D'ster said:
Tell us more of your own world.
Well, what, specifically?
My daughter is not conscious of her sexuality; she's three. I don't actually recognize many signs of its development at this point, but then again, I'm not really looking. To the other, though, a question arises because of the paranoid conservatism of her maternal grandparents, and also through her mother's vicious sense of one-upmanship. My daughter, when she wakes in the middle of the night, will often come into my room and climb into bed with me. She sleeps peacefully, and more often than not I don't know she's there until I wake up in the morning. (It was really cute the other morning when I got up and turned on the shower, she sat up, looked at the bathroom door, and then flopped back on the bed as if exasperated that her sleep had been interrupted.) But both her mother and maternal grandparents dislike this permissiveness of mine because they fear inappropriate sexual influence. It even shows through when my daughter stays at her grandparents for a night. (She wakes up, grandpa calms her, puts her back to bed, "But don't worry, he wears pajamas.") At some point, I want to pound the table and ask for volunteers: "Who is going to sexualize my daughter's outlook? Come on? Step up and make yourself known!"
My daughter doesn't look at the issue in terms of sexuality, but rather security and comfort. Do I foster in her an inappropriate dependence on my presence for her sense of security? Perhaps, but it's a gamble I'm willing to run with. Someone must first teach her to view these things in sexual terms, and I'm really curious to see who the first is to introduce that perspective: I will have something to say on that day.
In the meantime, the culture around us distributes its sexual sentiments wrongly and perversely. I was seventeen when a girl apologized to me for not being a virgin when we were first together; why should she apologize to me for being raped as a little girl? That such currents hold so much power in the culture is worrisome. Hetero- or homo-, I just want my daughter to find happiness. If I think her odds are better as a lesbian, it's probably some silly prejudice on my part asserting the simplicity and wholesomeness of a relationship sans penis.