BOGOTÁ — Jorge Apolaya, a 45-year-old Peruvian, is pained to recall his mother's disappointment in 2007, when she heard him admit he was gay and liked men. Activists like him often say that they don't want people to accept them, but to respect them. But the truth is that he did want his mother's acceptance.
"I couldn't live like Juan Gabriel who kept saying his mother never loved him," he says, citing the iconic Mexican crooner of the 1970s and 80s. Today, Jorge and his mother (64) live together, having established a modus vivendi after a good many conversations, arguments, trips together, and therapy. They have their house rules. They only attend family gatherings where both are welcome, and no homophobes or homophobic jokes are allowed in the house.
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It's been a journey for her. She went to her first Pride march in Lima in 2010, and has attended group meetings of LGBTIQ+ families, to hear about the concept of sexual orientation or learn about similar family situations. Now she knows: she hadn't done "anything wrong," her son's sexual orientation was neither a punishment nor a curse or sickness — but this is just how people are.
LGBTQ+ people and their family members may suffer considerable strife — and guilt, fear, shame and aversion — before they reach this point of understanding that Jorge and his mother achieved. Psychologists often compare the gamut of emotions to grieving, though situations will vary. Some families accept the revelation immediately, while others are forced to shut each other out for good.
Guilt
Guilt is one of the first emotions arising among LGBTQ+ persons: guilt at not being able to follow the heterosexual norm when, really, they never had a choice. There is guilt in families who believe they spoiled — or bent — their children; guilt because religion condemns homosexuality (effectively as worse than adultery); guilt for not wanting to be cured when others say you could be, even if the World Health Organization equates such cures with torture.
Thiago Miranda, a therapist with the Bolivian LGBTQ+ organization Adesproc Libertad, has been attending LGBTQ+ people and their families for a decade now. Latin American societies, he says, are particularly concerned with social reputation — and it is usually mothers who carry the burden of keeping the family's reputation immaculate. They will blame themselves as vigorously as society blames them.
Marithza Sandoval, a Colombian psychologist, says her ex-partner blamed her when their son came out as a transgender woman. He told her it was because she would dress him as a girl when he was an infant.
Fear
Sandoval has blamed herself, but only for not noticing earlier that she had a trans daughter. She sought help and — finding very little in the public health service — joined GAAT, Colombia's first support and information group for families of trans-persons. It gives advice on the transgender phenomenon based on information given by agencies like the UN and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
But soon Sandoval also began to fear for her daughter. She cried daily for three months, she says, imagining the harm she might face in Colombia, one of the world's more lethal countries for the LGBTQ+ collective. She imagined her daughter "will get on a bus and someone will take offense and kill her when she's done nothing at all." There are other, more mundane battles, like telling the janitor in their building to forget the boy he knew, and start treating her daughter as a girl.
There is of course a limit to how much you can or will talk to people to avert hostility, she says, "because I do not intend to argue about whether or not my daughter has a right to exist. There are times when I negotiate and others when I break off ties." She now considers herself part of her daughter's gender transition.
Why the guilt and fear?
Cristina Rojas Tello, an anthropologist and gender studies lecturer at Colombia's National University, writes in her book De Colores (Of Colors) that many societies and historical periods have rejected and persecuted diversity, so that guilt and fear that families feel is not unfounded.
The world is intrinsically homophobic, she writes, "thought up and built solely for heterosexuals. We grew up in a world where television always depicted the diverse character as an object of ridicule, for his (or her) gestures and always ending up alone." The unconscious message absorbed by all, she writes, is that "loneliness was the punishment for being homosexual." Television aside, all institutions from the family to schools would unwittingly enforce, and reinforce, this heterosexual order.
This is evidently changing, says therapist Miranda. In his early years, he says, most of his patients were gay or trans people wanting to understand how to come out, or families asking about cures. Now, he states, families want information on the best or least harmful way of dealing with a son or daughter who has come out.
Family support key to self-esteem
The family may be the first source of your moral values but later, says Betina Ticoulat, a psychologist, when LGBTQ+ persons face discrimination and cannot count on its support, "they could become insecure... or fall prey to manipulation."
San Francisco State University in the United States has carried out extensive research on the crucial role of family support in the physical health and mental welfare of young LGBTQ+ people. Since 2009 it has found clear, statistical links between low self-esteem and reckless behavior that can lead to sexually transmitted infections or drug addiction.
Gerald Wilmer González Brito, a 46-year-old living in Cuenca, Ecuador, might agree with the findings. Just 20 years ago he found he was intersex — with sexual organs that are neither masculine nor feminine in traditional terms. His is a body "in the middle" as he says, with ovo-testes. At some point doctors unilaterally decided on hormone therapy, which has given him a man's appearance. In sexual terms he is attracted to men.
Some years back, he left home as his family rejected him. He says society practically pushes you into prostitution in such cases, if not suicide, though he chose neither of those. Ties with his mother (now 78) have improved and they live together today. Yet there is no unconditional acceptance on her part, he finds. She barely consoled him when his partner was murdered, and will not discuss personal matters with him, he says.
Negotiating terms
Bruno Montenegro (32) is president of two NGOs in Peru, Fraternidad Transmasculina (Trans-Male Fraternity) and working with Más Igualdad Perú (More Equality Peru). He was 18 when he came out as a lesbian woman and 25, as a trans-man.
He did it reluctantly, under pressure from his sister who threatened to tell their parents about his sexual orientation. He later took her to court for the psychological harm she had inflicted, becoming an activist in the process.
With his parents, he has been in a 10-year process of "negotiation" in which they are gradually accepting him as "him." He tries not to be hurt when they slip back into using feminine adjectives when referring to him.
"I know I'm the same person, just with a new name. I should be more tolerant too. Usually, we do not understand that parents have their own process, coming from different contexts and periods," he says. His parents remain reluctant to receive his partners at home, however.
Acceptance
Montenegro gradually began to see his parents' acceptance in gestures like his father buying him a man's shirt, or his mother serving him a "man's portion" for lunch (which his sister said was sexist!). His mother has attended meetings with other parents of trans-children and seen psychiatrists. She told her sisters to shut up when they called her to say that her son was a disgrace to the family for appearing as an activist on television.
In Latin America there are several organizations or support groups helping parents of gay or trans children with advice. They include FAUDS in Colombia (Friends and Relatives United for Sexual and Gender Diversity), the Es Mi Familia association in Ecuador, FA-ME-LI (Familiares Mentes Libres) in Bolivia and regionally, the Asociación internacional de familias por la diversidad sexual, among others.
María Cristina Pulido, 72, has a gay son in Peru. She recalls that when he came out 45 years ago, the only person she could talk to was her hairdresser, also a gay man. There were no books or leaflets then. Today, just seeking out the right information is a big first step forward for families, says Santiago Carvajal, a lawyer and co-founder of FAUDS. Legislation for equality and diversity also helps families weather the "drama" and social hostility, says Bolivian lawyer Carla Guardia Pastrana.
The family is of course a social construct, and if in need individuals can always seek out people who will accept them as they are. There is nothing wrong with choosing your family.
This article was written in collaboration with the website Mutante.*
