I frequently have conversations with people who ask me when I realized that I was gay. When I tell them I'm pretty sure that I was five, they say that I couldn't have possibly known at that age. They say that all kids begin experimenting around that time, but that no one knows they're gay at that age. Or they assume that because my aunt is gay and that I spent a lot of time with her that she must've influenced me in some way.
Since there were more straight people around me at the time (my parents, grandparents, and the million other aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters), shouldn't I have wanted to be straight?
Recently, while discussing my 17-year-old cousin's sexuality, my mom said that she couldn't be gay because she is only 17. "She flirts with guys ," she said. "She's confused, she's too young to know what she is."
This is the cousin that we all have in our families who everyone just knows is going to be gay. She identified as a boy at a very young age, even refusing to put on a shirt because "she was a boy." She played with "boy" toys, hung out with the boys, and didn't want anything to do with anything "girly" or "feminine." My own mother is even guilty of saying my cousin was going to be gay when she grew up.
The funny thing is that you never hear that someone is too young to know "what they are" in regards to a child being straight. Imagine that someone could be too young to be straight. Why the double standard? At what age can someone realize they're gay? Is it when you can smoke? When you can drink? Or is there some other court-decided age?
This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2010.