"How am I supposed to explain this to my children?!"
"How am I supposed to explain this to my children?!"
166 comments
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MFer you explained to your children that an obese elderly man invaded your house to give them a PS5 and flew away on a magical sleigh.
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I have to wonder about the people who are fully 100% convinced that it’s just knowing about gay/trans/queer people that “turns” their children LGBTQ.
It’s like when I asked my youth leader in Bible study when he chose to be straight and he looked me dead in the eyes and answered, “when I was 12”. I wonder if he ever figured it out.
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"Being gay isn't your choice. It's mine. You are gay now."
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might be biased due to being bi myself but imo the simpler/more likely explanation is that the "homosexuality is a choice, reject it" homophobes are mostly bi people who've been conditioned by their environment from an early age to reject the same sex attraction, so it literally is true for them. In private they might also prefer gay porn because they find the taboo aspect arousing (a common pattern that extends to fetishes).
On demographic surveys bi people are much more common than gay people as well, but bi erasure is a thing in both the straight and LGBT community
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I really like that, and will posit the transphobic chaser (chaser is the term the trans community uses to describe people who fetishize us) as further evidence. There are plenty of cis people who are attracted to us normally, they’re a huge chunk of who I date, and they’re usually somewhere between neutral and good with our issues. Sometimes you even get someone transphobic who found themselves attracted to a person who happens to be trans.
But then there’s the chasers. Some are attracted to our bodies as novelty, but a large chunk are virulently bigoted towards us, and they follow the same pattern. They’re ashamed to be seen with us (even if we pass for cis), overly focus on our genitals, and generally treat us like we exist for their fetishization of us. And this winds up with a nasty cycle of them trying to define our existence as a fetish, them attempting to push us out of “normal” society and into a life where we hide or are relegated to sex work, and in a society where they succeed we’re deemed disgusting immoral sex objects that only sick freaks are into which creates more of the bigotry by which fetishization spreads.
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I think some of that is right, and maybe all of it for a portion of people, but I also believe there are gay or bi people who hate that about themselves and that causes them to be homophobic. I don’t think that’s a large percentage of homophobic people, but I do think it’s not zero.
I don’t blame the gay community or gay people for their own oppression. I blame these bigots, as well as all of the other bigots they join. It doesn’t matter to me what you truly believe underneath or whether your actions are motivated by self hatred.
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I was living in military housing, which were duplexes, and one guy was concerned about the lesbian couple that moved in next to them, asking how he would explain to his young children if they heard sex noises through the wall. I asked him how he would explain straight sex noises to them. He stopped voicing his concerns to me.
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It was easier for deaf gay couple next door. They tend to make very unusual noises.
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"What is the sound of two clams slapping?"
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It's never been about the "children".
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Being able to explain things in life to your child is basic parenting.
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even if you can't you can say it, like:
- I don't know
- don't worry about it
- I'll explain when you're a little older
but in reality "how will i explain to my kids" has never been a genuine question. you can say "some people do that" and that is all the explanation needed. no, this is just code for "i don't want to see this myself, and I'm using my children as an excuse".
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It's also code for "I really hate myself for who I am on the inside, and seeing other people be their authentic selves makes me sad, angry, and confused. If my kids learned that it was OK to be themselves, I would lose my shit. They must suffer as I have suffered."
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Usually the issue is LGBTphobic parents convinced themselves anything remotely LGBTQIA is sexual in nature, and they must protect their kids, that if they actually believe it, and not just either "noble lying" (seen some christian fundamentalists admitting "it's not actually harmful, but what if it'll be too late for heaven?"), or just doing it for cruelty reasons (bigots, just like bullies, like to paint their targets as people deserving of the bad treatment).
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And this also has a hidden assumption that talking to your kids about anything sexual isn't good. That mindset can lead to teenage pregnancy because, like it or not, our bodies are wired to make sexuality easily discoverable, even if society wasn't full of it (and it would still be full of it even if lgbt-ness could be dialed to 0).
On another note, wanting to suppress sexuality so that women have fewer options and might be more likely to choose those suppressing it is such a pathetic mindset.
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You don't have to explain it if you haven't taught them to hate from an early age.
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Jesus Christ... do kids really do regular active shooter drills at school now? This country is beyond fucked.
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In America they've been doing it since I was in middle school. And for good reason, too.
I almost made it out of high school without needing to utilize what we were taught in those drills, but then towards the end of my senior year some jackass kid decided to bring a gun to class and started shooting teachers and students. America is wild.
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It's absolutely insane that mass murders at schools have just become a fact of life in the US now, where it happens on an almost monthly basis, perhaps even more frequently than that.
In the UK we're struggling with a knife crime epidemic too. So much senseless violence taking too many lives on both sides of the Atlantic.
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We do fire drills once or twice a year where I live (not the US). I've been around for forty years and I've met only two people with a firearm licence (both for shooting sport-related reasons). The European mind can understand the historical reasons beyond the 2nd Amendment, but not the fetishization of firearms.
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I am a 66 year old American. I have no guns. The only time I have seen or operated one was when I was in the Navy in the early 1980s. I have seen the damage that guns can do several times in the 30 years I have been working as a child protective service caseworker/supervisor.
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This is America
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Yes, yes they do.
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I'm pretty sure active shooter drills have been ongoing for over a decade at some schools at this point. There was a whole thing a few years ago about schools "putting litter boxes in classrooms for kids that identify as cats" that conservatives were freaking out about where it turned out that the schools had cat litter in classroom survival kits. They sell Kevlar backpacks for kids.
This country has been screwed for decades now.
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yup
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I'm teaching Highschool in Germany. We do fire drills once a year and involuntarily every time something goes wrong in chemistry class. We also do what we call amok drills every other year.
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Likely monthly or every two-three months, if my memory serves and they haven't increased the rates any. I think really after Sandy Hook they doubled in intensity, I remember doing active shooter drills with regularity after that moment.
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It should be broadly easier to explain that than to explain how every summer is hotter than the last which is why their chances of dying of old age is quite slim.
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Do cartoons not regularly have characters in drag like they did when I was growing up? 🤔
Bugs Bunny would make himself up like a woman to confuse Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd all the time.
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Women were literally banned from performing on Elizabethan stage. All of Shakespeare's parts were played by men. Even Juliet. By law.
Drag wasn't just normal for Shakespeare, it was the only option. And yet he wrote something considered one of the all-time greatest romances.
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Which is kinda funny because morally, I see more of an issue with doing it specifically to deceive someone as opposed to doing it because you want to.
Though that is also where at least some of the discomfort about drag (and trans) comes from. The perception of deception, specifically when combined with a moment of potential interest, followed by the repulsion once they realize they are checking out someone of a gender they aren't interested in (where the gender they are interested in might include cis). It sucks that some turn to anger and hate in that moment when it's really a nothing burger moment.
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Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii'm your little señ-or-i-ta.
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Did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played a girl bunny?
All this hate is just people like Garth, now old and red-voting, having been stewing on the question for the last 32 years.
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I have the greatest friend whom I ADORE who is a gay guy whose family is religious. I asked him how he got along with his mom, and he said he loves her very much and they have great laughs together, but she also tells him that gay people are going to hell on a routine basis. He and I agreed that I would be his adopted mom going forward and that he didn't need to ever feel like she was right for one moment.
Imagine saying something like this to your own kid. Imagine letting your religion be more important than your relationship with your kid. Whatever you might feel about your faith, you should have the brains God gave you that tell you you can't change anybody and that you should love them as is, and keep your damn delusions to yourself at very least. Why would you ruin your relationship with your beloved child over them loving someone?
I grew up with a gay sibling in totally the opposite environment yet in the end just as toxic; we were raised to be extremely progressive, accept LGBT people as is and love them (and I am 50 so the fact we even discussed trans people back then is nothing short of miraculous because it was so taboo), and despite being Catholic we were also super pro choice. Yet my mother literally became psychotic because of my brother being gay, despite family members kindly and gently telling her all along to accept it, when it came to HER child it was unacceptable because she thought it reflected badly on her, and she was so obsessed with us being perfect that she did everything she could to force him to conceal it, including making him bring a beard to my wedding. Finally he grew a bit of a spine and got into a relationship with a guy, and despite her histrionics has continued. Now she's obsessed with trying to make them get married, because she wants her friends to give them gifts to pay her back for all the wedding gifts she has given.
Not to trauma dump, but just wanted to point out that it can be difficult even for supposedly accepting families to really honestly support their LGBT children.
Anyway, do your part for LGBT folks. I myself just joined Stand In Pride, which is an organization where allies befriend LGBT people whose family has rejected them, and are available to be chosen family for weddings or whatever. Go to Pride, give out free mom hugs, step in as chosen family for them, whatever you can do. This world is really terrible to gay people no matter what progress we've made.
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If, according to their own rules, that god created everything, it created LGTB+ people too. Are they saying their perfect imaginary being made a mistake? And if "it's the devil's work", is it so weak that it can't prevent it?
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Are they saying their perfect imaginary being made a mistake? And if “it’s the devil’s work”, is it so weak that it can’t prevent it?
The usual answer to this is that God gave man free will, and he can use that free will to act against God (or else the garden of Eden myth would be impossible) and if you choose to be gay, that's on you. That being LGBTQ+ is a choice is pretty fundamental to it, and also why they tend to believe in things like conversion therapy - if it's a choice, you can be taught to choose differently.
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Also, according to their rules, "love one another" is the single most important one. "Don't be gay" is in an ancient book that also includes "woman in their period must sleep in a separate tent", but we don't see them applying that one, do we?
So going by what's actually in the bible, hating gays is a bigger sin than being gay. Who's going to hell now?
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Your mom sounds like something the experts refer to as a "Cunt"
i wonder how much of the pro-LGBT stuff was just badges she could pin on her chest for clout, instead of actual belief.
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She has BPD so yes. And no I think she genuinely believes it, I really do, just not for her child. She's not one to fake that to her small credit
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I noticed something similar with my in-laws, as far as ruining your family relationship by not accepting people. The grandma goes on rants to her daughter about anti-trans and the pronoun (they/them). She has so much energy for this hate she preaches to her daughters (she has 2) all the time they talk. Always grabbing those talking points.
One daughter has 4 kids and they are all under 18. Some of them experimented with gender fluid stuff. I'm not well versed enough to explain. I know one goes by they/them and the grandmother won't make an effort, or when she messes up the gender she makes a big scene of "I'm old, it wasn't like this. Blah blah."
The really weird thing is after all this hate and after the grandma started putting up walls to her grandchildren (because of the hate she preaches about their siblings). Now she complains that no one wants to talk to her or hang out with her when she visits. Does she not know she was talking about her family during those rants?
She got hooked on some alt right news bs. Started saying she was a tradwife, making butter, and looking for raw milk. Idk what happened, especially since I saw her when she was "strong woman" and gay friendly when she was raising her kids.
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That's so sad. Facebook and the like are the devil for creating those echo chambers.
Imagine hurting someone for living their life. How do they lives with themselves?
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It's weird watching people drop down those rabbit holes in real time.
Like they have to be all in on the crazy in order to be accepted by a new group that doesn't even care if they exist.
"Oh, this site said something I agreed with about Covid, maybe white people really are genetically superior..."
Before you know it, they're posting Facebook articles from sites only one step removed from Stormfront.
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I don't know the Lemmy equivalent, but /r/raisedbynarcissists...
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BPD actually. They're just as difficult.
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If you don't teach your children that there are only two genders and that only heterosexuality is ok then you don't have to explain it to them at all. Our children were exposed to our lesbian friends including a lesbian couple and our gay friends including a gay couple from the days they were born. They met one of my trans friends when they were very young. If you don't teach children to hate then they won't hate. If you struggle with how to speak to your children about these things then you've already failed them and the future.
There have always been gays and trans people. There will always be gays and trans people. Get the fuck over youselves.
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Interestingly how my dad taught me was by not talking about it. He didn't talk about race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, nothing. I watched him interact with all walks of life and watched him treat everyone with the same basic level of respect. Now that I'm older I treat it just like my dad taught it, everyone is a person and unless shown otherwise deserves basic respect.
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Exactly. We did the same thing with our kids. They saw us interacting with a wide range of people. When our son came home from a friend's house and said, "Mommy, what she's the word n----r mean? What does the word f----t mean?" we had a conversation about loaded words and how we don't use them. I've been working to eliminate gendered insults like b**ch and p---y from my speech. My son called a friend a b--ch while gaming today and I told him not to use gendered insults and explained why. We teach our kids how to deal with people. If you teach them right they will be good human beings.
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That’s how it was explained to me as a kid. But it was also made clear how it plays a pivotal role in aviation. Unfortunately it did have lifelong damage done to my sister, she grew up to be an aerospace engineer
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I dream of a drag free* future for aviation! My rocket planes are very good at doing up and almost always come back down. I'm pretty much done, the problem area is just such a short moment in time between getting down all the way and coming to a safe stop. And the ones that don't come back down.
- The drag is still there a lot of the time, but the aviation no longer depends on it.
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"It's like Halloween for grownups."
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"Probably involves more sugar too when you look at the drinks on offer at a lot of places..."
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Just say its the force of air hitting the object as it moves, and since it hits in the opposite direction, it slows down the object. What RU talking abt in the second paragraph it has norelation to drag
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I was first introduced to drag in my childhood through cpl Klinger on MASH. I never really had a conversation about it with my family, but Klinger was always one of my favorite characters on the show and imo had the strongest character arc of all of the cast that lasted the entire run.
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Sometimes little chonco. Grown ups wear dresses. It is for fun.
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Of you don't teach them that its shameful to stray outside your assigned gender norms in the first place, you have no trouble explaining people wearing people's clothes.
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Not to let reality get in the way of a good joke, but more than likley the sort who has this opinion, either does not send their child to school, or also has a problem with schools.
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I love the way you opened with "not to let reality get in the way of a good joke" and then proceeded to make up your own version of reality that you liked better than the one being presented to you.
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Not really a reality I prefer, just felt that the assumption that the hypothetical individual would care about school shooter drills is less likely than the target audience of the joke would assume.
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I have a stupid question: why does drag reading hour even exist? Drag people are not all encompassing of trans or LGBT+ identities. If we want kids to be empathetic towards people different from them and teach them that it’s okay to question your gender, then let’s have trans reading hour. To me drag queens are performers, so having them be a role model for kids is the same as having Kim Kardashian or other reality performers be a role model for kids.
Anyone who knows how I post knows I am not anti-trans or a transphobe. I just question anything that doesn’t make sense to me.
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They don't need to be all encompassing for anything. A brightly dressed adult is just interesting to children, and people in general like reading to children because it's fun and it promotes literacy. People use puppets to read to kids after all.
It's also not about promoting being trans, it's about making the kids aware that people are all different, live different lives and do different things. It's why you get school visits from firefighters, various cultural presentations, science presentations etc.
You wouldn't say a native american speaker was promoting being native american.
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First of all, you don't need to be LGBTA to be Queer, secondly, when it comes to normalising acceptance drag queens are brilliant. When I was a kid Olivia Jones (or Lilo Wanders?) was in like every second talk show round, having funny wholesome meta-takes.
Or, differently put: Imagine a 2.10m unit moderating a presidential debate in full drag. Heck, imagine a native american doing it in full regalia. As long as that's not possible in the US because the adults would freak out you have to start with the kids so that they won't freak out when they're older.
then let’s have trans reading hour. To me drag queens are performers,
Judith Butler aside, trans folks generally don't want to be performers. They tend to want to be who they are and be accepted as such, blend in as their gender, not stand out as breaking norms.
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If it’s not about creating empathy for trans people, then I am against trans reading hour. Sorry, but I don’t care if kids like brightly colored stuff or someone would like to read to them.
My own preference is that role models should give you a goal or aspiration. I don’t think becoming a drag queen should be an aspiration, the same way I don’t think becoming a reality tv star should be an aspiration. Do I care if my own kid would want to be a drag queen? No. If we’re talking about creating goals for children’s future, then performance arts (while interesting) are not the goal that I would choose. That’s just my STEM bias, I guess.
If someone is both a scientist and drag queen, that’s awesome and I think we should celebrate that person. For most people, the barrier to entry to become a drag queen is zero and should not be a goal for future generations. Even reality tv stardom seems to require more skill and talent then, apparently.
Edit: I am not for giving kids role models for things which apparently don’t require skill or talent. Come to think of it, a lot of performance arts require skill and talent. Does being a drag queen require any skill or talent? If I am wrong, let me know
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Issue with that is that trans people are not performers. On the whole we do not want people to gawk at us like we're unique little curiosities wheeled out specifically for inclusion hour to socialize a bunch of kids who are likely to hammer on our triggers. We usually have to do this for a lot of our one on one interactions with adults and random peoples kids and it's mentally exhausting. Trans people do not want attention showered upon their gender. We usually want it to be the least interesting thing about us. If your librarian reading to your kids is trans and you bill it as "trans reading hour" that is flying damn close to workplace harassment.
The LGBTQIA however as a whole has a historic unique culture that isn't passed down via being born into it. It has it's own orthodoxy and history. It has experienced changes over time but Drag is a queer rooted performance art that has a history of criminalization and individual performers have lineages some of the more storied go back around 80 years. It's definitely older than that but pre WWII stuff is murky and we lost some rather specifics due to it being an underground culture where written records purposefully don't exist but it is essentially a cultural darling. It's not that Drag Queens and Kings are full representations of an entire community - that's not their job. But they are a performance art built around music, dance, comedy, improv and they love attention and treat what they do as a craft. Voguing is another LGBTQIA art form, ball culture is a historic queer social cultural event. The community is a culture and the art form that struck poses leaving the building as Stonewall burned aren't gunna be plussed about some innocently ignorant comments from kids.
Drag Queen story hour is an opportunity to introduce kids to a unique culture's history and performance that has value in it's own right.
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Hey I just want to thank you for this comment. I've been trying to better understand non-white/non-cis culture lately and it can feel a bit daunting.
Honestly idk what I'm trying to say, but your comment meant a lot to me. Somebody has to educate the straights and I appreciate you taking the time to politely answer this persons question despite them coming off a bit argumentative.
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Issue with that is that trans people are not performers. On the whole we do not want people to gawk at us like we’re unique little curiosities wheeled out specifically for inclusion hour to socialize a bunch of kids who are likely to hammer on our triggers.
But is reading about performance only? Firefighters are not performers and they read to kids. Let it be a trans firefighter then if they want
the community is a culture and the art form that struck poses leaving the building as Stonewall burned aren’t gunna be plussed about some innocently ignorant comments from kids.
Drag Queen story hour is an opportunity to introduce kids to a unique culture’s history and performance that has value in its own right.
These are great points, but unless the drag queen is also an activist it seems irrelevant
Edit to say not all drag queens are trans, and not all trans are drag queens. It seems unnecessary to enjoin drag queens to trans identity
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I have a stupid question: why does drag reading hour even exist?
Because otherwise the top Google results for "rainbow dildo butt monkey" would be something much more horrifying. And if you do search for that, that story is what every right winger out there is thinking of when you mention drag reading hour.
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That is a comedy of errors.
With the care that I've seen other people put into understanding the impact of their work, I can absolutely see the booking company staff being unaware of what they were booking, not communicating the purpose of the event to the staff, and not providing the library with photo stock of the costumed performers.
I hope whatever brain-dead peon that did this has woken up.
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To me, the issue is that library reading hour is a precious commodity and libraries are tax payer funded. I don’t want my taxes going towards teaching kids to do low skill and low talent things.
I don’t hate drag queens, I enjoy their work and I don’t think kids are “too young” to learn about them. I just don’t think they represent good role models for kids. Again, to me they’re like reality tv stars
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Ultimately it comes down to, some drag queens decided to do this and they are. Trans people haven't, at least not to this level of visibility. Maybe some trans people participate in drag reading hour. I dunno, I've never really engaged with it.
But that pretty much applies to any time the question is "why is group a doing something instead of group b?" It's because group a decided to do it and group b didn't, or because they both did but group a was more successful/visible than group b.
Edit: also, while the answer might seem obvious when put that way, I don't think it's a stupid question. IMO it's better to ask a question if you're not sure. If the answer is obvious, then you'll know one more obvious thing than you did previously. A desire to learn and grow isn't stupid.
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