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
I think maybe this girls mother has had her carpet munched by her Lesbian friends a bit too.
Now the girl has holes in her ears, holes in her tongue, a hole in her nose ,holes in her lips. With all that hardware on her head. When she sticks her head in a tight place whoever she is making love too may be lucky to come out unscathed. Does she carry band aids for her lovers?
One day she may grow up right now she is playing with her body and mutilating it, I would bet tatoos are next if she thinks about it. IMO she dislikes herself and her mother and the mutilation and lesbianism is to punish her mother who really dosnt give a damn.
LOL, she thinks they're chaperones. Doesn't she realize they are trolling for youngsters?
Talking about sex at Thanksgiving is empowering. It's what seperates us from the oysters ya' know.
It's widely rumored she's gay, but she's never so much as actually admitted it IIRC.
I think I see the problem.
Assuming the article is accurate -- which is a big assumption -- yes. Their mantra is that all gay people are evil and are going to rot in hell. IMO, they are just as dangerous as those who pretend that being gay is normal and something to which we should all aspire. Is being gay a sin? According to the Bible, that seems to be the case. But so are lots of other things, like failing to keep the Sabbath holy. I wonder if her Grandparents and Sunday School teachers also told her that working, shopping, going to a NASCAR race, or watching a football or baseball game on a Sunday violates the Ten Commandments and that people who do any of those things are evil and disgusting, and will rot in hell.
I snuck onto the hall of my cousins dorm at Simmons college in Boston one time, and it was shocking. She lives in a monestary of a very liberal order of nuns these days.
No, but tongue-kissing Carmen Electra in public does get attention. And she has appeared in concert to support gay causes for years.
"Six hoop earrings, black Motorhead T-shirt, black pants, tongue stud, lip stud, nose ring and heavy mascara"
Her body screams "LOOK AT ME. PAY ATTENTION TO ME, DADDY".
Sad
True, I have no idea whether this person is telling the truth. Unlike you, however, I refuse to call her a degenerate merely because she is a sinner, because if that is the standard then every person here on FR is a degenerate including you my friend.
I kind of was wondering the same thing...
I Think you may be on to something there.
It seems to me that the worst thing her family could have said to her as she told them was "So What? Pass the gravy."
Dad is conspicuously absent from this story...other than mentioning her Mom is divorced. Sounds like someone is rebelling a little.
I wish her well, too; maybe because to a certain extent I can see myself in her.
When I was in an all-girls high school --- we're talking about 40 years ago --- we were strongly encouraged to go to school-sponsored "record hops" and dances and entertainments with boys, and I was doggedly resistant, because they didn't interest me: neither the entertainments nor the boys. Succumbing to blind dates with Elaine's-really-nice-brother and so forth, I was mildly to moderately repelled by the way the guys wanted to squeeze me and kiss me (yuck) --- and if there had been a lesbian movement around at that time, I would have jumped into it feet-first yelling ya-HOO!
There are plenty of reasons why girls might be interested in lesbianism, and 98.8 percent of these reasons are transient:
While I'm "certainly not in a position to be her judge," I think I am well-enough equipped with years, experience, and the wisdom of others to say that it's a bad idea for anybody to identify themselves in a way that centers on their sex drive. And furthermore, it's easy to turn a transient social ambivalence into a lasting sexual disorientation by engaging in transgressive behavior.
I'd sure like to spare her that.
The hallmark of any liberal...
Oh why can't all lesbos look like Portia Di Rossi.
She would have simply upped the volume. They crave the attention, even if it is negative.
The one thing they cannot stand is ridicule and the truth.
"Hey Grandma"
"Well, I see you are still dressing up like a clown to get attention."
Cousin of mine is 16 or 17. Last year, at Christmas, he showed up at the family dinner looking like a homeless person - Unshaven, hair not combed, clothes too big, and looking like he slept in them. I teased him about if he had a girlfriend, and got a 'No'. Then, I asked him if he was gay and got a very indignant "NO" for an answer.
...so, my response was that I thought he was, since no self-respecting girl would be seen with him if he looked the way he did.
This year, he had gotten a haircut and was clean shaven. I still think that his clothes needed pressing and he needed to lose the baseball cap, but at least his shirt was tucked in. Asked him if he was seeing anyone and he smiled and said 'Yes'.
That's me, WBill, cleaning up the world one teenager at a time.
Exactly.
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