Having a son is interesting in many ways. One of the most frequent jokes people say to me is that my three-year-old son might grow up to be gay. They say that without meaning that my son has shown any tendency _ some of the people who say that have never even met my son.
Some say that since I am a single mother, my son will copy me and want to be a woman when he grows up. They just assume that since there are so many gay men today, I should watch out for my little boy, although if I ask them how I can "watch out", they just say ridiculous things like teaching him to fight or taking him to boxing classes.
While discussing school options with a distant relative the other day, I mentioned an all-boys school that I thought would be a good choice for my son, location-wise. He sneered: "Have you ever seen the students there? Half of them are gay! Do you want your only son to be gay?"
I didn't quite know how to respond to that. So many thoughts passed through my head, and none of them was polite or civilised enough to be said to a relative my mother's age. I just smiled and ignored his comment.
The other day, my mother told me about a newspaper column she read. A father wrote to a psychiatrist about his son, a primary school student, who was spending a lot of time with a group of friends who did not seem like "real" boys. He asked whether he should move his son to another school to avoid him turning gay. The doctor said he and his wife should be close in order to show his son that men and women can have a beautiful relationship. That way, he won't be gay. Indirectly, the doctor's answer implies that people turn gay because of their parents.
It's amazing how, after all these years, people still treat homosexuality as a disease _ something which is developed from a negative cause but can be treated. My father is a doctor, and sometimes his patients would ask him how to cure their son's homosexuality. Is there any medicine for it? Does the boy need to see a shrink? Would moving to a co-ed school help?
Even worse, boys are encouraged to boost their masculinity in ridiculous ways. When they fight physically, some adults even encourage it, saying boys will be boys. When they refuse to help with housework, the excuse is that boys are not supposed to do women's work. I have seen fathers who are proud when their son punches a friend, because that's what "real" boys do. Some parents push their boys to study martial arts because they think it will serve as a vaccine against homosexuality.
I have friends of every shade of gender imaginable, and I never feel that their gender affects their values, morality or intelligence. A good friend is a good friend, regardless of their gender. I asked a few non-straight friends whether they can pinpoint the reason why they are not straight, and they just say there is no reason. If I don't need an explanation for why I am straight, why do they need an explanation for why they are not? None of them cites the typical reasons that society uses to explain homosexuality _ broken family, lack of male presence, being dressed in pink as a boy, or eating too much chicken. It's just who they are, simple as that.
Gender comes in different colours of the rainbow, but a lot of people still see it in black and white. They seem to think people in the grey area are put here on Earth so we can have a good laugh. If we put on a pair of black-and-white glasses, we will miss out on the many other beautiful colours the world has to offer. I hope one day this attitude towards gender, like black-and-white television, will be out of fashion.
Napamon Roongwitoo is a feature writer for the Bangkok Post.