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The Right to Be Yourself

Everyone has the right to make his or her own decisions. Everyone should be able to choose to be whoever he or she wants to be, and no one should have the power to stop him or her. This choice includes gender preferences.

Recently, my parents have been acting quite strange towards me. They are especially focused on the topic of gays and lesbians, an extremely sensitive topic to talk about in my family. My mom thinks that I am a “tomboy” just because I do not act like other “normal” girls. She says, “All your female cousins are wearing makeup, and they all love to wear fancy dresses. Why can’t you be like them? You’re a girl; you should like those things. And also, they all have table manners!”

I always get criticized because I lack propriety in public. I spit my gum out on the streets, chew and talk with my mouth full and sit with my legs spread wide open. My mom thinks I’ll become a boy because that was how my cousin in China acted. My whole family just found out that she is a lesbian. My mom looked at me and saw a resemblance to my cousin, and she immediately had to talk to me about it — fearing that one of these days, I’ll be telling her that I’m a lesbian too.

From my childhood memories, I see my cousin as always being the toughest girl. She was always doing things that boys liked to do. All her friends were boys and she even had a boy hair cut. I went to China last year to visit her, and I saw that she had totally changed. Now she actually looked like a guy. I didn’t even recognize her. As I got to know her better, she confessed to me that she was a lesbian. I wasn’t shocked at all. Just from the way she looked, I had an idea of what she considered her sexual orientation. I was glad she told me because it’s not easy confiding in someone about being gay. I had no problem with it. I’m pretty open-minded about this topic, and I don’t look at her or judge her in any way differently than before. She told me to keep this a secret because she wasn’t sure if her parents would accept the fact that she is a lesbian.

About a year later, my parents got a phone call from my aunt and uncle in China. It turned out that my cousin had confronted her parents about her sexual orientation and they were furious about it — especially since they are from China. Chinese people are usually less open about this subject and not many people accept gays and lesbians. When her parents realized what was happening, my cousin was physically beaten. It’s modern day now, and they still don’t understand that it is very normal for her to feel that way. One of the most challenging things a child might have to do is to tell his or her parents that he or she is gay. My cousin broke out of her bubble and finally worked up the courage to tell her parents. However, her parents’ reaction turned out to be the exact opposite of what she hoped.

I think her parents overreacted to her situation because she is an only child. In China, every family can only have one child; therefore, that only child is everything to them. They overprotect the child because they are not allowed to have more. My cousin’s parents wanted her to be like every other girl. But that’s not going to be possible because they can’t expect everyone to be the same. She has her own choices to make and shouldn’t be judged differently, let alone beaten. What hurts her most is that it is her own parents that won’t allow her to be who she wants to be.