One of my favourite definitions of feminism sums it up: "Feminism - the radical idea that women are people too".
My 6-year-old has recently asked me "what's gay Mum?" He explained that one of the annoying boys at school had called him that as an insult.
I took a breath and started on an explanation of how a man and a man could love each other as could a woman and a woman, and not all couples had to be a man and a woman, and how it was okay - normal even. But some people didn't like same-sex couples so they used the word "gay" as if it was a bad thing.
Then I went on about how there was nothing wrong with being gay so it didn't make sense for it to be an insult.
But, I didn't even get through half of my spiel before Mr Six had moved on to something else - I tried to bring him back to the conversation but he wasn't worried or interested or curious. So that was that then. Gay is no big deal and not an insult, sorted. Sometimes kids see things simply and clearly.
I finally watched a great movie this week - the award-winning Dallas Buyers Club - and saw why actor Matthew McConaughey got rave reviews for his role. McConaughey played Ron Woodroof, a man with AIDS in the mid-1980s when the disease was highly stigmatised. The movie is based on a true story about Woodruff smuggling unapproved AIDS drug treatments into Texas and setting up a club to supply people with the drugs.
What is interesting to me is the journey Woodroof goes through from being intensely uncomfortable around trans people and homosexual men to developing compassion and building friendships.
I didn't recognise Jared Leto who played Rayon, a trans woman and Woodroof's business partner, in the movie - both Leto and McConaughey won Academy Awards for their acting.
When I was 18 years old, I spent five months living in Europe, based mainly with my uncle in Hamburg, Germany. He was a dance captain in the musical Cats and almost every man in the production, including my uncle, was gay.
It was an incredible time - I was welcomed into their theatre family and went to some crazy parties.
In this community, AIDS was real - it wasn't just in the movies. I feel fortunate to have been part of this time and both to have been accepted as I was, a Kiwi teenager, and to have had the chance to befriend people who have at times been considered outside the range of "normal", at least by New Zealand standards in 1991.
There is much beauty in diversity - difference is good and normal, and not scary at all.
-Nicola Young has worked in the government and private sectors in Australia and New Zealand and now works from home in Taranaki for a national charitable foundation. Educated at Wanganui Girls' College, she has a science degree and is the mother of two boys.
