social norms Essay

Submitted By Wendy-Mao
Words: 1506
Pages: 7
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Being a minority I am often asked by friends, family and even strangers what it's like to be a heterosexual, how it feels to be a minority in a society which advocates freedom and egalitarian. The answer is that it is not easy. I try to write something to share these years my feelings, perception and how I strived in society dominated by majority. First, as a heterosexual I do feel like I am automatically divided to a minority, and it seems true of all heterosexual almost everywhere in the world. About ten percent of New Zealand population is heterosexual. The views of heterosexuals are commonly as abnormality and dislike. Since I was 15 years old, I have known I was different from other students around me. Unlike other girls, I did not feel sexually attracted by same genders and I had nothing common topics with them. By contrast, I started to have sexual feelings towards people of different genders. Every time when I talk to boys, I felt my heart beat fast and my face flushed. I started searching information about sex orientation via internet resources, then I realized that I was in a category called heterosexual. At the beginning of carrying this feeling, I dreaded and I managed to deny this fact. Brooks (1981) explained that this feeling comes from minority stress which is related with an inferior status to dominant values experienced by minority group. I decided to hide this secret in my heart because I did not want to be rejected by society. In fact, according Roesler and Deisher’s (1972) research, many heterosexuals hide their sexual identity because of the same fear as me. I started to avoid connection with peers and teachers as much as I could. Every time when I was at home, I felt deep guilty towards my family. There were times that I was going to tell my family, but whenever I made mention of anything related with heterosexual, I heard all about negative attitude. How could I let my family down? So I swallowed those feelings up again. That was a tough time in my life. I still can remember the feelings that I often woke up with nightmares, scared and depressive in midnight. Living by this way lasted around three years, and I was extremely lonely during that period as I never got help for my hopelessness and depression. There were persisting thought that I wish I could openly love and have sex with a boy. I could not get rid of this thought and I had no way to relieve my pain until I learned to smoke and drink alcohol from street girls. In a psychological study, Safren and Heimberg’s (1999) reported that sexual minority have high risk experiencing negative mental outcomes and substance use because of the stigmatization and discrimination towards sexual orientation. The worst time was happen when I was 18 in high school. I could not stop falling in love with a boy. We privately met together. We were happy but not for long. We were found by classmates one day when we held hands. Suddenly the news about us exploded all over the school. After being exposure, I felt extremely insecure and feared to go to school. Whenever I walked at school, some students always followed close, laughing and mocking at me. My friend began avoiding me. When I sat in classes, nobody would like to near me. Even worse, a bunch of girls threw stones to me. They called me ‘disgusting’ and the pollution of pure school. And then, of course, the school headmaster talked to me. He said there had zero toleration about my behaviour, and he decided to tell it to my parent. I was desperate and that moment I wished I could die, then I would not suffer anymore. I so cared about my family and then I did not know what they were going to react. I still clearly remembered that it was one o’clock in the morning, I was sitting at stairs, listening to my parent’s arguing. They were in pain about my sexual orientation. They thought something was wrong with me and they wanted to take me to see a
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