The problem is people labeling people they don’t actually know as something they’re actually not.
Because people think and assume you’re something, you’re more likely to try and act in a specific way either to keep people ok thinking that, or in a complete opposite way to try to make people change their minds.
When you’re labaled as X thing so much that people actually think that’s true, you can have su much trouble with yourself. Specially in teenagehood, which, may I say is commonly said to end when you start your 20, but in psychology, it tends to expand into 25, depending on the person of course.
As you may recall from your own experiences, teenagehood is the most awkward, embarrassing and cofusing periods of time in a person’s life. People who struggle at this age tend to grow up to be insecure or shy adults. Experiences that could be traumatic to a teenager can and will have repercussions during adulthood.
Just to exemplify the impact that people around us, or in Shawn’s case, literally millions of people, imagine someone that’s been told for an extended period of time that he has to be something that he/she is not. People all around them say it’s normal to be that way and that he should or in some cases, must be that way. Then that one person startes to feel confused because he/she knows he’s different from what people want him/her to be. That causes anxiety, fear, the feeling of not being able to be who he/she is, because that might disappoint others. Thus, he/she starts to have nightmares of what ge/she “should” be to keep people happy, but that doesn’t make him/ger happy. What comes next is the development of a clinical anxiety or depressive disorder that could need medication. If that person doesn’t take said medication, the problem will not disappear. And even if said person starts yo take the medication, it’s not a guarantee that it will work because people react differently to the same chemicals.
Also, let’s think for one second that even if he/she is medicated, the original problem, people labeling him/her and telling them what they should or must be is still present. Thus, that person still can’t be true to himself/herself because that’s not what people want of him/her. In some cases, that could lead the person to suicide.
Sounds familiar? That’s what happen when you’re LGBT in a conservative family, school or society. Is it a longshot to try and guess this could happen in the opposite case? probably yes, because they’re not any scientific studies on the matter. But the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. You can tell it’s at least possible to happen when you look at what happen to LGBT kids on said conservative environments. In Shawn’s case, there’re literally millions of people claiming, not guessing, he is gay and are constantly looking for evidence to say so, even if it’s something as minimal as “the way he walks” or “he has femenine mannerisms”. People, we are about to start 2019 in just a few weeks and still there’s people who think mannerisms are strictly related to sexual orientation or gender identity. We’ve come a long way in what gender roles are. Women can be masculine and still be straight, and men can be femenine and still be straight. If wee keep on judging people for how they act, and think that means they’re something they might not be, then we won’t be walking forward into actual equality and willnkeep on repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
That said, I know people will comment something related to gay adoption. Before you start tipping, I want you to know that’s not, at the very slightest what it mean. I myself want to have children of my own with my husband, but I want them to grow up and be whatever they want and chose to be, not what I or my partner want them to. If they turn out straight, gay, bi or something else, it doesn’t matter to me. And it shouldn’t matter to anyone but themselves. That’s the difference between parenthood and forcing someone to fulfill a political or personal agenda.
