shaping perceptions

Since I haven't hand any memorable experiences to write about lately, I'm forced to write about my memories. For about 8 months, I used to work with homeless youth ages 5-17 through an organization called Home Away From Homelessness in 2006. Even though I didn't get paid for my time, I got psychology credit by writing psychology related papers using my experiences as research.

One of the reoccurring themes of my writings was perception. After a long time of being around so many different kids, studying their perceptions of life and reality, I began to see myself shaping their perceptions, hence impacting their life experience and memories, which will go on to shape the scripts and schemas that they use in their daily experience throughout their whole lives. As a child, I remember the most random of people incredibly vividly, and I often wondered if I would randomly be one of those memorable figures for the kids to whom I was revealing myself.

Sometimes, I would be confusing to the children, probably because of the fact that I didn't necessarily fit into the gender roles that to which their peers and family had exposed them. I remember being asked if I was a girl a few times, to which I responded, "No, I'm a boy." After explaining that I was still a boy, my role began to redefine maleness in their minds, giving them a new definition of queerness and gender, which I'm sure could only help them, either to feel better about "not fitting in" or merely as an educational lesson in diversity. Ironically, what I realize now as the most powerful influential aspect of my presence, is that the other woman who I would work with was, to someone close minded and uneducated to gender realities, rather butch, and she was also a lesbian, so both adults working with children were queer.

After a few months, my co-worker, who I totally loved and have absolutely nothing bad to say about, shaved her head, which the kids found to be confusing. I would notice that they would ask both she and I if she was a boy, to which I would reply, "No, she's still a girl." I can only assume that they had either never been exposed to a woman or a man with alternative gender expressions in their own lives (or on TV/ through the media), or were too young to fully understand the reality of the situation, and the pluralistic nature of the united states as it goes though continued social revolutions for equality for minorities. Obviously, those with less money are more likely to be homophobic, because I doubt most homeless parents have taken a human sexuality class, and understand the issue to the depth than a minority belonging to the decentralized group. I'm just glad I could make the world a better place by educating children, exposing them to queer people, so hopefully the next generation doesn't have so much discrimination and hate crimes.