Once more, Facebook has connected me with a part of my past. Probably a year or so ago, a person who was a high school classmate of mine for a couple of years joined Facebook. We became “friends” on Facebook, even though I haven’t seen her in person since I was in my teens. I exchanged a couple of letters with her in the late 1970s/early ’80s, and that has been the extent of any contact with her. Through Facebook, I’ve also reconnected in a sense with her twin sister and another high school classmate.
And then there is Jayne, my best friend in high school and my first female lover. Cathy, Carolyn, Becky, Jayne, Mary Ann, and I were all a little clique in high school, a group of people who were maybe a little “fringy” in our own way. Cathy and Jayne have remained close over the years, both deeply religious and completely submerged in a hardcore sort of Catholicism, even though neither of them was when I knew them in high school.
My best friendship with Jayne spanned all of high school, and we were lovers from the end of our sophomore year to halfway through our senior year. I know that both of us struggled with the meaning of that at the time. After all, we were mere teenagers with a lot of life and a lot of wisdom and perspective to gain.
My relationship with her ended on a very bad note, one that I don’t care to elaborate on in this post. Let’s just say that it ended with me destroying all my photos of her, tearing up letters, and returning every gift she had ever given me, including the little gold pinkie ring with the small diamond in the center of the band that I always wore. She had a matching one that she bought for herself.
I felt very weird when I saw that Jayne had become Facebook friends with Cathy, Carolyn and Becky last year. I could see her comments on their updates. I’ve been able to see status updates on her profile. I haven’t engaged her in any way, wanting to keep my distance that I’ve maintained all these years, but it felt odd and uncomfortable just having her as close as my “friends” on Facebook.
A shocking thing occurred, though, when I glanced at her profile page and discovered this link she had posted:
The Three Myths
About Homosexuality
Myth #1
Homosexuality is normal and biologically determined.
The truth…
There is no scientific research indicating a biological or genetic cause for homosexuality. Biological factors may play a role in the predisposition to homosexuality. However, this is true of many other psychological conditions.
Research suggests that social and psychological factors are strongly influential. Examples include problems in early family relationships, sexual seduction, and sense of inadequacy with same-sex peers, with resulting disturbance in gender identity. Society can also influence a sexually questioning youth when it encourages gay self-labeling.
Myth #2
Homosexuals cannot change, and if they try, they will suffer great emotional distress and become suicidal. Therefore, treatment to change homosexuality must be stopped.
The truth…
Psychotherapists around the world who treat homosexuals report that significant numbers of their clients have experienced substantial healing. Change has come through psychological therapy, spirituality, and ex-gay support groups. Whether leading married or committed celibate lives, many report that their homosexual feelings have diminished greatly, and do not trouble them as much as they had in the past.
The keys to change are desire, persistence, and a willingness to investigate the conscious and unconscious conflicts from which the condition originated. Change comes slowly, usually over several years. Clients learn how to meet their needs for same-sex nurturance and affirmation without eroticizing the relationship. As they grow into their heterosexual potential, men and women typically experience a deeper and fuller sense of themselves as male or female.
If some homosexuals do not wish to change, that is their choice, yet it is profoundly sad that gay-rights activists struggle against the right-to-treatment for other homosexuals who yearn for freedom from their attractions.
Myth #3
We must teach our children that homosexuality is as normal and healthy as heterosexuality. Teenagers should be encouraged to celebrate their same-sex attractions.
The truth…
Scientific research supports age-old cultural norms that homosexuality is not a healthy, natural alternative to heterosexuality. Research shows that gay teens are especially vulnerable to substance abuse and early, high-risk sexual behavior. It does far more harm than good to tell a teenager that his or her attractions toward members of the same sex are normal and desirable. Teens in this position need understanding and counseling, not a push in the direction of a potentially deadly lifestyle.
A 1992 study in Pediatrics found that 25.9% of 12-year-olds are uncertain if they are gay or straight. The teen years are critical to the question of self-labeling, so the facts must be presented in our schools in a fair and balanced manner.
It is never too late…
________________________________________________
I’m in such shock that this could possibly be the same woman I knew in high school, the one who wrote in a letter to me at the beginning of our senior year, “I love you. It is as simple and as complicated as that. I know that my life is meant to be with you….”
How does a person go from being willingly and apparently joyfully involved in a same-sex relationship to something like this? Denial? Rationalization? Brainwashing? Actually, any words of understanding would be greatly appreciated!
Amongst the jumble of things that I feel about this, I am grateful that I did not continue a relationship with the person who holds the honor in my heart of being my first female lover. I was at that time and have continued to be a woman who respects those feelings, who finds pleasure and beauty in those feelings, who upholds the rights of others in the GLBT community to be fully who and what they are. I am so totally on the other end of the spectrum from this person who was many years ago one of the closest people to me.
I know that many years and many experiences have separated us, but it still is incredible to me how these wildly divergent paths could exist, considering that we walked the same path at one time, our arms around each other.
Comments on: "Highly Disturbing" (4)
Highly disturbing indeed. I’m in the middle of re-making some of those old High School connections myself, and so far no-one seems to have changed that drastically. The creepy, flirtatious guy whose parents were Nigerian royalty is still creepy and flirtatious, although his profile says he is now a born-again Christian. The sex scandals and arrest on 47 charges of fraud tend to say otherwise, though. The comments on his Wall are all from people who call him “Sir” and say how terrible it is that his political enemies are accusing him of such falsehoods.
Is it possible she is posting these links to appease those who surround her these days, and keeping her true feelings under wraps? Were those in your circle aware of your relationship, or was she more of a “we can’t let anyone know!” person even then? As the frequent “scandals” we see in the news show, some people seem to find arousal in the mere fact that their liaisons are “wrong”.
Was there a comment with the link? Is there a chance she was posting this with an “I can’t believe someone wrote this!” intent? I’ve seen friends post links to far right wing blogs for similar reasons – just to show their friends how ridiculous some people’s thought processes can be.
If neither is the case, perhaps she did go through some type of “ex-gay” brainwashing process. It does funny things to people who are susceptible to suggestion. She may find she needs to publicly declare her support for the effectiveness of “being turned straight” in order to reinforce what must ultimately be a self-delusion.
I do believe that some people’s orientation can be fluid over the course of their life, but that is a natural process, and not one brought about by self-hating, or reparative therapy. I remain highly skeptical of any woman who avows that she is no longer attracted to other women, and only likes men (or, for that matter, any woman who suddenly switches from being adamant about her 100% hetero status to saying that yes, she could be with a woman). If your desires change, that’s fair enough, but be honest and open about the fact that they were different in the past, and they could change again, or broaden. The bisexual (or pansexual) label exists for a reason.
Jayne was of the “we can’t let anyone know” mentality back when we were in high school together. Of course, I was too at that point, not knowing where my feelings belonged in the tapestry of my life. As far as I know, none of our high school classmates realized that we were anything other than “best friends.” I was the one, however, who told my boyfriend of the nature of my relationship with Jayne while it was still an ongoing thing, and I soon thereafter realized that this was not a passing attraction in my life. Quite confusing, however, is the letter she wrote me, saying that her life was meant to be with me. Those are not the words of a woman who is not aware of her feelings for another woman!
She appeared to have posted this link because she supports the position taken in the article. Her Facebook status updates are nothing but Bible quotes and the upholding of Catholic dogma, including a lot of fear surrounding worldly temptation and evil. This is a far cry from the woman I knew in high school. Something happened….
A friend asked me if I was hurt because she obviously views our former relationship as a time in her life when she succumbed to temptation and evil and fell away from the True Light. No, the adjective I’d use to describe my feelings isn’t hurt. A few words I can think of are bewilderment, confusion, sadness, concern, and anger in a general sense that anyone can lend credence to the derogatory crap that is published about fluid sexuality that differs from garden-variety heterosexuality.
I always feel a twinge of sadness when diversity is seen as a shameful, sinful thing rather than a celebration of the range of human emotions and experiences that can exist in our world.
Truth be told, I think I’m much, much happier than she is for having chosen the path that I have! I feel blessed.
Not sure how much, if anything, I should say. I went from kind freaky to a strange kind of freaky religious, myself. Without getting too deep into it, I never fit in anywhere – neither the materialist hedonists I went to University with, nor ultimately with the spiritual hedonists I found in the pentecostal church. For myself, leaving the hard-core evangelical world was very difficult – there was much there that did work for me, but the parts that didn’t eventually became too abrasive to my soul.
We are not truly ourselves alone, the company we keep is a big part of our identity. Now that I am estranged from my former spiritual community, I am finding that I can return many things to myself that I once suppressed, but I have lost much as well.
And since I can hear _Hejira_ in the background of my mind, I’ll just leave Joni’s brilliant words
“In our possessive coupling
So much could not be expressed
So now I’m returning to myself
These things that you and I suppressed
I see something of myself in everyone
Just at this moment of the world
…
I’ve just read a bunch of your posts and first I want to say thank you for being so brave and honest – bisexuality is very often erased and invisible, as evidenced so clearly in your story.
What this one makes me wonder is how two seemingly similar people with similar pasts (you went to the same high school for a few years) can evolve to become so diametrically opposed in beliefs and values? What was the turning point that made you go one way and her the other? If we can find this, maybe we can prevent people like Jayne from become hateful of others, and often, of themselves.