The Child You Rather Have
Kevin Hart, Gloria Hemingway & Confidence
This is Sitting Queerly, a newsletter about the late blooming queer experience and the lofty goal of opening up conversations and celebrating those who embrace their full selves.
I regularly point out to my oldest child how goth they are.
This happened most recently after a recent clothes shopping trip with their mother to Hot Topic. Once home they modeled a pair of super wide legged jeans with star patches on them, t-shirts baggy enough to fit my hefty frame and they made sure to also have black lipstick on.
“God, you’re so goth.”
“No I’m not! You’re so mean!”
I want to be clear that their retort was made in the same playful whine they make through a smile and repressed laugh whenever I poke fun at them, be that for their undying devotion for Bill Cipher or constant hunt for queer characters to ship in the anime they watch. And she dishes it out, too; calling me old and “unc,” subtly and not-so-subtly pointing out my baldness and mocking my unhealthy addiction to chocolate milk.
I have no idea if they are actually goth. I knew plenty of goth kids growing up who would have vibed in that outfit. But my kid also likes to wear short sports skirts in pastels and tie-dyed shirts they made at camp and to steal my hoodies. One of their requested Christmas presents was a raccoon tail, which they have happily worn out to dinner recently along with much of their more goth-like attire. I’ll be honest, I took a mental deep breath when I noticed she was wearing it. I’m ashamed to admit that my thoughts briefly flashed to the looks it would get in the white bread conservative community we live in. But she was excited to have it on and as long as it didn’t interfere with her ability to put on her seatbelt in the car…
There’s an interview clip involving comedian Kevin Hart circulating in some social media circles. He was interviewed by comedian and media personality Ziwe Fumudoh and she asks him if he’d rather have a gay son or a thot1 daughter. Per culture website Complex:
“I would rather have two healthy kids. Like, it doesn’t matter to me,” said the father of four. “Two healthy children and the fact that you have to put them in those categories says a lot about who you are.”
“I’m just telling you I think the real problem is in the thinker, not the answerer. The thinker,” Hart continued with a pensive facial expression. “Maybe you should, maybe you should just ponder on that for a second,” he added.
The comedian wasn’t always so enlightened; Hart made homophobic comments in the past–including disgust at the potential of having a gay son–that earned him backlash (and the loss of work) in recent years.
Hart’s response turns on its head a toxic either/or hypothetical situation that has circulated on social media since 2021 and depends on homophobic and misogynistic framing. While he’s been praised for it, he also has earned some derision, with some noting that the interview was done on a satirical program that is more akin to Zach Galifinakis’ infamous Between Two Ferns than a sit-down with Oprah Winfrey or Barbara Walters and his straight-face response may also be a similar act.
Gloria Hemingway didn’t even have the luxury of satirical words from her father.
A 2021 piece from All That’s Interesting noted the AMAB child of renowned author Ernest Hemingway had qualities her father took pride in, such as her athleticism. But the author, who became a cultural touchstone of heteronormativity and traditional masculinity, reportedly went berserk when he found her trying on one of her stepmother’s dresses at the age of 10.
At 19, Gloria was arrested at an LA movie theater. Her father told media the incident was due to her “taking a mind-stimulating drug before such things were fashionable.” In reality, Gloria was arrested for using the women’s restroom.
The incident resulted in the author berating Gloria’s mother and blaming her for their child’s behavior. Gloria’s mother died suddenly that night, and Ernest Hemingway blamed his gender nonconforming daughter for her mother’s death. They never reconciled and roughly ten years later, the author was dead by his own hand and his daughter 40 years after that, albeit by natural causes in a Florida women’s jail days after being found unconscious on a beach.
Growing up, my own father often steered me toward Hemingway’s works, most notably his Nick Adams short stories. He saw in them a model for what he wanted to instill in me–courage in the face of fear, stoicism, toughness, confidence2. At one time during my teenage years, he wanted me to go on a “vision quest,” though he never really explained what he meant by that. He pushed me to take up sports, which led to mediocre outings in wrestling, track and field and tennis. He once said he was proud of my own interest in writing, “even poetry.” And he told me that if any of his children were to become gay, he would think he failed as a father.
I’ve spent much of my life seeking to make sure I didn’t fail my father. This is not to say that he’s approved of all my choices; he thought journalism “stressed me out too much” and didn’t understand why I chose it as a career. My choice to live in the middle of the towns I moved to for work, rather than out in the open country, puzzled him. This past summer he avoided acknowledging the tattoo I got a few years ago, a pop culture practice he ascribed to a vain waste of money when I was growing up.
But I won awards for my writing, which he lauded, and gave him grandchildren to shower with affection, albeit from halfway across the country. And I’ve kept my queerness from him. When I was younger that meant self-hatred and shame, depression and suicidal ideation. Now I curate our conversations, audit my appearance, hold my tongue more than I should when he goes on rants about “boys thinking they’re girls.”
My oldest child makes no such effort with me. They enter every room I’m in eager to share their thoughts, no matter how unhinged or how little context their audience may have of the topic at hand. They are proud of every drawing they show me. They constantly belt out songs from the musicals they are obsessed with. And they pose whenever they are excited about their outfit before heading to school or play rehearsal or a birthday party.
Sometimes I tell her the clothes they are wearing are inappropriate, albeit for seasonal reasons (“No, you are not leaving the house without at least a jacket when it’s below freezing outside” “Why are you leaving the house in just your socks?”). Sometimes I ask them to not be so loud, primarily because my sensitivity to loud sounds has worsened in my old age. Sometimes I tell them I wasn’t listening because I was in the middle of a task and give me a moment and then I can pay attention.
But I’m grateful that their instinct is to come to me being fully themselves. Because, hopefully, that means they never have to ask themselves what kind of child I would rather have. They have the confidence I never had, and without even knowing who the hell Nick Adams is.
The term “thot” is an acronym for “that ho over there,” and is typically used derisively to refer to individuals, usually women, who are considered promiscuous or outside puritanical standards for modesty.