Gay people think they were born this way while straight people think there is something related to their development, the discussion was open when a mother of a 4 years old boy decided to create a Blog called Raising My Rainbow, where she tells the adventures of being a mother of a effeminate child and why she defends her position of not forcing him to play with boy toys and allowing him to play with Barbies and dress himself as his favourite character: Alice in the Wonderland.

The Blog was not only extremely successful but also created a lot of controversy and that just made me think about my own childhood and how much her journey may relate to my mother’s own journey.

As a young boy I had my share of ambiguous behaviour myself, if you know me you know how imaginative I can be as a adult, so as a child I was in a perpetual state of drossiness, life was a magical adventure for me and my imagination putted me in dangerous situations like mix detergent, washing powder and soap and water and drink it because they smell good (before I was taken to the hospital my mother says I show up in the living room like a epileptic having a attack, in another time I climbed the wardrobe and jumped saying I was Batman and was going to fly ( I forgot that who actually fly is Superman ) I was left with a broken arm that still not quite the same as the other arm today.

After seen a tv commercial where a couple started to fly after try the menthol Halls I made my mom buy boxes of Halls just to get sick in the end of the day because I ate all of them in a attempt to fly! After that my mother had the great idea of pay for sealing all our apartment windows. ( so you got the idea )

With the same happiness I used to play and dress like one of the Chips ( old show from tv with two hunks railway motorbike cops ) I was also fascinated about how Wonder woman could just spin herself and booom changed clothing, so I still remember me singing the show theme song from the show while spinning, and also remember my stepfather making a comment to my mom : - Cecilia Cecilia be careful with this boy because he may turn to be gay ! My mother didn’t care, as she thought was just my hyperactive imagination.

So I played with my trains, my falcon (soldier action figure for boys when I was a child) my skate board but also played with my sister’s Barbies few time until I decided to sleep with one of them and broke her arm ( later my sister smashed my Falcon on the wall as a sign of revenge ) so I kept sending those mixed messages that I guess left my mom very confuse about my future sexuality.

From as long I remember boys always attracted more my attention than girls, but when I was a very young child I used to show that naturally, but as soon I start to understand how the world works I started to feel uncomfortable around men, I didn’t understand why in that time but now i know that was because I was attracted to them.

I had the whole stereotype thing about how to raise a gay person (in another words: the recipe to create a gay man) I was raised by a single strong hyper protective open minded mother, since I was very young sexuality was discussed in my house, I enter the puberty knowing about AIDS and sex wasn’t a taboo, but it might escaped my modern and open minded mom that her son so good with the girls in school was actually about to put her level of acceptance at test.

Since I start to go out in the gay jungle I met a lot of people and realised that maybe my mom wasn’t that responsible for my gayness after all ( lol ) first of all : if depends of my mom I could be a drag queen that she would love exchange make up tips with me, so how come that a deliberated mother like mine end up with the most square gay man I know : myself. And why so many friends of mine that came from the Navy, Army and military families with strong father figures and slave mothers end up all being screaming queens?

While I lived almost a year in Gran Canaria I met this gay couple who were raising two kids, one boy of 14 and a girl of 12, the very flamboyant couple came to a dinner at my place with their kids and for my surprise ( and shame for be surprised ) they were the most normal, loving family I ever see, the kids all very polite, well educated and kind, the boy brought his girlfriend and his sister presented herself as a proper daddy’s princess.

My family in the other hand was also fulled of love but was definitely much more unconventional, my sister different than me used to beat all the boys in the neighbourhood, never really enjoyed dolls, make up or pretty dresses ( so different from my feminine femme fatale mother ) and during her teens was always surrounded by boys like she was one of them, so you would say : uhhh, recipe for a lesbian right ? Wrong, she still married with her first boyfriend and they couldn’t be more of a traditional family.

The story has few good examples of how try to change someone nature is a bad thing in any age, I was very lucky growing up with freedom to explore and was always loved at home and that definitely was the key point that defined my personality and self esteem, unfortunately I met many people in my life that were so self destructive emotionally but in the same time so different from each other ,but they all shared just one thing in common : lack of love, abuse and mistreatment for their unusual behaviour as children.

Some stories are scary like The Sissy Boy Experiment about a effeminate boy who was put under “treatment” that supposedly cured him from his homosexuality with disastrous consequences. Another good example is the true story which the movie Prayers for Bobby is based, with Sigourney weaver in a great performance like a religious mother of a teenager boy who kill himself because of the religious ignorance of his family and the journey of his mother to forgive herself and turn herself around.

The book Dead Boys Can’t Dance is also a great source of information based in many sad stories of young boys that after a lifetime of feeling ashamed at home and school bullying at school end up their short lives before even started.

Ignorance is a cancer that can eat the ignorant victim for a lifetime, so educate your straight friends, your brothers and sisters because sometimes a Barbie is just a action figure with luscious hair.

When it comes to sexuality or personal life styles we always gonna step in misunderstandings and wrong impressions, was always so clear in my mind what is being gay is all about that while my one year staying in Belo Horizonte –Brazil I found out through my friends (most of them heterosexual) what really cross straight people minds when they think about gay sexuality. I was astonished how easily we can pass the wrong impression and create a stereotype that not always reflects the true about the gay community in general.

But surprise, surprise, not only straight people has their miss concepts and stereotypes, gay people also do that in a different way, how many times I saw gays guys putting their safety at risk because they think that they can change any straight man into gay.

Like anyone else I just can give my point of view based in my own life and observation, im am what you may called (even that word sounds a little bit prejudice I think ) straight acting gay guy (but none of us are that 2 dimensional) im the guy that can easily and most of the time pass as straight man ,my voice is strong and im polite but a bit rough and butch ,thought the years I heard things from straight people like : - ah, you just haven’t found the right girl ( yeah sure, haven’t found one with cock so far ) our (that is lovely) God can wash the gay away from you so you stop living as a sinner ( normally who say that is a big closet queer in a tie married to a butch ex-lesbian )

(how you gonna ask for people respect your sexuality if you don´t respect theirs)

how many times I had gay friends of mine asking me to set myself free because they thought I was holding myself back our I was too shy to be myself ( or at least what they thought that would be me ) so not only some straight people think we are all screaming camp queens, the screaming camp queens also think that we are all screaming camp queens ,and the straight ones are just screaming camp queens in the closet waiting to be converted.

How can we educate about us when not even us no what we are ? but the thing is : the human being is very complex to be totally understood, the only difference about the gay diversity and straight diversity is that they don´t need to justify their existence like we do. Close to my sister house there is a street full of female prostitutes, so that means that all women sell their bodies? Oh no, just some women, everybody knows that ,but so why some people think that a masculine hunk gay man or a transsexual are prostitutes ?

Lately I had do learned and deal with my miss concept myself when the discussion in America about LGBT rights brought to the light on the web, tv shows and in my favourite podcast Feast of Fun what is be a transgender, I was always intrigued about the subject especially because a lot of people think that we are gay because deep inside we want to be women, and I always felt angry about it ( I never had any connection with the women’s world ,just a dude that like dudes ! lol ) and never let myself to actually understand it right, I was lucky, I was straight away accepted by my family, im not ashamed of my sexuality but if I don’t say it I can get away without people staring at me or doing comments, so if life as a gay is already harder for a more obvious gay guy ,I can only imagine of a what a life of a transsexual is with people constantly judging you and your choices.

This last week I downloaded a show that I always wanted to watch but is not available through my cable tv provider, RuPaul Drag race and of course the show is over the top camp, funny but also taught me a little bit more of this world where my knowledge doesn’t go much further than the shows I watched in gay clubs more than 10 years ago.

The line between gender and sexuality are very blurry those days, if you are a drag queen not necessarily means that you want to be a woman, if you are transgender not necessarily means you are gay ( yeah right there actually cases of operated transgender women who went from straight men to transgender female lesbians )

We are what we are, the more the human race involve more new definitions and contractions will appear and we will see not only some people but also ourselves questioning and getting wrong what is exactly the definition of “normal” I get in the point that what I think is abnormal is someone else trying to define what is normal, as long you not hurting anyone, is your right to cut, implant, shave, extended and do with your body what you do with your house in a way that makes more comfortable and beautiful for you and hey ,I don’t like your house lemon green walls but is you living there not me ,so why I should care ?

Big kisses for anyone that have the courage to stand up and against all odds be yourself !