The confluence of Men’s Health Month, Pride Month, and Father’s Day resonated with me this year. I don’t know why, but this year it truly did.
I usually tread lightly on holidays because we all experience them differently, and for some folks, Mother’s and Father’s Day(s) are challenging. I want to be gentle and inclusive with my related social media. When I started creating a June blog post about men’s health, consequently, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t ever written a blog post about gay men’s health. Not only that, but I hadn’t ever really thought about Father’s Day and how it fit into June’s dual focus on men’s health and Pride.
In my 2018 post, “Men’s Health and Why It’s on My Radar” (which is embarrassingly heteronormative when I read it today), I wrote about growing up in the gym and then, as an adult, being a professor. Spending my formative years around guys in a male-dominated atmosphere gave me one perspective; and, as I explained, my academic career and the number of young guys who came to my office and cried gave me another.
But I didn’t share a story that happened early in my graduate student days when I still taught Italian. And if I’m looking back on that period of my life and considering how it shaped my perspective on gay men’s health, I would also have to include the story of my father, who is gay.
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Indiana University, where I earned my first two M.A. degrees and the Ph.D., seemed backwards to me when I first got there. I went from the Università di Bologna in Italy to Bloomington, Indiana, and it was a culture shock on many levels. Attitudes towards gay people constituted one such surprise. For instance: I spent much of my twenties in Spain and Italy, and in both countries, I danced the night away at discotecas populated by marvelous gay men. But in Bloomington, there was one tiny gay club and it seemed just a little daring for a straight woman to go there.
What really struck me, though, were the students, and my experiences in the classroom.
One day, for instance, I taught my class as I normally did, with lots of energy and my whole-hearted enthusiasm for teaching. As ever, my students were lively and engaged. I loved them and most of them loved me back, so class was fun and productive. Except for one student, one who usually participated with all the verve of a musical theater kid (which is what he was). On that day, he was silent and seemed oddly numbed. I asked him to stay after class because his anguished eyes worried me so, and I waited for his classmates to leave before asking him if he was alright. I said, “It’s not my business and I don’t want to pry, but I couldn’t help but notice how distressed you look…do you need help? Are you ok?”
My student opened his mouth to reply and instead broke into sobs. He had come out to his parents, he said, and they responded by kicking him out of the house. He looked at me with an expression of utter grief and said, with a finality that I remember even now, “They told me that I am a sinner.” I helped him to dry his tears and I walked with him to the student center to see about finding a counselor, and he survived his awful parents. But this wasn’t the only time that an undergraduate came to me with this experience while I was in graduate school.
I think about this today and feel perturbed. Will current political and cultural shifts make my old stories new again? In the face of such dangers, I think that speaking up as an ally is everyone’s duty. We allies need to take up some space and hold our ground, I think. I don’t want to go back to how it was when I was in my first graduate program.
Which brings me to my dad. How he came out is his story to tell, but I will say that I knew that he was gay long before he admitted it, and I will also confess that I was confused by the shame and the secrecy. When he finally did come out, I was further baffled by the abrupt about-face. I wanted my dad to be happy and I truly was glad that he didn’t intend to spend his entire life living a lie. And yet…I was not sure how to be proud of something I’d been taught over the course of my whole life to pretend not to see.
Several of my closest friends in graduate school were gay men and I practiced my version of “coming out” to them. They already knew about my dad. Sometimes I would talk to my friends about my frustration and perplexity regarding his concealed reality, so they knew. But I needed someone to hear me say, “My dad is gay and I’m proud of him” because I was strangely afraid to be out and proud on my dad’s behalf.
My friends were there for me to hear me say this over and over until I felt safe and comfortable being an out and proud daughter of a gay man. And this did take practice. When I first tried to speak my truth, I would start to cry as soon as I opened my mouth. And my beloved friends would hug me and let me speak, and then they’d share their stories of truly coming out, of coming out as gay men. I felt much less alone, listening to my friends’ stories. My dad’s story was his own, sure, but it wasn’t the only one and there were people who had lived it and understood it and cared for his story and, by extension, for mine, as his daughter.
This is such a personal memory, but I feel compelled to express my thoughts on what this experience means to me so that it doesn’t disappear into the mists of time. I hope that current political and cultural shifts will not make it hard for any child, adult or otherwise, to say: “My dad (or mom) is gay and I’m proud.”
I think that it’s important for us Gen-X adults, we who are old enough to remember feeling ashamed and confused in our generation’s way, to lift our voices in support of today’s young LGBTQ families. I hope that my shame and confusion is past history and won’t be commonplace in the future.
And on a happy note: by my final year of graduate school, I was teaching Spanish. The book we used was inclusive and had a lesson about varying human experiences, including those of gay and lesbian people. One day, a male student made a disparaging remark about lesbians and another student–before I could respond to his comment–raised her hand and firmly announced, “My mothers are lesbians.” I went over to her desk and stood beside her and said, “Thank you for sharing.” I then turned to the group and said, without skipping a beat, “My dad is gay.” The student and I looked at her classmates, and there were encouraging murmurs from all around us. I then directed the class back to our work, and the students were thoughtful and engaged.
It turned out that we were not the only two with gay parents–another spoke up at the end of the class period–and it was a proud moment for the three of us to express solidarity with our mothers and fathers.
That’s not being “woke.” I am concerned today, as a former professor, to hear that DEI is being disbanded on many campuses, and I don’t like that heteronormativity seems to be morphing into hegemony. Being proud of our gay parents and speaking out in a classroom is not “woke.” That’s being real. Gay parents exist. They are just as real as straight parents. That is a fact.
Now I am a practitioner of Chinese medicine and one of my specialty areas is men’s health. All men, straight and gay (and anything in between).
For the latter, dear reader, I give all due credit to Dolly Parton.
A dear friend in my second graduate program (that would be the one in Chinese medicine, and yes, my buddy was a gay man) convinced me to go to a Dolly Parton Birthday Bash, which is an amazing fundraiser for her Imagination Library. It was there that I met Prentiss Douthit, who was, at the time, the director of the Hill Country Ride for AIDS. Prentiss is a charmer and he asked me with his beautiful Alabama drawl if I would like to volunteer for the Hill Country Ride for AIDS, Austin’s yearly bike riding fundraiser for local HIV/AIDS services.
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Of course, I said yes, and the rest is history.
I volunteered that year and again the year I finished board exams and became licensed to practice acupuncture. The experiences of providing Chinese manual therapy (tui na, which is like massage, and cupping) at an HIV/AIDS fundraising race while I was finishing up my program and getting licensed to practice acupuncture? So much fun! And as a result, I ended up with several marvelous gay patients who came to my office for treatment, and many of them stayed with me long-term. It was a wonderful way to develop my practice, and it was a treasure of an opportunity to learn about gay men’s health and what their concerns are with respect to their wellbeing.
As a practitioner, one who now has almost a decade of attending to gay men’s health to her credit, I do have words to say on the subject. For that, since it is a complete topic on its own, I will direct you to please continue on to Part II: “Gay Men’s Health & What Should Be On Your Radar (Thoughts From a Holistic Practitioner, Part II)“
The bottom line, though? Gay men’s health is on my radar, now and always. Indeed, I am a proud ally, in June and in every other month of the year.
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Dr. Paula Bruno, Ph.D., L.Ac., is a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist, an AOBTA-CP traditional Chinese bodywork therapist, a health coach, and an author. She maintains an active and growing practice at her Austin, TX office. Dr. Bruno is also available for distance appointments for wellness consultation or coaching.
In her first career, she was a Spanish professor.
Dr. Bruno’s specialties as a Chinese medicine practitioner include: • Musculoskeletal health (acute or chronic pain relief; Ehlers Danlos syndrome & hypermobility support) • Digestive support, gut health, and weight loss • Aesthetic treatment, including scar revision • Men’s health • General preventative care and wellness support for all persons.
She is the author of Chinese Medicine and the Management of Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome: A Practitioner’s Guide. Dr. Bruno also maintains a second website, holistichealthandheds.com, with resources and information curated specifically for people with hEDS and HSD.
When you are ready to discover what traditional medicine plus a vibrant and engaged approach to holistic health can do for you, either contact Dr. Bruno or book an appointment online.
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