Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The Shedding of Heterosexual Privilege

As a short follow up to something I mentioned last time, today I "came out" at work.

Just chatting with my boss about planning holidays and the conversation went something like this.

ME: Yeah, we'll have to have a think about when I should take time off as J--'s writing up so can't just look after him full time.
HIM: J--, that's your boyfriend isn't it?
ME: (blushing and avoiding eye contact even more than usual) Girlfriend, actually.
HIM: (a beat) Oh. (embarrassed) Sorry.
ME: (embarrassed) S'ok.

And then we carried on as before. I don't know why I was so worried, although I'm still kind of dreading the inevitable conversation about who the Terror's father is then. But only kind of. The fact that this even bothers me at all is an uncomfortable reminder of how easy I've had it so far - the heteronormative assumptions that underpin so much casual social conversation used to work in my favour too and now I feel like I ought to give a brief bio whenever I first meet someone.

Or just get a t-shirt with "My son's daddy is my girlfriend" on it or something.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well done Adele!