Posted on 12/28/2006 10:36:24 AM PST by presidio9
Thanksgiving in Salem at Aunt Teri's house and the family is picking at Sasha Villarreal, asking questions, pushing buttons.
So, are you lesbian? What if you meet a nice boy? One uncle says he'd rather his teenage daughter be pregnant than gay.
It makes Sasha nervous, brings a little flutter to her heart. She's 18. Family is important to her. But she doesn't back down. She comes right back at them, kidding, asking questions of her own.
Well, why do you like girls, Uncle Tony?
Their response? Uncle Tony puts his hands over his ears, like he doesn't want to hear another word. But Grandpa just laughs, and Sasha feels good about that.
She remembers the ride home to Portland that night, rehashing the day with her supportive mom, grateful to pass another milestone in an already momentous year.
Takes on activist role
Sasha's been out for a while. But in 2006, she pushed aside the last vestiges of her fundamentalist upbringing and stepped to the forefront of queer youth activism in Oregon.
She helped organize the Oregon Queer Youth Conference last February. She helped put together the Oregon Gay-Straight Alliance, a school-based group that fights homophobia, and now serves on its board.
In the summer, she traveled to San Francisco for a national gay-straight conference, which inspired her to get even more involved.
"I told myself that it was my job to try and make my school, Portland and eventually the state a better place for queer youth," she says at a Starbucks near her Southeast Portland home.
As always, she's decked out in a cool kid uniform: Six hoop earrings, black Motorhead T-shirt, black pants, tongue stud, lip stud, nose ring and heavy mascara. She's tall, and her hair is chopped short, framing a full, unlined face.
Coming out to her deeply religious extended family started late last year and has continued slowly throughout 2006. Their grudging acceptance was a relief and gave Sasha the confidence to speak out on behalf of herself and other queer teens.
Her mom, Gina Hansen, has noticed a marked difference in recent months as Sasha makes her way toward adulthood.
"This year, she's 100 percent out," Hansen says. "She has no shame at all."
Struggling with confusion
The Sunday school teachers told her homosexuality was disgusting, a sin punishable by eternal damnation.
And Sasha was a kid, so she believed them.
Sasha and her three siblings lived with their grandparents in Salem for several years while their parents were in and out of trouble with the law. Twice a week, grandma and grandpa took them to church, where the teachers hammered home the lessons of conservative faith.
"I remember them telling us that people who were homosexual would go to hell if they didn't cleanse themselves," Sasha says, "that they were disgusting and basically godless, very low people."
When she was 11, Sasha moved to Portland to live with her mother, who is divorced from her father. That's when she started questioning the teachings of her old church.
Hansen, who is now remarried, has a liberal philosophy about sexuality and a wide circle of gay and lesbian friends.
One lesbian couple, in particular, was especially close to the family, coming over for barbecues and movies. Sasha loved them but felt bewildered at the same time.
"It made me really confused as to why these people were so 'disgusting,' " she says. "They seemed like really good people to me."
About the same time, Sasha began questioning her own sexuality. What followed were several years of silent struggle after she realized she had a crush on her best friend. Ultimately, Sasha decided her Sunday school teachers were wrong.
"I wasn't completely positive at first," she says. "It was scary and weird. I still felt like it was so wrong, but my feelings were so strong I thought it couldn't be fake."
Growing more comfortable
Sasha sits in a crowded downtown coffeehouse surrounded by four adults, making plans for the statewide Gay-Straight Alliance convention next spring.
Listening to her hash out the details of a needs assessment questionnaire, watching her pull out an appointment book so she can organize her week, it's easy to forget that she's a baby-faced senior at Cleveland High School who's just now applying to colleges.
But it's true. Her bedroom is cluttered with the detritus of teenhood: porcelain dolls, stuffed animals, makeup, jewelry, posters featuring the Grateful Dead, Slayer, Kurt Cobain, Angelina Jolie, Queen and "Brokeback Mountain."
Half the time, she dresses like a high school kid, circa 1982. One day she wears black-and-red tights, Pat Benatar mascara and a Judas Priest T-shirt.
At the coffeehouse, she's got a camo cap cocked sideways, a pair of purple Chuck Taylor high-tops, striped knickers and a black T-shirt featuring a pink outline of a plump mud-flap model.
She jiggles her leg, fiddles with her hair and hangs back while the grown-ups run through the nitty-gritty for next year's convention.
But the advisers draw her out, asking questions, trying to find out what young people want for entertainment, dancing, etc. And she delivers, providing a much-needed teen-centric perspective.
Like, don't invite so many adult chaperones to the dance this time. It makes the kids uncomfortable.
And how about a smaller room? More kids will dance if they're not standing in the middle of a cavernous dance floor.
OK, what about the music?
"In general," she says, "techno is the queer beat for kids."
In the past year, Sasha has grown more comfortable speaking to groups and communicating her ideas about activism, says Austin Lea, one of the adult advisers for the Oregon Gay-Straight Alliance.
Planning events and working with other kids, he says, "has really been empowering for her."
In addition to conferences, Sasha also is planning for her future. She hopes to study criminology at Southern Oregon University next year and wants to continue her advocacy for queer youth.
All of which makes her mother proud.
"She's turning out to be a very smart, powerful and beautiful woman," Hansen says.
But for now, Sasha's got homework to do, conferences to plan, college applications to finish.
Then there's her extended family. They love her but still think homosexuality is a sin.
Which is all right with Sasha. She understands how difficult it is to overcome church teachings. And she realizes the teasing and the questions might continue. She's willing to take it. Up to a point.
"I'm OK," Sasha says, "as long as they don't call me a fag."
Stephen Beaven: 503-294-7663; stevebeaven@news.oregonian.com
ping
Another LUG... (lesbian until graduation)
Motorhead T-shirt?
Hmm... there's not even one straight bone in her body?
Fag!
Hell is chock full of good people.
...and there never will be.
/rimshot
18 with an opinion that anybody cares about?
Not to deride you, but may I ask how you arrive at that?
I'm confuzzled
I live in Portland and although there are some really great things about it, it really is the land of fruits and nuts.
She has no shame at all."
Says it all.
Hurl O-rama
"Greetings, queers! It's me, Sasha! And I'm here to help!"
Sasha thinks God was joking when he told women not to sleep with women.
Uh-oh.
Why is her sexuality an open issue at Thanksgiving? Better to sweep and keep it under the carpet.
Nobody cared about mine at age 16, age 18, and they still don't care about it at age 21.
The term is often used humorously or pejoratively, and the phenomenon it describes is sometimes presented as evidence that homosexuality (or human sexuality in general) is purely a matter of changeable sexual preference as opposed to innate sexual orientation.
One counterargument holds that such behavior is quite distinct from "true" lesbianism in that it is consciously elective, temporary, and "bi-curious" behavior. Another counterargument holds that such behavior is deliberately temporary, only engaging in homosexual behavior for hedonistic purposes, or for other purposes, such as:
allowing the participants to concentrate on studies without the distraction of "genuine" romantic relationships, avoiding unwanted male attention, surprising parents, relatives, friends, and acquaintances with news that is presumed to be undesirable, developing solidarity with an oppressed community, or losing the risk of unwanted pregnancy while remaining sexually active.
The phenomenon is usually associated with women at elite (and often all-female) colleges or universities. In some cases these women may hide their experimentation from parents or guardians. Others consider coming out to their parents or friends to be an essential part of their experimentation with lesbian lifestyle.
Dr. Lisa M. Diamond of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City found that, among a group of women ages 18 to 25, one quarter of those who said they were lesbian or bisexual no longer identified themselves as such five years later.
In the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Diamond writes that this tendency to change identities among young, non-heterosexual women has yielded the joking term "LUG", or "lesbian until graduation", on some college campuses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian_until_graduation
They don't care after retirement either, although they sometimes listen politely and nod as if they care.
"Ultimately, Sasha decided her Sunday school teachers were wrong."
Let me get this straight, if someone says something you don't like, it's now wrong.
I guess I can now live on Big Macs, Camels and Old Milwaukee because my doctor and my wife are "wrong". I might just get me that 25 year old Asian Aerobics Instructor that I've always wanted. If Mrs. Exile says anything about it, I'll just call her a bigot.
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