Be honest to ourselves!
Lilac Kamiya
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Proud to have a gay daughter
When Anstey Spraggan's daughter Lucy came out aged 14, it came as no surprise. Lucy had been wearing boys' clothes and going by the name Max for years. What was surprising was the joy Anstey felt at becoming part of a 'special club'
My mother wouldn't have the "H" word in the house. She had met a homosexual man called Hugh in the 1950s and hadn't liked him at all. From that moment on, all homosexual people (and, to be fair, anyone called Hugh) were persona non gratae.
She adored my brother's best friend, but only as long as we all fiercely ignored that he was, openly, the gayest man alive. I wonder how her attitude would have changed had she lived beyond the mid-90s. I am inclined to think there would have been an uneasy truce born of her being a more committed grandmother than a homophobe.
My daughter was 14 when she first told me she was a lesbian. We were walking up the drive to our house when she began to chant: "I'm gay, I'm gay, I'm gay!" I'd had a long day at work, and my reaction was to chant back: "I don't care, I don't care, I don't care!" followed by a brief explanation that my other two children hadn't felt the need to shout: "I'm straight, I'm straight, I'm straight!" And then I went indoors to make the dinner.
Lucy, oddly, remembers it differently. Now 19, she swears blind she told me in my bedroom – that her stepfather and I were sitting up in bed, with her on the other end, and that we listened intently and sympathetically to her well-rehearsed declaration. My husband distinctly remembers her telling us in the kitchen. We are all agreed on where we lived at the time, but that's about it.
I can only conclude that the event was so insignificant that one, or all, of us has completely forgotten it. As long as they are happy and safe from harm, the sexual orientation of my children is, frankly, none of my business. I find the idea of any of my children engaged in "adult pursuits" absolutely repugnant and I know full well that they extend me the same courtesy (or revulsion).
When I told my late mother's sister the news, her reaction was: "Well, it's not like you haven't had 14 years' notice." She wasn't wrong; Lucy's primary school had a policy that read "Everyone shall be called by their chosen, or given, name." Lucy interpreted this, at the age of six, as her right to go to school and be called "Max". By everyone. She asked to have her hair cut short and began to wear her brother's cast-off shorts to school with the rest of the androgynous uniform. Most people just assumed she was a boy. I didn't think much of it; I'd been through a very similar stage myself, at the same sort of age (I pretended to be called "Peter" on all our family holidays).
One day the boys at school, uncertain of Lucy's gender, performed the acid test. They took her into the boys' loos and pulled down her shorts. Boxers. That proved she was a boy; she was wearing boys' pants.
Lucy's first Valentine card was to a girl. I rang the girl's mother to check she wouldn't mind her seven-year-old daughter receiving a declaration of undying love from another girl. The mother was indignant. "I can't believe you've asked me that. How could you think I would be offended? Gosh, what do you take me for?" After that, I really didn't worry much again.
For my husband, having a gay stepdaughter is interesting and an advantage. Neither my husband's own son, nor my son, are particularly into the kinds of traditional male pursuits my husband favours – rugby, mending cars and performing physical jerks. In this respect, Lucy is the "son he never had"; she has to climb higher, run faster and get into more danger than any boy she knows.
In some senses, I wonder whether we have failed my daughter by not being more shocked or reactive to her sexuality. There are times when I think that the fireworks and drama of revelation are part of the process, and a flaming row, or thrashing out of rules and regulations, might have made things easier for Lucy. A friend of mine whose son is gay says she was very aware of his need for her to react badly as a form of sounding board. But she found, as I did, that her politics and life experience simply didn't allow for any kind of sensational reaction; much the same, presumably, as in Jonathan Ross's household when his daughter Betty Kitten, 19, announced that she was gay (Ross is fully supportive of his daughter, and says that her sexuality makes no difference at all).
There were some issues that were new to us. For example, at what age do you allow a gay child to sleep with their partner under your roof? After all, there is no risk of pregnancy (which was my main terror, rightly or wrongly, with my straight children) and we had covered all the bases on sexually transmitted infections, at least in theory.
Lucy decided to exploit the fact that everyone else was allowed same-sex partners to stay over until we had to get firm; no more girls, gay or straight, in her bed until she reached an age where she could cope with the full-on nature of an adult relationship. Consequently, we drew some comment and judgment when we let her share a tent on a very provincial French campsite with her male best friend the week of her 15th birthday. We decided it was easier simply to let them think we were parents with loose morals than explain, in broken French, why she was definitely not going to sleep with him.
Having a gay child makes me feel like I'm part of a special club; because my prejudice tells me that gay people are more interesting, more creative and more charming than straight people.
When I meet a dull or unpleasant gay person I write them off as "not really gay" or as a one-off. I kept this attitude to myself until, one day, my friend Mandy said: "Why you? It's so unfair, I'm just as deserving and we both have three kids. Why have you got a gay one and I haven't?"
I don't mean to be patronising with my "awe" (for want of a better word) and I can't rationalise it; I'm simply trying to be honest. My overly positive discrimination is perhaps in answer to the perpetual homophobia that makes life more difficult for gay young people, even in this day and age. Friends of mine report incidents of violence on Canal Street in Manchester that occur when groups of straight women on hen nights, looking for the spectacle of boys kissing boys, react aggressively to finding themselves in a community of gay women.
But every year I go to the Pride festival and cry when I see members of the public services and armed forces marching in uniform. I try to explain to young people around me (who are seldom grateful) that if they were older they would appreciate just what this means; that it's an indication of how far we have moved on from the days when a serving British soldier would be forced to quit if it became known that they were gay. And then I do feel proud and I want to add that "and my daughter's gay" – just so those strangers know that I'm part of the club.
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