tangleofrainbows reblogged
female bloggers: I hate that thing where men deny our experiences like they are authorities on our lives.
male commenters: That doesn't happen.
[discussion of family, coming out, transphobia, and things that maybe sorta vaguely border on emotional abuse under the cut. please don’t reblog this post, and if you read it, please let me know, either by liking it, replying to it, pm-ing me, or some other mode of communication]
tangleofrainbows reblogged
Help me help LGBT young'ns!
I’m giving a presentation to foster parents next week about, basically, how not to be shitty to your foster kids if they aren’t straight and cis. I’ll do some 101 stuff and cover the basics (“what does cis mean?” “My kid said they’re queer, isn’t that a bad word???”) but I want some input to make sure I got everything important.
So! If you were or are an LGBT Youth™, what do you wish your parents and guardians had known? Something specific you wish they’d done differently, beyond just be supportive generally?
Thank you for any feedback y'all have! And if you wouldn’t mind reblogging so I get a wider set of responses that would be awesome.
a few things that spring readily to mind:
- if your kid says they’re lgbt, believe them. you may think they’re confused or wrong or “just going thru a phase”, but even if they are, things are only going to go badly if you try to convince them that they’re not who they think they are. the progression isn’t “an adult figure in my life is telling me i’m wrong about some fundamental aspects of my identity” –> “i must not actually be lgbt”; it’s “i told this supposedly trustworthy adult something really personal about myself and now they’re trying to change that part of me” –> “i can’t trust my parents with important parts of my life”
- just in general believe what your kids tell you about themselves? like, telling your kid that they’re wrong about who they think they are sends the message that you know the inside of their head better than they themselves do, that they can’t trust their own perceptions of what they’re thinking and feeling
- if you’re feeling upset about your kid being lgbt, i’m not going to tell you to Magically Stop Feeling That, but don’t make it your kid’s problem to solve. they’re not “making you feel this way” by living their authentic lives; it’s systemic homo/transphobia that’s doing that by insisting [insert negative tropes about lgbt people here]
- do not out your kid without their EXPRESS permission. do not out them to anyone. your parents, your spouse (if they’re still in the dark), your Pertinent Religious Authority — do not tell any of these people without the explicit permission of your kid. if you really want to talk to one of these people (esp wrt the above dealing with feelings), it’s ok to ask your kid if they’re ok with you confiding in so-and-so, but don’t just assume that they’re ok with it. if they seem uncertain or unsure, treat that like a no. you can always out them later; you can’t un-out them if their lgbt-ness is already known
- even if you strongly suspect that your kid is lgbt (or inadvertently find out some other way), don’t blow off their choice to come out to you. even when you know that people are going to take it well, coming out can be scary, and it’s really dismissive to have that met with a “well duh, i’ve suspected for years, big whoop.”. a good fall back line is “thank you for trusting me with this part of yourself” or some such. even if it’s not a Totally Unexpected Shock That No One Could Ever Have Seen Coming, honor the moment
- for trans kids specifically: puberty blockers are great and if your kid is worried about going thru the wrong (“”) puberty, definitely look into them (tho obvs don’t force them on your kid if they’re not interested). there are few/no side effects, and they’re fully reversible if your kid later decides that they’re fine going thru puberty as they otherwise would
- also trans specific: your kid may try out a bunch of different pronouns and names. do your best to roll with it. gender is complicated
- if you’re worried about your kid being happy when they grow up: it is true that homo/transphobia is still everywhere, and that there will almost certainly be times where your kid will suffer specifically because they are lgbt. this sucks. trying to push your kid into being cis/straight won’t solve this, tho. in the long run, it will only make them more miserable. the best way to help your kid flourish when they grow up is to support and accept them for who they are. the world can be a bitterly cruel place. you can’t stop that. but you can send your kids out into it with the full knowledge that there are people who love and cherish them for who they are, people who support them and are rooting for them no matter what their gender or the gender of the people they want to take out on dates. make sure that they know that they have at least one safe harbor no matter what storms come their way
tangleofrainbows reblogged
Help me help LGBT young'ns!
I’m giving a presentation to foster parents next week about, basically, how not to be shitty to your foster kids if they aren’t straight and cis. I’ll do some 101 stuff and cover the basics (“what does cis mean?” “My kid said they’re queer, isn’t that a bad word???”) but I want some input to make sure I got everything important.
So! If you were or are an LGBT Youth™, what do you wish your parents and guardians had known? Something specific you wish they’d done differently, beyond just be supportive generally?
Thank you for any feedback y'all have! And if you wouldn’t mind reblogging so I get a wider set of responses that would be awesome.
a few things that spring readily to mind:
- if your kid says they’re lgbt, believe them. you may think they’re confused or wrong or “just going thru a phase”, but even if they are, things are only going to go badly if you try to convince them that they’re not who they think they are. the progression isn’t “an adult figure in my life is telling me i’m wrong about some fundamental aspects of my identity” --> “i must not actually be lgbt”; it’s “i told this supposedly trustworthy adult something really personal about myself and now they’re trying to change that part of me” --> “i can’t trust my parents with important parts of my life”
- just in general believe what your kids tell you about themselves? like, telling your kid that they’re wrong about who they think they are sends the message that you know the inside of their head better than they themselves do, that they can’t trust their own perceptions of what they’re thinking and feeling
- if you’re feeling upset about your kid being lgbt, i’m not going to tell you to Magically Stop Feeling That, but don’t make it your kid’s problem to solve. they’re not “making you feel this way” by living their authentic lives; it’s systemic homo/transphobia that’s doing that by insisting [insert negative tropes about lgbt people here]
- do not out your kid without their EXPRESS permission. do not out them to anyone. your parents, your spouse (if they’re still in the dark), your Pertinent Religious Authority — do not tell any of these people without the explicit permission of your kid. if you really want to talk to one of these people (esp wrt the above dealing with feelings), it’s ok to ask your kid if they’re ok with you confiding in so-and-so, but don’t just assume that they’re ok with it. if they seem uncertain or unsure, treat that like a no. you can always out them later; you can’t un-out them if their lgbt-ness is already known
- even if you strongly suspect that your kid is lgbt (or inadvertently find out some other way), don’t blow off their choice to come out to you. even when you know that people are going to take it well, coming out can be scary, and it’s really dismissive to have that met with a “well duh, i’ve suspected for years, big whoop.”. a good fall back line is “thank you for trusting me with this part of yourself” or some such. even if it’s not a Totally Unexpected Shock That No One Could Ever Have Seen Coming, honor the moment
- for trans kids specifically: puberty blockers are great and if your kid is worried about going thru the wrong (“”) puberty, definitely look into them (tho obvs don’t force them on your kid if they’re not interested). there are few/no side effects, and they’re fully reversible if your kid later decides that they’re fine going thru puberty as they otherwise would
- also trans specific: your kid may try out a bunch of different pronouns and names. do your best to roll with it. gender is complicated
- if you’re worried about your kid being happy when they grow up: it is true that homo/transphobia is still everywhere, and that there will almost certainly be times where your kid will suffer specifically because they are lgbt. this sucks. trying to push your kid into being cis/straight won’t solve this, tho. in the long run, it will only make them more miserable. the best way to help your kid flourish when they grow up is to support and accept them for who they are. the world can be a bitterly cruel place. you can’t stop that. but you can send your kids out into it with the full knowledge that there are people who love and cherish them for who they are, people who support them and are rooting for them no matter what their gender or the gender of the people they want to take out on dates. make sure that they know that they have at least one safe harbor no matter what storms come their way
tangleofrainbows reblogged
Within any community of marginalized people it seems like there are going to be some people whose experience of discrimination was dominated by hostility (”we don’t serve people like you here” “if you’re gay I’m kicking you out of the house” “he’s retarded, he doesn’t even know that we’re making fun of him”), people whose experience of discrimination was dominated by internalized negative stereotypes (”I thought people like me were burdens on their families” ”I felt like if I didn’t marry a man and have kids, there was no other way I could lead a valuable live” “I thought that people like me having sexual desire was gross and disgusting”) and people whose experience of discrimination was dominated by invalidation (”you’re not gay, honey, it’s a phase” “you saying you’re mentally ill is insulting to people with real illnesses” “you’re really white for a black person”)
And obviously lots of people get all three heaped on them, or different things for different axes of marginalization, but I think that a lot of community discussions I’ve seen have broken down along the fault lines of people having experienced fundamentally different forms of discrimination.
And that’s how you get “who is more privileged” debates - is invalidation less oppressive than internalized self-hatred? If you haven’t experienced hostility, are you really oppressed? It’s also how you get the “oh, we’ve solved that” flavor of cluelessness - hostility is easier to see than invalidation and internalized negative stereotypes, and so once hostility has been made socially unacceptable some people might think the space has been successfully cleansed of bigotry.
Also, some solutions can be very frustrating if they’re for the wrong problem - for example, if you think someone’s problem is internalized self-hatred so you tell them “it’s not true that the other kids don’t like you! people won’t see you any differently for who you really are!” when, in fact, they’re dealing with hostility because yeah, the other kids are in fact bullying them for who they are.
I guess the only remedy I have to propose is to keep in mind that another person’s experience of discrimination may be really different than yours, and don’t immediately try to put it on a spectrum as “worse” (and so I should feel guilty over my relative privilege) or “better” (and so I need to defend my place of relative disprivilege). It’s a multi-dimensional space we’re working in.
tangleofrainbows reblogged
if yr a nontransitioning person you get to be genderweird and it’s cool because you don’t have to jump through medical hoops, don’t have to prove you’re ‘really’ changing genders, etc.
there are a ton of trans women (and trans men) with genderweird histories/identities but you don’t see us talk about that shit much because we’ve got so much trauma around people using any possible reason to invalidate us, deny us medical care, block our transitions, etc. we live in a historical context where people have been prevented from transitioning at every turn and we know it, so we learn to shut up about our gender feelings that don’t fit the narrative
for me and a lot of transitioned people, genderqueerness/complex gender feelings will never be something we can talk about publicly without risking our safety or access to medical care, or at the very least, giving people reasons to see us as ‘not really’ who we say we are
solarmetronome
it’s like the majority of people can only acknowledge us in a social sense, or a pathologized, medical sense - if you are relating your gender to a person in terms of feeling genderweird, they will expect that that is enough for you to validate your gender. the moment you let on that you also happen to have entered a pathologized medical system for gender validation, gender can only be communicated in terms of cisnormative ideas of dysphoria, and “in the wrong body” clichés.