would not have known how to deal with it. And all this time I was trying to find emotional stability in a broken environment, in a home and world where financial stability had been taken away and was being rebuilt, and emotional stability was scarce. There just wasn't enough time, energy, resources. It was just too much, constantly, all the time. I never felt beautiful, never felt comfortable in my skin, never felt whole. Never felt anything. It was existing to say I was existing, going through the motions. All I knew was I had to do what was expected of me, everyday, until I die.
But now that I have come out to myself, to my family, and to some of my friends -- I feel freer in a way I have not felt. it hasn't been all highs. I have spent days and nights in tears, grappling what this realization means to me as a person, means to me as a person in Society, how it will change relationships, in fear of judgment of others -- but I also for once, feel calm and settled. I haven't had an anxiety attack since I started this journey; I feel calmer and less burdened. So many things in the past make sense now. For once I don't feel like a weirdo. I have explanations to unanswered questions. I have brain space to think about the future. I can now imagine a life that I can live for myself, where I am whole, and happy, and free.
My mentor said that I learned to play the games of men, became a little bit of what I hated, and in the end used it to destroy them. I learned about currencies and social contracts, and all my life I have learned to play these games and use them to my advantage. I now recognize these as games I played for survival, currencies I used to get a leg up, to protect myself in. I wondered if I had to learn these games, these currencies, to use the malleability of my identity because I was a woman in a military-adjacent industry, sharpening knives at all times. My softness and femininity were weapons there, but I was shaped into someone hardened too. Now I realize I've always been playing these games ever since I was young to hide myself, to make sure I was never found out. And now that I've accepted myself I no longer have the desire to play these games of men. I just want to be me.
It's international women's month, and i've been thinking about that a lot even as i review and understand my own sexuality. I was socialized straight, and I suspect there are a lot more women like me too. I hope that one day the expectation on women won't be so one-note, that women will be allowed to determine who we are, unburdened from the many expectations placed upon us. I hope there will be one day where compulsory heterosexuality is not the expectation in places like my home country. I hope for many things, but I hope we -- all women can be free.
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