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This article has been written and contributed by a guest blogger, for Lovehoney. It includes LGBTQ+ themes throughout. If your identity sits outside of the binary, you can find more relative content like this on our main LGBTQ+ page here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christian Hull is an AACTA nominated Australian Comedian and Content Creator who has accumulated over 670 million views on his plethora of hilarious videos. He is best recognised for his character sketches, enthusiasm over a t-shirt folder, guessing paint colours, reacting to hilarious 5 minute craft hacks and trying to find the ‘soy sauce’ Coles Mini. Christian has since published his book titled ‘Leave Me Alone’ through publishers Allen and Unwin which instantly became a bestseller.
Growing up in the 90s was fun. I have older parents, who were in their late thirties and early forties when I was born. A few years later mum popped out three more boys, triplets! My childhood was wild - chaos even. We went to church and were raised catholic. It wasn’t a strict catholic upbringing.
My theory is that dad only took us to church every Sunday so mum could have an hour of alone time without all of us raucous kids. Our home was very supportive. My parents have always been our biggest fans. Something I noticed growing up was the language they used around topics like homosexuality.
When it appeared on the TV they never said anything derogatory, they always used inclusive language in my teen years when I should’ve been getting a girlfriend. I remember it was never “when you have a girlfriend,” it was “if you choose to have a partner,” and while I was still coming to terms with my sexuality, I knew as a 13-14 year old, from those small gestures it didn’t matter what my sexuality was.
It was abundantly clear I was a little raging homo from the get-go. The theatre performances I would put on and the prancing around. I was a gay kid - watching the old home videos is hysterical. I really commend mum and dad for letting me just do whatever without feeling the need to point me in the direction of “being a boy.” For parents of my mum and dad’s generation that was a big thing.
As each year passes, I notice more parents and children being far more open and expressive. I would have never come out while I was in school but now I see kids happily identify within the LGBTQI community. There is still a lot of work in various communities to be done.
I think organisations still have a long way to come but I see small gestures and the language they use starting to change. Change takes time sadly. If you want to be a supportive ally, you can start by making sure you don’t let someone’s sexuality define who they are.
No whispers of “are they?” or trying to out someone because you’re ok with it.
Making your language inclusive and not assuming anything. I won’t lie, it can be extremely hard. Most of us have been ingrained with pink for girls, blue for boys. It takes time to unlearn these things. YOU CAN DO IT!
