Tis' the Season ******

As I was sitting in my room, I pondered what topic/issue I would discuss in my next blog post. I lost track and started talking about the upcoming holiday season with my roomate. Then a small memory hit me from last year, that I could just not seem to forget. 

It was Christmas Day, and my family and I had gone over to my Uncle Yosef's house for our annual Christmas dinner. Now, most of my family on my dad's side are all younger than him, so their kids are usually at most 10-15 years apart from my siblings and I. My brothers and I often, more than not have to end up babysitting the children, while the rest of the adults congregate over wine and food in the other room. In no way do I mean to sound spiteful about it, but it can be quite an irratable task being stuffed in a tiny room with multiple little children running around. My one cousin, Naod, was about seven years old at the time of this incident. Naod is the oldest of his three siblings. In my family he is known for having a very sensitive personality. He had asked my 28 year old cousin if he could play on his lap, while my cousin, precoccupied with something else, refused to do so. Naod than started whining excessively just like any other child. He then tried to play with some toys his brothers were using and they refused to give them up. He kept sobbing and begged for his parents to come and comfort him. Now Naod's perceived "feminity" in the way that he outwardly very emotional, polarizes with that of his younger brother, Noel, who is very confrontational, physically forceful, and assertive when things do not go his way. After Noed, stormed out of the room, my older cousin spoke to me with such concern on his face and said, "He can't be acting like this when he's older, He's acting like a baby, he doesn't need to be doing all of that, look at his brother, he has to cry for everything". I remember not really knowing what to say, but I knew at what exactly he was getting at. Trying to erase any kind of way homosexuality could be something in the future for young Noad. In a way at the time, I subtly agreed with my cousin. My world until last year of highschool had been shaped by forces that coerced me to believe that being gay was the product of negelect, confusion, and loss of faith in God. My parents sent me to a small Catholic school for nine years which was problematic in various ways and along with that, I was brought up in a home of devout Eastern Orthodox Christians. Now I love my parents, very dearly, and I am greatful they taught me that I was capable of doing anything. But often more than not I see now in present day families, that it's not that they may be cultivating their children with certain gender expectations, but there are gender boundaries that are set. In retrospect, I find it completely bizarre that a child who was barely seven years old was looked at being weak and irrational for his behavior. We live in a society which very much represses emotions on both gender spectrums, with young boys taught to get rid of it or act like it simply doesnt exist, and girls feeling like they are burdens on the rest of the world for doing so. I also find it interesting that at what age is it okay for young boys to developed an adult understanding of masculinity? Although Naod is only seven years old, my cousin is assuming that he knows the gender code that he, someone four times his age, lives by. Naod being the first born, was looked at being the example for his siblings. His four year old brother Noel, seemed to be understanding his role as a male

pretty well, which is no suprise why my cousin tended to favor him more. This in turn empahsized Naod failure as a young boy , when in reality it could be just due to his character. I can now say I understand my cousin, not that I agree with him, but essentially I could not expect something else from a male who had been born and raised in Eritrea for the majority of his life. Many Eritreans see queerness as the fault of the parents, because it is a culture where religion is at the core of every practice of life. Naod's behavior presented a fear to my cousin, that he felt the need to fix when he refused to let him play on his lap. In many ways, my cousin is simply probably duplicating the authoratative behavior his father enforced on him. It is destructive in many ways, but the most being is that it robs these young children of the short-lived innocense they have.