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Book rec: Raised by Unicorns
Raised by Unicorns: Stories from People with LGBTQ+ Parents
Ed. by Frank Lowe
This is a short anthology of essays written by people with LGBTQ+ parents—though it is 90% lesbian parents and 10% gay men (not surprising, really). Though the essay quality varies (like in any anthology) between both the writers’ facility as a writer and their level of insight into how having queer parents shaped their experience growing up, I found this a really informative read.
People have had queer parents forever, because there have been queer people forever, but being raised by openly queer people is so new. Therefore, the people in their 30s and 40s in this book (published in 2018, though from context it seems like most of the essays were written right after Obergefell in 2015/16) have completely different experiences than the few teenagers who contributed. And the people who are children right now will, I’m sure, also have completely different experiences.
There were some common themes, though:
- Most of the people who are currently adults were born into straight marriages that later divorced when one of their parents came out. Therefore, a lot of the pain and struggle is from being children of divorce—but with added strains around custody because one of their parents is gay. The lack of legal legitimacy of gay relationships also adds a layer when their gay parent has a new partner who becomes a parent to them—but doesn’t have any official standing in their life. So if that relationship breaks up, there’s no tie to this person who raised them anymore.
- People get bullied in middle school. The queer parents clearly changed the nature of the bullying, but people with straight parents get plenty bullied too—and a lot of these stories have in common moving to a more conservative area and/or going to Catholic school. In fact, Catholic school comes up a lot in this anthology.
- A lot of these children felt the need at one point or another to closet their parents. Some because they grew up in a time when people knowing their moms were their moms rather than mom and “an aunt” was a direct threat to the family and so were told to keep it a secret. But even for people who grew up in the oughts and the teens. Some because of explicit bullying. And some just because the relentless of heteronormativity made them feel different and they didn’t want to. We talk about having to come out over and over—well, so do kids of queer parents. And that’s a lot to ask of a six year old.
There were two main things that I take away from reading it.
One is that children of the LGBTQ+ community is such a new phenomenon that the community has not made any space for them. There were a couple of essays about this. One pointing out that she hates being called an ally, because the slurs thrown at her parents were also thrown at her and the rights denied her parents were also denied to her. She felt that being labeled “ally” after being in the fight her whole life put distance between her and her parents where she wanted solidarity.
There was another from a 21-year-old who grew up going with her brother and her moms to Provincetown every summer. And once she was old enough to be perceived as very very straight, she was suddenly seen as an outside voyeur in a place she’d spent her whole childhood. She went there once with a boyfriend because she wanted to share her community with him—and discovered it wasn’t her community at all. She refers to her moms as her passports to being allowed into queer spaces.
I don’t know what we in the queer community should do about this, but I do think we need to create a space to accept as part of the community straight people raised by queer parents. I feel like the Discourse has stopped at whether Pride should be kid friendly and hasn’t talked at all about whether we are in community with teenagers and adults who grew up in queer spaces and are now viewed as outsiders.
My other takeaway was from a story of a girl who heard people yelling slurs at her dads and was deeply traumatized by it—and they didn’t notice it. I think sometimes you can get so used to as an adult the “air you breathe” bigotry that you can miss that it’s something new to a kid. Don’t really know what to do with that thought, either.
But I would definitely recommend this anthology. I don’t think this is a part of queer experience that gets discussed a lot, and so far is mostly discussed from the parents’ perspective. But we’re starting to have a generation of adults who were raised by openly queer parents, and they have stories to share as well.
Ed. by Frank Lowe
This is a short anthology of essays written by people with LGBTQ+ parents—though it is 90% lesbian parents and 10% gay men (not surprising, really). Though the essay quality varies (like in any anthology) between both the writers’ facility as a writer and their level of insight into how having queer parents shaped their experience growing up, I found this a really informative read.
People have had queer parents forever, because there have been queer people forever, but being raised by openly queer people is so new. Therefore, the people in their 30s and 40s in this book (published in 2018, though from context it seems like most of the essays were written right after Obergefell in 2015/16) have completely different experiences than the few teenagers who contributed. And the people who are children right now will, I’m sure, also have completely different experiences.
There were some common themes, though:
- Most of the people who are currently adults were born into straight marriages that later divorced when one of their parents came out. Therefore, a lot of the pain and struggle is from being children of divorce—but with added strains around custody because one of their parents is gay. The lack of legal legitimacy of gay relationships also adds a layer when their gay parent has a new partner who becomes a parent to them—but doesn’t have any official standing in their life. So if that relationship breaks up, there’s no tie to this person who raised them anymore.
- People get bullied in middle school. The queer parents clearly changed the nature of the bullying, but people with straight parents get plenty bullied too—and a lot of these stories have in common moving to a more conservative area and/or going to Catholic school. In fact, Catholic school comes up a lot in this anthology.
- A lot of these children felt the need at one point or another to closet their parents. Some because they grew up in a time when people knowing their moms were their moms rather than mom and “an aunt” was a direct threat to the family and so were told to keep it a secret. But even for people who grew up in the oughts and the teens. Some because of explicit bullying. And some just because the relentless of heteronormativity made them feel different and they didn’t want to. We talk about having to come out over and over—well, so do kids of queer parents. And that’s a lot to ask of a six year old.
There were two main things that I take away from reading it.
One is that children of the LGBTQ+ community is such a new phenomenon that the community has not made any space for them. There were a couple of essays about this. One pointing out that she hates being called an ally, because the slurs thrown at her parents were also thrown at her and the rights denied her parents were also denied to her. She felt that being labeled “ally” after being in the fight her whole life put distance between her and her parents where she wanted solidarity.
There was another from a 21-year-old who grew up going with her brother and her moms to Provincetown every summer. And once she was old enough to be perceived as very very straight, she was suddenly seen as an outside voyeur in a place she’d spent her whole childhood. She went there once with a boyfriend because she wanted to share her community with him—and discovered it wasn’t her community at all. She refers to her moms as her passports to being allowed into queer spaces.
I don’t know what we in the queer community should do about this, but I do think we need to create a space to accept as part of the community straight people raised by queer parents. I feel like the Discourse has stopped at whether Pride should be kid friendly and hasn’t talked at all about whether we are in community with teenagers and adults who grew up in queer spaces and are now viewed as outsiders.
My other takeaway was from a story of a girl who heard people yelling slurs at her dads and was deeply traumatized by it—and they didn’t notice it. I think sometimes you can get so used to as an adult the “air you breathe” bigotry that you can miss that it’s something new to a kid. Don’t really know what to do with that thought, either.
But I would definitely recommend this anthology. I don’t think this is a part of queer experience that gets discussed a lot, and so far is mostly discussed from the parents’ perspective. But we’re starting to have a generation of adults who were raised by openly queer parents, and they have stories to share as well.