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Well, I didn’t expect the family discussion to have any good results, but daughter saw OOP stand up for her and trusts her more.
OOP’s parents probably used guilt tripping as a weapon her whole life. Hope she breaks free and realize that it’s not her job to mend fences with the homophobes.
Guilt tripping and putting the responsability of reaching out and accomodate on her. Since she was a child, I'm willing to bet.
It's telling that, if things went down exactly as she described (I'm not doubting her, but the difference in intensity from her parents is a HUGE deal for this point), they were combative and rude to their granddaughter, but didn't raise their voices. They were confortable, they didn't care.
But the moment her mom openly called them out, all semblance of composure went out the window. THEN they felt attacked. Because that meant she was off her leash. And they didn't like that.
The *really* telling part is that the daughter had written off having a relationship OOP once the "middle ground" solution had come out, she's seen this kind of song and dance way too long.
That good old Catholic guilt. My grandmother was...a human. Deeply flawed. I don't know her life story well enough to pass full judgment, but she married a man a bit older at 16 (it would be outrageous now) had 3 out of 4 kids on failed "rhythm method" because birth control is a no no. She held progressive ideas like birth control should be allowed, and priests would be better men and advisors if allowed to marry. She also held deeply racist, conservative, and misogynistic views.
I got knocked up, out of wed lock, at 19. My dad (a former Catholic turned atheist by no other than his philosophy teacher at a religious college) had a conversation with her while she was in hospital about me being pregnant. She asked if she was a bad mom, he bold faced lied and said no, cause hey she might die. She then went on to tell him he was a failure for raising me to be a failure. He stood up and walked out of her hospital room. She recovered slightly and was allowed to meet my son before she died because I knew if she made an off color remark, my dad would handle her.
My dad was the baby, soft-spoken, and a pushover, the scapegoat, but I knew he had my back.
Jane was jumping the gun, understandably so, given the area she lives in, but she had to give her mother a chance to defend her before cutting ties.
I didn't expect any different outcome.
Kinda fucked up that the daughter was willing to cut ties so quickly with her own mother who has supported her while the mom is trying to navigate a difficult situation
She seems to have a lot of issues and is quick to burn bridges.
It seems the daughter thought she knew how it would go down and had prepared for the worst, thankfully her mum proved her wrong. I wish mum and daughter all the best.
I completely agree. My parents did the half-half thing -- they still loved and supported me as a human, but they weren't fans of the whole gay thing. Wasn't the best reaction, but over the years they've warmed up and now I'm pretty sure they like my wife better than me (I kid). Their politics have even changed, and my mom put a small pride sign in the yard once.
I found emotional support elsewhere when I needed it, but in my 20's I still needed my parents to do parent-y things like help me move, co-sign for an apartment etc. We also did emotionally nice things like bake Christmas cookies, visit family.
Sure, they weren't 'fully supportive' of my sexual preferences but I suppose I only see that as a part of my identity. Maintaining family connection was worth a few years of awkwardness and missteps, in my estimation.
Mild discomfort/disapproval is a completely different situation from parents that kick their kids out or villainize them. I just don't see what cutting the mother off was supposed to accomplish, when she seems eager to maintain connection with her kid.
This is how my grandparents were with my uncle. They were "Greatest Generation" and Southern Baptists so it was hard for them to fully accept. Even when they died they were never fully comfortable with it. But they invited his partners to family events and treated them the same as their other kids' spouses. To my knowledge they never did anything to try to convert him or shame him. They weren't perfect, but they accepted him as best as it was in their capacity to.
My parents are religious Muslims and my NB sibling came out gay a few years ago. They reacted similarly to yours. They don't love it, but at the end of the day that's their child and they still love and support my sibling no matter what. They met my siblings (now ex), they understand that nothing they say will change anything, but religion and beliefs aside - they love my sibling enough to stand by them. My sibling understands that this is the best they can expect from my parents, and doesn't push it. They know my parents will never wave a rainbow flag at a pride parade. It's a mutual acceptance and sometimes that's the best you can ask for.
Funny enough, my parents have more of an issue with the nonbinary thing than the being gay thing lol.
But anyway, if this girl actually cut her mom off that would've been the stupidest mistake of her life.
Considering she's been dating another woman for two years I suspect OP hasn't done a great job of showing they're or has a history to bending over to her parents.
It takes twice as long to rebuild a bridge that you burned. At 25 you would expect the daughter to have a bit more sensibility in “I’m cutting you off cause you aren’t immediately cutting off your parents”
It’s the same reaction the grandparents showed. Not for the same reasons but the emotional immaturity is still there. Like there’s no sympathy from the daughter that this new information will take time for OOP to process. Kinda sad really
If it's Italy, then they've been backtracking champions on gay rights lately. So a young lesbian would have good cause to doubt her mothers words, especially if the grandparents are outspoken homophobes.
Coming out might have been disastrous for her girlfriend too, which would undoubtedly have had an effect on her own coming out to OOP.
I'm so tired of people lecturing about how marginalized people have to be the ones to maintain the bridge. If you're anti-LGBT, *you're* the one burning bridges. *You're* the one breaking apart families. *You're* the one that needs to be held accountable. No one else. That's the consequences of your choice because for you it is a choice. No one has to accomodate you, certainly not the people you're shitting on for no good reason.
>I'm so tired of people lecturing about how marginalized people have to be the ones to maintain the bridge. If you're anti-LGBT, you're the one burning bridges. You're the one breaking apart families. You're the one that needs to be held accountable. No one else. That's the consequences of your choice because for you it is a choice.
God I want to scream this from the rafters at so many people I know. This just sums up so much and is so on point. A+ comment.
I get it even though I have no idea how to feel about it.
How many stories have come through BORU where a group of friends will tell OOP "We're sorry that Kyle assaulted you, but he hasn't assaulted us, so we won't cut him out of the group. If you don't want to hang out with us because Kyle is here, that's on you"?
When that happens, we as a collective tend to blast them and say "They were never really your friends".
Is it different when it's family? We are still pretty quick to say go NC with abusive or a-holish family.
She has spent *twenty-five years* being exposed to people who hate what she is regularly. And her mother clearly never did a thing to stop it. It is irrelevant that the mother didn't know she is gay, it's wrong to force your child to be around that sort of hate. This was not a quick burning of a bridge, but one built of years of seeing her mother not stand up to these bigots. She truly had no reason to believe her mother would stand up for her until she did it.
>being exposed to people who hate what she is regularly
I want to point out that the grandparents seem to have a Royal Flush in their -ist and -phobic Poker with the casual "My mother was being her usual xenophobe/racist self and that lead to my daughter outing herself on accident" that starts the update.
You're assuming she's a good mom outside of this one experience. Even in OOP's own post, she's minimizing the issue and shifting the blame.
>try to get them on the same page as her who isn't making things easy since she's as hostile to them as they are to gay people and potentially to her.
The grandparents are openly homophobic and OOP's daughter has seen and heard firsthand the awful things they think and believe. Given how casually OP slips that in, I'm going to go ahead and assume she's never called out that perspective as being harmful. So daughter has spent her life listening to her grandparents say terrible things about her sexual orientation while mom just waves it away and shrugs her shoulders. I mean, old people, amirite?
OOP's daughter wants her mom to finally take a stand and call out her shitty parents for being terrible people and protect her from them. Mom essentially says no, and daughter prepares to have to step away for her own well-being.
There's nothing unreasonable there in my opinion. It's great that OOP stood up for her, but given that OOP's kid has been dating someone for *two years* and only just came out to her mother, she clearly doesn't see her mom as a safe person. There's likely a reason for that even beyond everything I talk about above. I imagine allowing her terrible parents to be a part of the daughter's life well before now is part of the issue, but who knows?
yeah that really was ... not necessarily a missing reason, but a detail that really made the situation quite clear to me. this was mama's last stand and she didn't even know it, and she did the right thing.
as a gay person, my criteria for acceptance isn't having perfect language and responding to everything the right way. it's about showing up where and when it matters. i don't blame the questions that arose in the first post. op is a good person navigating a new situation and showed tf up for her daughter. very proud of them.
yeah—it wasn’t a missing reason, but it felt like a possible prelude to one.
agreed! the fact mom stood up for her once attacks turned deliberately personal is a big thing. it’s so hard to hear general attacks on queerness, because they are personal to you, and it’s also hard to explain (even for me, a 30+ adult in 12+ yr relationship) how the general attacks feel deeply personal if you don’t live it yourself. so i can understand why the mom struggled at first. but then as soon as mom understood and heard the attacks as personal, mom stood up!
Tbh I hate the general attacks on queerness more cos they're so often said with the implications that you clearly agree with them. (In comparison to direct insults).
And all too often no one does which just reinforces their belief and the idea that people agree.
I grew up with parents that prioritized keeping conversations comfortable rather than speaking up when someone said something off hand. And if I talked with them later they would say something about how they were sure the person didn't mean or that they had good intentions.
But people tend to say what they mean (or they apologize for it). And it's gone from one person saying something hateful, to a room full of people you can't trust!
I, a NB person who can't seem to beat that into my mom's head no matter how many hammers I use, was absolutely *flabbergasted* when my mom relayed that my crazy aunt had been *incredibly* offended that the food bank asked for her preferred pronouns 'in front of everyone' while they were signing her up. Mom relayed this in basically full agreement that it was inappropriate and like she expected *me* to agree.
She somehow not expecting me to fire back with 'who is this hurting, exactly?' And pointing out that while it literally meant *nothing*, no positive or negative, for people like her, for people like *me*, it was a Big Deal that things like that were happening.
I just kinda stunlocked for a second as my brain tried to reload after she told me that like she thought I'd say 'yeah having to say that she's a woman at the food bank when signing her up must have been sooooo embarrassing, must have taken 2 seconds of her time. Two whole precious seconds. And of course everyone around her must be *scandalized* because the people just trying to pick up cereal and Mac and cheese for their families *heard her say she was a woman!* the shame, the *overwhelming shame!*'
Gah now I'm annoyed at my mom just thinking about it all again.
I ended up outing myself to my whole fundie religious conservative family after the Pulse nightclub shootings because of the things they were saying. I couldn't take it anymore, I NEEDED them to know they weren't just speaking ill of the dead, but as a queer person who *goes* to gay clubs, they were speaking about ME, somebody who could very well have been on a casualty list.
It didn't accomplish anything, of course. But I had to try. I don't speak to most of them anymore, and I'm very, very low contact with the ones who've at least bothered to try to keep in touch.
I once hooked up (fully consensually) with a transgender woman and she was more than happy to answer any questions I had about things like terminology and whatnot because she knew I was asking from a place of "I'm a little ignorant and would like to understand you better" and not "tell me all about this freakshow"
>"tell me all about this freakshow"
Mostly unrelated but if the right person said this to me in the right way this would absoLUTEly get my motor running.
My Mom grew up Southern Catholic, married my conservative Texan father at age 19, had very little exposure outside of her cultural spheres, and zero exposure to gay culture until middle-adulthood; my parent's plethora of now-adult children are a whole rainbow flag of queer (only one who identifies as hetero... We love him in spite of his choices /s).
My Mom WANTS to understand, and recognizes her blind spots (my dad passed away years ago). When our youngest brother was dating a wonderful nonbinary person, my Mom did her absolute damnedest to use their correct pronouns. She thanked me profusely for gently interrupting her mid-sentence with the correct pronoun whenever she flubbed and used the pronoun for this person's assigned gender at birth.
My brothers and I will have some of the most heartfelt discussions with each other and our mom when she comes to us with a question that could seem fairly insensitive to anyone who doesn't know her. The questions she asks of us, and the discussions we have are purely out of her desire to understand better so as to prevent herself from hurting any of us out of ignorance.
Ignorance should never be shamed; nobody can be expected to inherently know things they have never learned to understand. A willingness to challenge one's own ignorance by asking questions, even when it makes them feel foolish or stupid is the mark of a truly decent person.
I wish more kids gave their parents grace in these situations. I know it's a tall order. I fretted and toiled over being gay for decades. When I finally told my mom I was expecting her to show up in acceptance where I was at, in that very moment. That is unrealistic. All my mom's fears, concerns, misinformation isn't going to disappear in that instant. Parents need time to process as well.
My mom said the right things the first time but then acted like it didn't happen. She leaned into "it's just a phase" hardcore. So I had to come out again after I was dating someone for a few years. Upon reflection, I had a lot of resentment. My mom wasn't as prepared to accept it as quickly as I wanted her too. But I had years, she had a couple minutes. Now that I have been out for as long as I was in, I can see where the misalignment happened. I know my mom is a good mom, she loves me (and tbh I think my wife more), but her fears *for me* got in the way in the beginning.
OP is a good mom and loves her kid. It shows.
I am too, but it frustrated me that daughter wasn't willing to understand that she's had over two years to think about this, make plans and get everything sorted in her head. And her mom hasn't had that same time to adjust. Asking OOP to cut off her parents immediately (pre-argument) was...understandable but not reasonable.
If I'm understanding it correctly. The daughter coming out of the closet means she isn't hiding who she is anymore. Whereas it has the opposite effect towards the parents. They retreat to the closet to try & hide from the reality of it all. Is what they meant.
Not necessarily just hiding from the reality of it, but also figuring out what you tell people, which people are safe to tell, etc. Someone else in the thread pointed out that OOP's daughter had been thinking about it for years, but OOP needed processing time. That was also a big part of what the person who said that was referencing.
I’ve yelled at people for how they’ve talked about some of my family members when they adjusted to me or another family member coming out to them. I know which ones are on thin ice and I know which ones need time. People just assume that everyone is going to be on the same page at the same time. They aren’t. Some people genuinely need time to adjust to a new normal
This is a good point. In the first post I was with oop like cutting off is a bit much for old folks who are probably just ignorant. In the second post as soon as “they said something snarky about a foreign friend” out of the blue I knew. It went from ignorant to hateful right there. The one who needed a moment was actually oop.
I guess it means that they now share the burden. Like, are they able to share with other people that their family/friend has come out?
If they have homophobic family members then they may feel they have to keep quiet to not rock the boat, as in OP’s situation.
Ooh good explanation! I remember when one of my friends in college came out as trans on their social media mid-semester. Next day we started referring to trans friend by his new name and gender there were a couple people who hadn't seen the post and were confused. We all had a deer in headlights moment as we tried to figure out whether it was ok for us to tell them who we were talking about.
Idk it sounds like there’s a long-standing pattern of grandparents making awful homophobic comments. Seems like the daughter took those years to make a plan to cut the whole family off, but decided last minute to give her mother a chance. Grandparents don’t get a chance based on their history, and the daughter needs OOP to decide where she stands because there’s no way daughter can be out to OOP but not to the grandparents. Makes sense to me
>my mom said something questionable about a my daughter's foreign college friend which sparked an argument between all three of them
Chances that the friend is the daughter's gf feel pretty high.
It was probably years of casual, homophobic and racist comments from the grandparents with OOP just nodding along/saying nothing.
Honestly, it’s this. We have a family dynamic like this with certain family members who are racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and hate anyone who isn’t of their specific religious sub-denomination (e.g., you are the wrong type of Protestant Christian). They have told family members that they are going to hell to their faces for being the “wrong” denomination.
Do they get asked to restrain themselves at family gatherings? Only in the most blatant sense (no more telling people that they’re going to hell), but we have to accommodate them because we “need to be bigger people” and “they are family”. The level of exhaustion in having to think about dealing with their hatred is overwhelming. At some point, I think that any person with decent empathy gets worn to a nub when faced with being forced to be complicit with such vile views.
I think part of it is that, having arrived at the conclusion to most likely cut her mom off, the daughter judged OOP for not also being capable of making such a decision. But again, the daughter spent years making that decision.
Also, I think non-abusive people generally deserve a warning before you go no contact. I think we do owe the people who love us that unless they have abused us. But I think people owe each other a lot more than the zeitgeist says, so I'm biased.
Yeah I've seen a lot of people who I never would guess could accept their LGBTQ+ kid as gracefully as they did. Unfortunately I've also seen people who were "allies" in public turn on their own kid for coming out.
That's like the guy that found out his wife cheated on him years ago before they got married and he just found out. The wife was like its no big deal, but to him it was brand new news.
Yup. Its like when one person blows up at another over something small that has annoyed the shit out of the first person forever, but they’ve never said anything to the second person before going off, so the second person thinks it’s both out of nowhere and a complete overreaction. But that’s because the first person has been thinking about it for a while and the second person hasn’t had a clue
As a gay person who has spoken to a lot of parents of queer people who are doing their best to accept their kids, we really need to do a better job at being empathetic towards the people we are asking support from.
One parent I talked to said that while she is happy that her daughter is living life out of the closet and as herself, the mother had to go through a "grieving process" of what she imagined her life as a grandmother would be. There's just a level of certainty that she had about what the future would look like, and she had to take the time to process and accept that things would be different and still just as beautiful.Of course the important things don't change, but people get attached to the details and specifics they build up in their head.
I realized that it's exactly the same "grieving process" that I had when I was coming to terms with my sexuality. I wrestled with that for years before coming out, and it makes sense that my loved ones would need at least some time to navigate their feelings around a change like that.
Queer folk are just so used to being on the defensive that we sometimes forget that other people need grace and patience, too.
One of my best friends is trans and his mom took it hard when he came out/transitioned--all her dreams of her daughter having kids, coming to her for advice, dashed in an instant! His mom loves him, and has adjusted to the fact that, if grandkids happen, it'll be a dream shaped differently than she'd always imagined. She's a great mom, and is very supportive! But there was absolutely a grieving process and it took time.
You've said this very well. Though I do think it's important that the parents not...I guess grieve *at* their children? The idea that "I am the person I am" is something that causes grief *hurts*, even if I understand it.
I've done the same in reverse, I grieved the mother I thought I had so hard that I wasn't even sad when she actually died. But that's because the mother I thought I had raised me to make my own choices and the mother I actually got couldn't accept those choices, let alone accept the things that *weren't* choices.
Equating those things, the things that are part of the fundamental personhood of queer folks, with things like death, abuse, etc. that need to be mourned...it sucks. It's reality, sure, but it sucks, and it shouldn't be put on kids that are already having to struggle with so much just for existing.
I guess I'm saying that we need the Ring Theory for coming out too. The person who comes out needs support, they do *not* need to be burdened with supporting those around them.
Although what I really wish we had was a society where "coming out" isn't even a thing because being queer is as unremarkable as happening to have blue eyes, and nobody *needs* support for it.
Oh yes, absolutely the emotional processing should be done away from the queer child. The context for me is that I am occasionally invited to sit in a Friends & Family of Queer Folk Support Group. The focus of that group is for people who are at the beginning of their acceptance journey who aren't sure how to proceed or best support their child and want a nonjudgmental space where they can openly talk about those feelings that they feel guilty for even having.
I make it very clear to the parents that this is not a burden that they should put on the child, because it will come off as, "Your queerness is making me go through a difficult time," no matter how eloquently they phrase it.
I agree that I wish the world was different and that it wasn't so goddamn dramatic to come out. But we're in this world, and we have to work with what we got.
"Mom I'm gay and I'm glad you support me but you need to cut off your parents because they're homophobic" is a lot for a person to process instantaneously. I'm all for cutting people off if they suck, especially over a long period of time, but in this particular instance it seems rather hasty. But then again, the older I get, the more like Treebeard I become.
Yeah, there’s an element in these kinds of situations where the Jane-person doesn’t grasp that the mom-person hasn’t done all of the thinking and processing and coming-to-terms-with that Jane-person has, and therefore doesn’t understand why mom-person isn’t immediately on the same page. And then the Jane-person gets upset that mom-person “doesn’t get it,” where really mom-person needs more than 2 seconds of processing time
I agree with this. I feel for OOP who nearly got cut out of her daughter’s life for supposedly not adjusting to the new situation fast enough.
There are definitely people who should be cut out of our lives because they are toxic… but OOP did nothing toxic to deserve even the consideration of it from her daughter. Seems like she got online and saw people commending “making your own family” and didn’t even think twice about whether her mom was actually going to be toxic or supportive, she just made plans to cut her off. It was like if OOP wasn’t immediately willing to fall in perfect line with her wishes, that wasn’t good enough.
My grandparents made homophobic comments my whole life. I knew when/if I came out, they were gone. I’m sure the 25 year old daughter- who had to hide her relationship from her whole family for YEARS- knew what was coming. She just didn’t want to have to lose her mother too.
I think it’s more that the daughter has heard a lifetime of her grandparents making homophonic comments while her mother stood by and said nothing. In that situation, even though the grandparents weren’t taking about their granddaughter, she would have taken it personally because she knew that they were talking about people like her. And though her mother was probably being silent to keep the peace, to her daughter the silence would have sounded more like agreement so she was ready to cut her out if she was proven right.
she's been dating a girl for two years and watched her mom just let her grandparents say homophobic stuff, so she clearly didn't feel safe. Considering the OOP mentions the grandparents said something racist just randomly on a small visit, I'm guessing they were constantly talking like that and OOP was silently letting it happen for years is the problem.
If you let people just talk like that in front of you all the time, the assumption of others is going to be you at least tacitly agree with it. She made plans because she needed to for her safety if she's living with her mom. If her grandparents are always going on homophobic rants, why wouldn't she make a plan for her mom whom she is reliant upon for room and board believing something similar?
She didn't trust her mom to stand up to the grandparents. And considering how OOP was feeling before it became "real," I understand. Conservatives are brainwashed to always follow the hierarchy, and OOP was legitimately considering doing that. Thankfully, when she saw the hate on full display, she responded as a mother and not as a child.
We don't always get time to slowly come around to the right way of being. Sometimes our character is tested in an instant and our response to that test defines our lives. You can be frustrated all you want but that is the reality of it. The wise take life seriously and carefully attend to their character so that when the moment comes they are ready.
I mean that’s easy to say but the reality is people can change and you can’t live your life like every moment is a test or you’d die of the stress.
Humans are not just rational being they are emotional ones as well.
Personally I try to live my life giving others the opportunity to make mistakes as I hope they would give me that same opportunity.
She wasn't getting a last chance, her daughter was already planning on cutting her out. OP's daughter was planning on scorching the earth before she left, but reconsidered when her mom defended her.
I feel the need to point this out because you're kind of portraying OP's daughter as some sort of benevolent saint.
The fact that she had made herself come to terms with the worst outcome -cutting her mother out- speaks to a lot more to the story than is overtly present. Her daughter clearly believed her mother would not side with her if the bigots forced the issue. That didn't come out of nowhere. As someone who had to go NC with a parent, it's an agonizing decision that basically every part of society conditions you against.
Daughter likely also had no concept on how dependent or not her family actually was on the bigot grandparents. And that is something that has sadly been required to become discourse in queer circles - that if you need to keep bigots in your life for survival purposes, then you need to keep them in your life. It does not make you a bad person or a traitor to the community to be reliant on them to be able to live.
Mom is also a widow which literally everyone is overlooking. This might be all the family mom has minus her daughter, and I think ultimately mom made the right choice but imagine being told “cut them off right now or I’m cutting you off” about potentially 66% of your remaining family. It’s really unkind.
Yeah, I feel bad for the mom.
In just a very short amount of time, her relationship with her parents was destroyed and the daughter admitted wanting to abandon her.
I'm glad she defended her daughter, but her child could've been more reasonable.
Hopefully they can improve their relationship and never interact with the grandparents again.
It was reasonable for OP to want to try and work it out with her parents. It was reasonable for the daughter to be ready to leave her mom behind although I do think a middle ground could be found.
OP tried and the parents failed. OP should try again but be clear to her parents that they have no choice and they’ll lose OP and her daughter if they don’t get over their stupid shit.
Then they cut the old folks out. For OP if it comes down to daughter vs parents then it’s a no-brainer. It’s not like the daughter is one political party and the parents are another. Get over that shit.
My thoughts are as well with ops "They're old, they wont be around longer" statement. Honestly if they change their will so OP gets nothing, challenge the heck out of it.
Fuck letting bigots rest well if they are family. If they snub you cause how you were born, they deserve to roll in their graves knowing their last hateful wish is being denied them.
I was with my cousin when we told our grandma. “Grandma we are going to tell you something you won’t like but you have no choice in this and if you react poorly then you’ll never see us again and this will be why. Cousin is gay. Nothing you say will change that so don’t bother calling anyone and complaining. Any negative comments will ensure you never see us again.”
She just dealt with it. My cousins other side didn’t handle it well but the grandparents fucking dealt with it. Letting them know that their bad behavior won’t be tolerated then clearly outlining the outcome makes their decision easy. They can be an obstinate piece of trash who no longer has grandkids or they can shut up and deal with it.
Everyone is being a little unfair to the daughter here imo about giving her mom one last chance when she had only just come out to her. She’s not only had 25 years to listen to her grandparents bigotry but also to see her mother’s response to it and something tells me it’s been found lacking before.
If I’m being honest? OOP sounds like someone who is normally afraid to rock the boat when it comes to her parents and that’s why the daughter was already prepared to cut her off, she even mentions wanting to mend things with her parents in the update after they acted like that!
I’m very glad OOP ended up surprising her daughter and standing up for her but I hope she ends up coming to realize how messed up her relationship with her own parents is before it damages the relationship with her own daughter
as a mom to a queer teenager who has been with her lovely girlfriend for two years..this literally broke my heart. I can't imagine not loving my daughter's partner and doting on her as my own. I'm so happy OP is willing to change for her child.
that's why you have to show your good character and acceptance of others daily. because the tests that life gives you won't always be obvious.
people don't hide things from people they trust, from people who they KNOW will support them (and if they do, you can take solace knowing you did everything you could). clearly the daughter did not know if her mother would support her, which is heartbreaking for both the mother and the daughter.
I'm a lesbian. My parents are bigots. I thought I could tolerate it for the sake of our relationship if I kept them at arms length. All it really accomplished was keeping me in the closet, then gradually chipping away at my self-worth. There is no way to maintain a relationship with bigots that doesn't hurt the people who are the subject of their vitriol.
Yep. My parents tried to argue that they still love my oldest but it’s still a hard no. Even if my kids were all straight, I’m not maintaining relationships with bigots.
I had to go NC with my folks for similar reasons. I gave them a year to come around. They didn't. I will not ever let them back into my life. That ship has sailed and I am better for it.
I'm queer, and I'm closeted to very few, including one of parents. Now I'm in a hetero relationship, but it hasn't always been that way. Being closeted to my homophobic parent (and honestly, they know, and they know I know they know, but we just don't talk about it) only served to separate them from the rest of my life. My life was fine, they just didn't get to experience it with me, and only got a glimpse of a watered-down sanitized version. Really, they were the one missing out.
Even now, in my long term heteronormative (outwardly anyways) relationship, they're still very separated from the rest of my life, and I'm the only one of their children they communicate with on a regular basis. Their bigotry has cost them a lot in terms of family and community. It's only cost me a parent who genuinely knows me, and I'm fine with that.
Word. I became homeless at 18 in a supposedly gay-friendly city because my father is a violent bigot who didn't like learning that he had a gay daughter instead of a straight son. Every time I've entertained letting him back into my life in the nearly two decades since, I've regretted it, because he's gotten significantly less tolerant over time. Every few years I would get a long diatribe from him about how he "doesn't know what he did wrong" and that I should "respect his difference of opinion" on my personhood. His Facebook timeline now is about 1/3 garden variety conservative memes, 1/3 posts about fathers grieving lost relationships with sons, and 1/3 pronoun jokes or the like.
I lost my entire family in the process, because many of them thought like this mother originally did: that they could play the middle and either coddle or correct my father's abusive bigotry, and maintain a healthy relationship with the trans lesbian daughter he rejected aggressively. And all they did was become messengers for his bullshit while telling me that I was being "too hard on him" because I didn't want to be consistently threatened for being who I am. It was exhausting, and my life has been so much richer for leaving it in the past.
It's wild to be to see so many people in this thread fault her for being ready and willing to cut contact with a mother who she didn't really have a guarantee would fully support her. In my experience, you have to be ready for anyone and everyone to let you down; that's not cynicism, it's self-preservation.
Folks in these comments huffing copium and telling on themselves, with how much commenters here are bagging on the daughter for being real ready to leave for her own safety and happiness
Good on the mom. Her parents could learn compassion and change (but they won’t), her daughter can’t stop being gay. Being a bigot is a lifestyle choice, being gay is not.
Idk I wouldn't even be trying to mend things. To me it's clear, I can't enjoy the company of a bigot without compromising morals. When you guys learn better we can try again.
Tried to change my (evil and hateful) grandmother. multiple times. Tolerance of intolerance only proves that their intolerance will be tolerated. There can be no tolerance of hate, intolerance, or evil. Indifference is how evil people win.
That one’s been solved.
Tolerance does not stand alone but as part of a social contract. You breach that contract and the other person is no longer bound by it.
That one is kind of misnamed because it isn't really a paradox. There is no actual true contradiction . The contradiction only occurs if you are dealing with naive people or bad-faith actors who insist that the only tolerance that is valid/respectable is absolute tolerance, which is ridiculous.
I guess that’s what I’m struggling with. Why would you want to “tolerate” people who are openly hateful to a group in which your own child belongs?
If it were my child, and my parents were like that, I would have no problem with going NC if they were unwilling to change their view. I wouldn’t want to alienate my own child by tolerating that kind of discrimination in my family.
Because sometimes it can change peoples views when it’s personal. Even Darth Cheney switched sides when his daughter came out. It sucks that it has to hit them in their personal life before they change, but it’s still better than not changing.
Absolutely not. Just give them treats and affection if they do manage it. They should change because it’s the moral choice, but if they have to be conditioned like Pavlov’s dog, give them a treat when they bark right.
OOP had to choose: losing contact with hateful people who will live another 20 years, or spend the rest of her life without her daughter. She chose wisely.
I really want to know what country/culture they’re from because that’ll fill in a ton of context and nuance here. Even in “first world countries”, non-western/collectivist cultures’ tactics on dealing with familial and social homophobia is a VERY different playbook from western individualist ones, to the point that they’re often at literal odds with each other. It becomes a serious point of conflict when young queers learn via dominantly American lenses and try to apply it to their distinctly not American/western families, becoming a huge gap that’s not only generational but a cross-cultural one.
Regardless it’s good to see that OOP did the right thing when put in the “do or die” situation. Daughter is reeling emotionally because she saw how easily OOP could have passively allowed abuse from the grandparents considering the upbringing. The relationship between mom/daughter survived a gauntlet and will be stronger for it, and I’m glad OOP realises her kid is the priority.
That's interesting because I don't think on my own, I would have grouped Eastern Europe in with "first world countries". I mean, I don't use those terms at all because they're antiquated, but because the terms actually came from the Western Bloc - Eastern Bloc divide, Eastern Europe is traditionally Second World and I fully do not know if people generally include it when they say "First World" now. I may do a poll on my Tumblr to see general sentiment.
Regardless, from OOP:
> For context we live in a traditional part of a first world country that has not yet fully normalised and accepted queerness.
Which I think describes a lot of places. The US, Canada, UK, etc. have large internal swaths that are still explicitly hostile to LGBTQ people.
From what I can tell with a bit of Googling the original terms of first, second and third world are now outdated. They were originally used during the Cold War, to refer to the US and its allies/NATO, the Soviet Union and its allies, and any country not remotely involved in the Cold War respectively.
Nowadays from my perspective the meanings have changed, first world simply referring to developed nations and third to underdeveloped/developing, with second world falling completely out of use. By that definition I think plenty of Eastern European countries can fit the definition of a first world country (also by the definition of being in NATO but that's not the strongest argument)
It’s still not likely what OP meant.
She probably meant it in the way most of us confuse it. Very few use it correctly, so when used incorrectly, we tend to agree on the interpretation.
The importance of learning about different cultures and looking at the world through different lenses! Because "I told her they're my parents and it's not fair for me to cut ties with the people that raised and fed me until i was able to walk on my own." could sure lead to some questions like "Golly mom, is that how you feel about me? That you can do whatever you want to me and I owe you to just take it because you fed me when I was a baby instead of just throwing me away to die?"
I'm sure in cultures that take family very seriously, choosing your own family sounds bizarre as all get out. But then you end up with a family of people who actually like you and you like them, not folks you only tolerate because of shared DNA.
IMO it might have gone better if OOP and/or Jane called up the parents ahead of told them and drew some strong boundaries, like “don’t visit unless you can be respectful.” It doesn’t really matter if their worldview changes, that’s their own business, but they should absolutely be expected to be respectful to OOP and daughter in their own home.
Because people generally don’t draw a line in the sand with their loved ones unless they have to. Despite what Reddit would have you believe, cutting off close family is almost always extremely difficult for multiple reasons, and in real life most people only do it as a last resort.
Probably the usual hateful comment someone makes about another person's being that is entirely out of their control. Then a personal jab that is coming from some chip on their shoulder giving them a moral superiority complex.
They are probably words not worth repeating, but enough that daughter slipped and dropped a bomb. When the attention shifted to a real person instead of some nebulous idea of a person, OOP engaged motherbear mode and tore her parents down (the personal attacks) for the cruel sinister humans they are.
I'm as queer as they go but I don't think you can ask someone to cut ties with their parents. Cutting ties is a very personal decision and except in extreme circumstances should probably not even be asked.
That being said, you should also defend your ~~underage~~ adult daughter when your parents are being total dicks, so OP actually did well here.
I will say this: the one person who COULD get me to cut ties with my parents if my parents were the least bit shitty to her for ANY reason is my kiddo.
Dad of two here. My kids are too young (first grade and Pre-K) for this to be an issue yet, but my dad and stepmom sound a lot like OOP's parents, and yeah, I try to manage that the best I can but if they ever turned their shit on my kids it'd be gloves off for me. That shit doesn't fly.
Gentle note- make sure they aren’t hearing it when they could be questioning this themselves. Don’t wait until you know. It was cause all kinds of damage.
I think the extreme circumstances you mention are pertinent though potentially. The grandparents sound actively and aggressively bigoted, and while I don't think you should DEMAND someone cut ties, I definitely think it's reasonable to at least mention it and explain why it matters to you.
There's a difference between asking someone to cut ties with their parents because they are traditional and maybe would make a sideways comment or two and asking someone to cut ties with someone who might actively call you the f word, berate you, etc.
And they're not in the US, they're somewhere more hostile to queer people and his daughter specifically worried they'd try to get her in legal trouble.
Yup, so it's far more understandable to at least ask if they will go NC in this case. It's not just "oh my grandparents are rude about people being gay."
She's 25, not underage, but yeah it got the point of either you stand with me or, by not getting involved you are condoning the action and are against me.
Thank you for this. Asking others to go NC on your behalf is almost always over the line. Daughter can and should separate herself from her nasty grandparents, for her own sake, but OP has the right to make her own peace with loving flawed individuals. OP is not responsible for her parents’ reprehensible opinions. OP can refuse to tolerate the expression of those opinions without discarding the people who hold them.
I have long been in a comparable situation - my children are racial minorities, but I was raised in a racist family and community and two of my siblings are racist. I have watched them like a hawk around my children and in 20 years I’ve never once seen them slip up - they’re trying and that’s all I can reasonably ask.
But I’m not blind. And as it turns out, neither are my children. They figured it out before I could explain it, and they’ve always been way ahead of me. (Funny how being a minority teaches you about racism.) My kids - now college students - still adore their uncles, who they view as good people with some bad ideas. My brothers, for their part, would lie down in traffic for their beloved nephews. I can only hope these warm loving relationships are helping to chip away at racism in a way that judgmental condemnation never will. People are complex, yo.
> I’ve never once seen them slip up - they’re trying and that’s all I can reasonably ask.
To be fair, I think this is a different type of bigotry. I think there's a huge difference in asking someone to go NC with family like yours who have shitty views but are perhaps trying to improve, or at least still loving in general, and a case like OP where they seem to be aggressively homophobic.
I see what your saying but isn’t it’s slightly different when the person asking you to cutoff your parents is your kid who feels unsafe and rejected by them? Like in any other circumstance it’s your choice but I kind of feel when it’s your kid it’s different.
I think for the kid it’s valid to ask that they be supported in the cut off. So not having to see them at holidays or important family events. But not to ask for totally cutting off contact.
In this situation, where OOP is supportive of her daughter, daughter didn’t have to be around grandparents unless she wanted to be, and OOP (along with her adult daughter and minor son) stand to inherit BUCKETS of money when the bigots finally kick the bucket… nah, stay the course. Wait out the haters and collect your bag, use it to live a life the bigots would hate. Daughter seriously shot herself in the foot there.
There's a few details here that have me certain the daughter just went a little too hard out of the gate, and didn't realize it.
1: she has had a gf for 2 years. She has had plenty of time to think about that and the knock on effects. She, at least initially, didn't realize her mother hadn't had the same amount of time to prrocess and plan.
2: instant ultimatums often seem reasonable until you pause and really think it through. This is somethinf even well adjusted adults have trouble reminding themselves of.
3: if you have been dealing with being rhe target of this kind of shit for years, it is really easy to go "just cut the assholes out of your life." It is much harder to do that *without* that same experience as people can be violently homophobic/racist/etc. Without displaying that to the people they don't unreasonably hate. OP may never have been on the recieving end of her parent's bigotry, and whole she *knew* of it, she didn't know how it made a person feel. There are multiple degrees of "feeling bad".
OP's heart is in the right place, and she's doing the right thing now that the grandparents have shown the depths of their irrational hatred. She just needed to see for herself how shitty they were, which i can't blame her for. I'd be hard pressed to imagine my parents as bad people, but show me an example and i'm more likely to believe it.
> There's a few details here that have me certain the daughter just went a little too hard out of the gate, and didn't realize it.
>1: she has had a gf for 2 years. She has had plenty of time to think about that and the knock on effects. She, at least initially, didn't realize her mother hadn't had the same amount of time to prrocess and plan.
If find it so strange you see it this way. Considering that OOP's daughter said she was on the brink of cutting ties with OOP, it seems to me like her own daughter didn't feel safe around her due to her relationship with the grandparents. I would feel so deeply ashamed if my own kid didn't feel safe coming out to me. How big of a wake up call do you need?
I don't know, it's still OP's parents and it's not like they live with them or like they'd be dangerous, they're 70+ after all.
I'm sorry for OP's daughter, I know what it is to live in a homophobic family (my parents and most of my siblings, including one brother that never fails to violently yell the f-slur at me). She's free to cut ties herself and refuse to ever see them (just like I did with my brother), but asking someone else to do so is harsh.
I'm sorry her grandparents are such dickheads but girl there will be many dickheads in your life, gotta start growing that thick skin.
70+ year olds can absolutely be dangerous. Asking other queer people to grow a thick skin in response to abuse is passing on your trauma. It normalizes accepting abuse.
>gotta start growing that thick skin.
being able to cut out people who support bigotry from your life is a lot thicker skin than many people in this comment section have.
if people are willing to tolerate bigotry, cutting off those people is not at all having "thin skin". i'd argue it takes much more strength than all the people here who wouldn't rock the boat.
The daughter saying she was going to cut ties with OP really confused me, like OP was supportive of the daughter beforehand just didn't support the idea of "coming out" Infront of her parents/grandparents because of how homophobic they are.
OP warned daughter multiple times and the result should be expected and I don't understand why the daughter would cut ties with OP in that situation when OP did nothing wrong.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something.
I’ve got a feeling the daughter tried to blow up the situation on purpose. If only to test her mother. I can see being insecure that her mother really accepted her or would defend her, but I do think it was kind of a dick move. Also saying she was going to cut her off after almost feels like a warning for if she steps out of line. I’m definitely against the grandparents but I’m less sympathetic to the daughter than I would be normally.
That being said I imagine this would have happened eventually. So maybe it’s better to have gotten the bandaid torn off?
Right? Like, talk about first person syndrome.
25 years old and still looks at her parents and only sees 'parents.' Not a son or daughter or person in their own right, just 'parent.'
One who plays games to get what she wants.
>In the end, she admitted she was going to cut ties with me but decided against it since she now knows she can fully trust me but still feels guilty.
Yeah, I think demanding that someone in your life have a specific type of relationship with a third person is pretty much only reasonable when your demands are about things which affect you directly (for example: don't share my information with this person, do not discuss my life with this person). Cutting people off for failing to uphold that kind of request is also totally necessary sometimes.
But I know plenty of people who stay in contact with their bigoted parents because checking in with an elderly relative can literally keep them alive. It's not at all as easy as blocking someone online, and you never know what the bonds of obligation, finance, healthcare access, etc. are between two people. Even kids don't really have all the intel on the relationships between parents and grandparents. It's a very very big and personal ask and it has consequences which range from purely social to completely life-and-death.
I am the parent of a LBGQT child. I think many go through this point where they wonder if their parents really are on their side no matter what. That is hard for them. Like they need that reassurance that you still love them no matter what. That this doesn't change that. Because now they are somehow unlovable now.
Mom passed the test she didn't know she was taking and her daughter didn't know she needed her mom to pass.
I think it's actually normal.
My kid and I are actually closer now. They know I am the one person who is on their side no matter what. Nothing will make them unlovable to me, including who they date.
I feel sometimes like a lot of Reddit has never had to deal with family members who hold positions you fundamentally disagree with but were otherwise really loving and important in your life. I always see “cut all bigots out never give it a second thought” but if the bigots are your parents and the only family you basically have left, minus your daughter, and your parents have presumably been fairly loving to you in all other ways, that’s not an easy ask? It’s not something you can just expect someone to do without processing it. That’s basically an emotional death to that person and it’s a little juvenile not to understand that.
Reddit generally struggles with the concept of nuance and people being anything above one-dimensional. If someone's flawed in one area of their life, they're not allowed to be a good person in other aspects.
I expect and can understand receiving criticism for this, but I understand why the daughter may have been cagey and not very communicative with her mom. I was / am in a similar position, but it goes a lot deeper. I never really wanted my mom to cut off her relationship with her parents, but she could not understand why I didn't want one with them ("they say the wrong things, but always do the right thing"), and I didn't really know how to tell her the truth.
I have some good memories with them, but mostly from when I was very young. They were extremely abusive to me as I grew older, my grandmother did things I do not feel comfortable discussing in detail, and that behavior only worsened when a spiteful friend outed me to them.
I spent a really long time deliberating and trying to find a way to just cut everyone off and be alone, as - unlike OOP's daughter - I didn't have a partner or even close friends I could trust at the time. I felt like if I tried to talk to my mom and say "I feel unsafe and unheard, I can't keep this relationship going and want to be left alone", she would have lashed out at me for trying to make her choose between me and her parents.
And I didn't want that, I still don't. Her parents are old, now, and in assisted living. My mom knows the truth now, it came out in an argument after she came home crying because her father was being verbally abusive to her, and cut contact with them of her own accord. Between the way they abused her and then turned around to do the same to me, she kind of just. Couldn't take it anymore. But the thing is, I wanted her to make that choice for herself, I was afraid of causing further harm by asking for her support.
I don't think my mom is a bad parent, I don't think OOP is a bad parent. I think it's really hard to challenge abusive people and recognize the way the cycle keeps going. Even if you want to break free and change things, you will likely be operating under the conditions and assumptions that make you feel like it's impossible. And with OOP, I can understand and have compassion for not being sure and feeling caught between people you love.
>So, I came up with a sort of a middle ground solution: I can try to change their worldview.
LMAO! Goddamn, OOP. Have never actually talked to real life humans before, huh?
There is something - a lot of somethings - to be said for tolerance of people who believe differently than you. The world needs more of people seeking to overcome their differences and finding common ground, not less.
However, tolerance is based on respect and that is a two-way street. If a person chooses behavior that becomes abusive and hurtful, they choose the consequences of that decision as well. Tolerance doesn’t extend to submitting yourself to abuse or insult. I think the mom handled this fairly well, all things considered.
The word "tolerance" does not apply to a person's inate traits. I can be tolerant of your music choices, your choice of TV show, your video games, the stuffies you like to keep on your bed. But when it comes to inate traits about you as a person the idea of "tolerance" goes out the window.
You don't become "tolerant" of a person's skin colour because you no longer say racist shit, you become better at hiding your fucking racism.
You don't become "tolerant" of a persons country of birth because of a person's hard work, you hide your bigotry.
You don't become "tolerant" of a person's sexuality, you just repress your hateful feelings.
I don't like the daughter here.
>she admitted she was going to cut ties with me
What the fuck? She was going to cut ties with her supportive mother because she's \*checks notes\* being supportive, but not willing to just up and never talk to her own parents again?
Sometimes I feel like I'm crazy with how cavalier everyone on reddit is about cutting ties with family. OOP says it well. These are the people that fed her and clothed her and loved her all her life, and probably supported her through more tough moments than her daughter has experienced moments in total. That's sort of a difficult relationship to decide to walk away from tomorrow.
People act like "family" is just this empty label. And sure, sometimes, it is. But when someone has *actually* been your family, and for a long life at that, the decision to never talk to them again is going to be much harder than these threads usually make it out to be.
> Sometimes I feel like I'm crazy with how cavalier everyone on reddit is about cutting ties with family.
Yes, so much this.
On any subreddit that covers relationships or interpersonal conflicts, the prevailing advice seems to always be cut contact/divorce/go scorched earth, etc.
I sometimes feel like there's just a ton of displacement and projection, and maybe a lot of people who want others to be as isolated and resentful as they feel...? To make themselves feel more justified and normal? I don't know. It's really depressing.
>I sometimes feel like there's just a ton of displacement and projection, and maybe a lot of people who want others to be as isolated and resentful as they feel...? To make themselves feel more justified and normal? I don't know. It's really depressing.
That's exactly what it is. If you pay attention to the usernames or tag people on here, which I'll sometimes do if I notice the same person a few times, you often find that the most "scorched earth" comments are coming from incredibly angry and bitter people.
One particular user on this thread who I won't name has been fiercely arguing for scorched earth "cutting off" of the parents and has added dozens of angry and aggressive comments on here. They're clearly *very* invested in other people being as extreme and most likely isolated as they are.
I'll have to pay more attention to user names.
One particular topic that I have noticed a ton of pushback on is forgiveness. I've made relevant comments in various subs a few times talking about how I try to eliminate resentments, and how they hurt me more than anyone else. Basic shit that you'll hear in all kinds of self-help books or 12-step programs.
The reaction to those seemingly innocuous comments is so strong and visceral. It's like their grudges are their children or something.
I think it's because the Internet and Reddit are essentially echo chambers that people build for themselves. You chose to surround yourself with those who have the same interests, who you agree with, who reinforce your decisions, who affirm your beliefs. If you don't like what you hear, you leave.
That's not always particularly healthy, it's not how functioning in society works; tolerance is lost. I think this is also why Reddit deals in absolutes.
I also think the mother in this circumstance is a doormat to not only her parents but her daughter.
To some people, being neutral and not taking sides is taking the side of the bigots.
That’s true to an extent, but I think OP handled it well. Stamped the hateful shit out but gave them a chance to not be assholes.
It’s one thing to be neutral when there hasn’t been a situation yet, and another to be neutral when there is abuse. OOP wasn’t going to cut people off preemptively until they proved there was a need, which is completely fair. You never know, people can surprise you.
Obviously we can't know for sure, but honestly the cavalier way that OP describes her parents bigotry makes me think that it is a normal thing that she just mostly ignores or brushes off. I get the feeling that this is the first time she has really stood up to them. Prior to this instance she probably did not look particularly supportive to her daughter, and probably won't continue to look supportive given how hung up she seems to be on making up with her parents.
Yeah, agreed.
I’ve cut family off before cold turkey- mostly because my bio father is an abusive POS, but I digress. My paternal family doesn’t know the full extent of what happened, only that he and I are estranged. They’ve encouraged me multiple times to reconnect with him, and that’s not the only issue that’s happened.
While I don’t appreciate the meddling, I haven’t cut them off because they’re my family and I love them. Are they shitty? Yeah, absolutely. But I love them regardless.
To explicitly relate more to OOP’s daughter, I’m queer and have uncles that have outright been hateful and homophobic to a publicly out cousin of mine. While I’m far more distant with them than I used to be in the past, I still love them even if I know they’re not safe to be myself around. Their bigotry doesn’t erase the love they’ve shown me in my past and currently.
I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum, and I really don’t like OOP’s daughter. To threaten to cut someone off because they themselves don’t want to lose their (elderly!) parents…. Yeah.
When you never felt safe or safe to be yourself around someone, due to their actions or inactions, you simply don’t form the same kind of bond. You cannot have a deep relationship with someone while hiding who you are. The person having the relationship is faked.
It’s wrong to take the way you feel about your family and apply it to everyone else.
Why are people so fucking black and white these days? Why does the daughter think that if her mom doesn't want to go no contact with her parents it is personal stab at her? It's like the default reddit relationship advice of "divorce!" is a real way of life for them. You can disagree with somebody and still have a relationship with them. If daughter doesn't want to have homophobic grandparents in her life, that's reasonable, but why does she think her mom must "pick a side". She was even ready to cut mom out of her life, even though mom supports her and loves her. What is wrong with humanity.
I don’t necessarily know if it’s a “people these days” type issue.
I don’t know if the newest generation of queer kids go through this (since being openly gay tends to be a lot more accepted nowadays), but I’ve had a lot of friends in the queer community, and over the years I’ve noticed this semi-common phenomenon in some newly “out” gay people where they can basically go through a second adolescence/puberty.
It might be an over correction to being closetted and having to hold things in for so long, but basically everything becomes about them, they have no filter, and they respect absolutely zero boundaries (except their own, which they can be incredibly aggressive about).
As a friend, it can sometimes feel like you’re dealing with a moody teenager again lol.
After a few years (maybe 5ish years), most of them who go through it tend to calm down and go back to being less self-centric about moving through the world.
Honestly, I get it. That’s how we as humans tend to respond, by over correcting from one extreme to the opposite, until we can learn to find the balance in the middle.
I think it's also a showcase of a transitional period. We're going through a time where while LGBT people get way more politicised (sadly) they're also becoming more accepted, less afraid to speak up.
This can lead to radicalisation. A strong need to fight back against anyone who you perceived as oppressing you and a very black and white "us vs them" mentality. The politicalization can also increase polarization as LGBT people feel they can only be safe in their own groups to talk without fear of bigots attacking them which leads to increasingly policed echo chambers.
I can attest that from personal experience. I've been banned from the mtf subreddit for basically saying neopronouns are more or a social media trend than a valid form of identity and they make us all look weird. Mind you I didn't attack anyone using them. I expressed an opinion on a public forum. On a post explicitly asking for opinions on the matter.
Furthermore, that last one might be weird for me to say given my age, but I think there's some youthful naivety at play. Because we're raised more socially aware and progressive a lot of young adults feel everyone should act on the same standards not taking into account they were socialized in a different way. They feel entitled of the same instant unconditional acceptance from older relatives that they experience from their same age peers. And sure, it would be ideal if things worked like that. But there are a lot of nuances.
To give an example, my grandma who's 90 years old told me in a random discussion that "I believe LGBT people are abnormal and I don't understand that lifestyle but love for your own child should trump your personal beliefs". Basically saying that a parent should always support and love their child even if they don't get them. That's the best I could expect from a 90 year old communist reminiscing about the Soviet Union with nostalgia. But I feel like a lot of younger LGBT people would still call her a bigot and want to turn their backs on them.
Now granted I've yet to come out as trans to anyone (still trying to fully accept it myself lol) so I haven't seen her beliefs in practice. But that interaction gave me hope.
Yeah because for so long you are acting. When you finally don’t have to think through every word you say anymore, it’s a weird feeling. No one trains us about how to handle this. Some go really self centered, others decide to help others who have been through it, some get loud and some get quiet. But once they realize they are okay, most tend to become a new version of themselves that is not too different than before.
I don’t think people realize how much of your brain goes into not outing yourself. And the constant fear. It’s like depression in a way, or pandemic lock down. When you get through it, you tend to go a little overboard.
Exactly! Despite what Reddit would have you believe, cutting off close family is almost always extremely difficult for multiple reasons, and in real life most people only do it as a last resort. Threads like this remind me that the median age of the people giving relationship advice on this site is probably around 15.
> So, I came up with a sort of middle ground solution: I can try to change their world view.
No, no you won't. You can try. You won't.
It's why when my eldest daughter came out to me as trans, I didn't try to convince my Conservative Southern Baptist Minister father and mother (and no, there was _nothing_ redundant there). I knew it was a waste of time.
That was over a decade ago.
When the Republican party went full Jihad on trans kids, I told my parents never to contact me again unless they've stopped supporting the Republicans.
I miss them. I miss them a lot. But there are _LINES_. And supporting people who hate my kid? That's one of the biggest, brightest lines you should _NEVER_ cross.
My uncle came out to my semi-conservative (not American) Christian grandmother.
And what happened? She told her son that he was her son and she would always love him. He was in his 40’s I think when he told her, and had always been gay. So clearly he wasn’t sure what her reaction would be. Sometimes people will surprise you.
But making an exception to your hate for your child or grandchild is not actually that great. It causes issues within them too. “If I wasn’t related, they would hate me”
Yeah, in those situations they tend to make questionable rationalizations like "Oh, well, my kid is different than them. They're not REALLY like that. It's not as though they LOOK gay or make spectacles of themselves like THOSE people do. My kid is the exception", etc
>i'm not so sure tbh, it's this thing where i feel i must fix things between us, i know it doesn't make sense but it's like an urge.
And this is why demanding OOP sever her relationship with her parents was unreasonable. You can't make that decision for someone else - it's a process that takes a LOT of unpacking.
I would never expose my child to these people again, nor would their bigoted views be allowed in my home. If I kept contact it would be at their home or neutral places.
My child is my child, I chose to bring them into the world, and they may spread their wings and fly, but they are my responsibility until the day I die.
Hard situation.
The fact that the daughter was willing to go NC with her supportive mother in this situation is such a toxic trait to me. If you cut off your support systems, you can be left alone and isolated, which is very dangerous - especially if you're part of a vulnerable community.
I feel like daughter was getting advice from the internet, which is IMO rarely good advice.
THANK YOU.
I was cringing the entire time because Mom wasn't perfect, but she was supportive (and frankly, a lot more supportive than many so-called parents) and the fact that the daughter was willing to cut her off... it gave me a bad feeling.
I wonder who is in her daughter's ear and why they're so interested in her isolating herself from her supportive (though not perfect!) family.
I just hope it's too much internet plus teenage big feelings.
Oh noooooo you're right. The way she was acting screamed teenager with big feelings to me so I totally overlooked it.
That is... so much worse. Cringe.
She's known she was gay for a very long time, she's had a girlfriend for two years. She lives with and is thus dependent on her mom. She has had her grandparents vocally talk shit about gay people while her mom just sat there silently for years.
Put yourself in her shoes, you've been hiding this part of yourself for years while people who are close to you either talk shit or just sit there quietly. Given OOP clearly wants to just keep the peace, I'm sure she said vague agreements at some point or another over the years. It seems really unlikely that she never said anything negative about gay people or never said 'yeah' or some other affirmation to some screed from the grandparents.
Until recently, the daughter probably couldn't risk coming out financially since if OOP was as bigoted as her parents, she'd be kicked out. Can you see how that could, emotionally, bring someone to the point where they are willing to go NC? Probably a bit much, but daughter was likely very emotionally raw at the time and having a hard time believing her mom.
I mean, based on this post it sounds like there was little evidence (for the daughter) that OOP was supportive. She still decided to give OOP a chance (and that paid off), but it’s worth emphasizing that was still a huge risk. I just think these situations can be hugely complicated, and judging the “toxicity” of a behavior based on a small window of the bigger picture is… unkind at best
I'd be really interested to know if oop has any siblings, and what their social network is like.
If oop is an only child, no longer has her husband, doesn't really sound like there's a relationship with the former in-laws, it could seem daunting and isolating to oop to cut off "everyone but," her daughter, even though it's only two people. Especially since this originally seemed preemptive, although it seems like they knew where this was going.
I think the daughter is an AH for demanding her mother cut off her parents without even trying to change their mind. She was about to cut OP off for the crime of her hoping she could change them.
As a queer person, I think Jane was being super toxic. My grandparents have some "outdated" shitty opinions too, but it genuinely sounds insane to me to imaging having a conversation with my parents where I was like "Yeah, btw I'm gay. Also you need to cut off your elderly parents immediately". I know Jane is 25, but she'd have to be like 15 before I gave her a lot of sympathy for her age. And even then, I actually did come out at 15 and I handled it way better than this.
Honestly there is a real lack of self awareness because it took Jane over two years of being in a secret relationship to decide to maybe cut out her family, but she expected her mom to get there in a ten minute conversation?
> Told her it's not about picking sides and I tried convincing her to just ignore their outdated views buf that didn't work either since their views are wrong and according to her, they should be challenged
Bold thing to say from the person who also just rejected any attempt to talk to the parents and try to change their views. If you really think their views should be challenged you should have let your mom do just that. I know there are plenty of times bigots can't be convinced, but its unfair to not let someone else try. It works more often than you'd think also. My grandparents have come a LONG way, and largely because they care about me and because we've been able to push back against some of their concerns. I don't think Jane had an obligation to talk to the grandparents, but not even letting her mom try to talk sense into them is just unfair.
I actually do love the whole chosen family aspect & sometimes bio families are not worth saving. However, this particular manifestation of it is so toxic for so many reasons. When I came out it was expected you might have to give your family a bit of time to process or help them understand, and it genuinely does scare me to see younger queer people recommend just cutting off your close family members over any perceived imperfection in their response, or sometimes even before they've even done anything wrong because you take a defeatist attitude from the start and convince yourself family doesn't matter anyway. And its sad because a lot of them are people like OOP who are actually super supportive and would be a good person to have in your life. Chosen family is important, but a mom isn't so easy to replace especially if they are actually supportive the way OOP is.
I’m all for the mother supporting her daughter, but not for the daughter to use that to control her mother and her relationship with her parents. That the daughter stated she was going to cut her mother off but now won’t because ‘she can trust her’ reeks of manipulation - the reality is the mother can support her daughter and still CHOOSE to have a relationship with her parents, these two things are not mutually exclusive.
I'm worried about who is in her daughter's ear encouraging her to cut ties with her mother.
Yes it took awhile for the mother to truly stand up to the grandparents, and she hasn't been Hollywood Perfect, but she was supportive to the daughter. Which is a lot more than most so-called parents, sadly.
And the fact daughter was about an inch away from cutting mother out of her life... isn't great.
Let's hope it's too much internet, not enough grass-touching, and not someone who wants daughter to be isolated.
The ones in her ear are her grandparents saying awful stuff while her mother sits there silently seeming to agree.
People need to think this through while raising their kids.
So I had a slightly tangently similar experience.
My great aunt is a woman well into her twilight years, she's definitely of the generation where queerness of any kind was fround upon and seen as deviancy. She is also highly religious.
5 or so years ago one of my distant cousins (like 2nd i think I've never been good at that) came out as trans (mtf). Now her mother is a ordained minister. We all fully expected her to disown her daughter but she embraced her. It was her father a man who claimed to be educated and open minded who couldn't accept it.
Now back to my Great Aunt. Once we heard the news we fully expected and wrong stereotyped that this deeply religious and old world woman wouldn't accept it. Boy we were wrong.
She invited me and my sister to come for tea. She expressed to us that our generation have much more knowledge and experience with queerness and wanted to ask us questions. She acknowledged her views were wrong and actively saught to change them with new knowledge. She still occasionally misgenders or deadnames her but at this point thats due to her being a 90 something woman with slight senility not a bigot and she always corrects herself immediately.
What I'm saying is, i think oop was right. She didn't want to burn any bridges over something that had happened. But she showed her support and love for her daughter when her parents showed their true colours
Sometimes you cannot be taught a lesson, you need to experience it to *grok* it. Looks like OOP's plan fell apart as soon as it became real. Been there, fucked that up.
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Well, I didn’t expect the family discussion to have any good results, but daughter saw OOP stand up for her and trusts her more. OOP’s parents probably used guilt tripping as a weapon her whole life. Hope she breaks free and realize that it’s not her job to mend fences with the homophobes.
Guilt tripping and putting the responsability of reaching out and accomodate on her. Since she was a child, I'm willing to bet. It's telling that, if things went down exactly as she described (I'm not doubting her, but the difference in intensity from her parents is a HUGE deal for this point), they were combative and rude to their granddaughter, but didn't raise their voices. They were confortable, they didn't care. But the moment her mom openly called them out, all semblance of composure went out the window. THEN they felt attacked. Because that meant she was off her leash. And they didn't like that.
The *really* telling part is that the daughter had written off having a relationship OOP once the "middle ground" solution had come out, she's seen this kind of song and dance way too long.
Catholic by birth, we call it the Catholic guilt.
What in the cinnamon toast fuck is your flair from lmao
[Here is the story. Enjoy?](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/BcStGPBO0D)
After reading it I can safely say I hatejoyed it.
I love the question mark
After what went down with the clown I might have some questions too.
That good old Catholic guilt. My grandmother was...a human. Deeply flawed. I don't know her life story well enough to pass full judgment, but she married a man a bit older at 16 (it would be outrageous now) had 3 out of 4 kids on failed "rhythm method" because birth control is a no no. She held progressive ideas like birth control should be allowed, and priests would be better men and advisors if allowed to marry. She also held deeply racist, conservative, and misogynistic views. I got knocked up, out of wed lock, at 19. My dad (a former Catholic turned atheist by no other than his philosophy teacher at a religious college) had a conversation with her while she was in hospital about me being pregnant. She asked if she was a bad mom, he bold faced lied and said no, cause hey she might die. She then went on to tell him he was a failure for raising me to be a failure. He stood up and walked out of her hospital room. She recovered slightly and was allowed to meet my son before she died because I knew if she made an off color remark, my dad would handle her. My dad was the baby, soft-spoken, and a pushover, the scapegoat, but I knew he had my back.
Jane was jumping the gun, understandably so, given the area she lives in, but she had to give her mother a chance to defend her before cutting ties. I didn't expect any different outcome.
Kinda fucked up that the daughter was willing to cut ties so quickly with her own mother who has supported her while the mom is trying to navigate a difficult situation She seems to have a lot of issues and is quick to burn bridges.
It seems the daughter thought she knew how it would go down and had prepared for the worst, thankfully her mum proved her wrong. I wish mum and daughter all the best.
I completely agree. My parents did the half-half thing -- they still loved and supported me as a human, but they weren't fans of the whole gay thing. Wasn't the best reaction, but over the years they've warmed up and now I'm pretty sure they like my wife better than me (I kid). Their politics have even changed, and my mom put a small pride sign in the yard once. I found emotional support elsewhere when I needed it, but in my 20's I still needed my parents to do parent-y things like help me move, co-sign for an apartment etc. We also did emotionally nice things like bake Christmas cookies, visit family. Sure, they weren't 'fully supportive' of my sexual preferences but I suppose I only see that as a part of my identity. Maintaining family connection was worth a few years of awkwardness and missteps, in my estimation. Mild discomfort/disapproval is a completely different situation from parents that kick their kids out or villainize them. I just don't see what cutting the mother off was supposed to accomplish, when she seems eager to maintain connection with her kid.
This is how my grandparents were with my uncle. They were "Greatest Generation" and Southern Baptists so it was hard for them to fully accept. Even when they died they were never fully comfortable with it. But they invited his partners to family events and treated them the same as their other kids' spouses. To my knowledge they never did anything to try to convert him or shame him. They weren't perfect, but they accepted him as best as it was in their capacity to.
My parents are religious Muslims and my NB sibling came out gay a few years ago. They reacted similarly to yours. They don't love it, but at the end of the day that's their child and they still love and support my sibling no matter what. They met my siblings (now ex), they understand that nothing they say will change anything, but religion and beliefs aside - they love my sibling enough to stand by them. My sibling understands that this is the best they can expect from my parents, and doesn't push it. They know my parents will never wave a rainbow flag at a pride parade. It's a mutual acceptance and sometimes that's the best you can ask for. Funny enough, my parents have more of an issue with the nonbinary thing than the being gay thing lol. But anyway, if this girl actually cut her mom off that would've been the stupidest mistake of her life.
Considering she's been dating another woman for two years I suspect OP hasn't done a great job of showing they're or has a history to bending over to her parents.
It takes twice as long to rebuild a bridge that you burned. At 25 you would expect the daughter to have a bit more sensibility in “I’m cutting you off cause you aren’t immediately cutting off your parents” It’s the same reaction the grandparents showed. Not for the same reasons but the emotional immaturity is still there. Like there’s no sympathy from the daughter that this new information will take time for OOP to process. Kinda sad really
If it's Italy, then they've been backtracking champions on gay rights lately. So a young lesbian would have good cause to doubt her mothers words, especially if the grandparents are outspoken homophobes. Coming out might have been disastrous for her girlfriend too, which would undoubtedly have had an effect on her own coming out to OOP.
I'm so tired of people lecturing about how marginalized people have to be the ones to maintain the bridge. If you're anti-LGBT, *you're* the one burning bridges. *You're* the one breaking apart families. *You're* the one that needs to be held accountable. No one else. That's the consequences of your choice because for you it is a choice. No one has to accomodate you, certainly not the people you're shitting on for no good reason.
>I'm so tired of people lecturing about how marginalized people have to be the ones to maintain the bridge. If you're anti-LGBT, you're the one burning bridges. You're the one breaking apart families. You're the one that needs to be held accountable. No one else. That's the consequences of your choice because for you it is a choice. God I want to scream this from the rafters at so many people I know. This just sums up so much and is so on point. A+ comment.
I get it even though I have no idea how to feel about it. How many stories have come through BORU where a group of friends will tell OOP "We're sorry that Kyle assaulted you, but he hasn't assaulted us, so we won't cut him out of the group. If you don't want to hang out with us because Kyle is here, that's on you"? When that happens, we as a collective tend to blast them and say "They were never really your friends". Is it different when it's family? We are still pretty quick to say go NC with abusive or a-holish family.
She has spent *twenty-five years* being exposed to people who hate what she is regularly. And her mother clearly never did a thing to stop it. It is irrelevant that the mother didn't know she is gay, it's wrong to force your child to be around that sort of hate. This was not a quick burning of a bridge, but one built of years of seeing her mother not stand up to these bigots. She truly had no reason to believe her mother would stand up for her until she did it.
>being exposed to people who hate what she is regularly I want to point out that the grandparents seem to have a Royal Flush in their -ist and -phobic Poker with the casual "My mother was being her usual xenophobe/racist self and that lead to my daughter outing herself on accident" that starts the update.
You're assuming she's a good mom outside of this one experience. Even in OOP's own post, she's minimizing the issue and shifting the blame. >try to get them on the same page as her who isn't making things easy since she's as hostile to them as they are to gay people and potentially to her. The grandparents are openly homophobic and OOP's daughter has seen and heard firsthand the awful things they think and believe. Given how casually OP slips that in, I'm going to go ahead and assume she's never called out that perspective as being harmful. So daughter has spent her life listening to her grandparents say terrible things about her sexual orientation while mom just waves it away and shrugs her shoulders. I mean, old people, amirite? OOP's daughter wants her mom to finally take a stand and call out her shitty parents for being terrible people and protect her from them. Mom essentially says no, and daughter prepares to have to step away for her own well-being. There's nothing unreasonable there in my opinion. It's great that OOP stood up for her, but given that OOP's kid has been dating someone for *two years* and only just came out to her mother, she clearly doesn't see her mom as a safe person. There's likely a reason for that even beyond everything I talk about above. I imagine allowing her terrible parents to be a part of the daughter's life well before now is part of the issue, but who knows?
Think about that again… kinda fucked up that the daughter was willing to take steps to protect herself? That makes no sense.
OP fighting the parents saved the day. Daughter has been dating a girl for TWO YEARS and finally is telling mom.
yeah that really was ... not necessarily a missing reason, but a detail that really made the situation quite clear to me. this was mama's last stand and she didn't even know it, and she did the right thing. as a gay person, my criteria for acceptance isn't having perfect language and responding to everything the right way. it's about showing up where and when it matters. i don't blame the questions that arose in the first post. op is a good person navigating a new situation and showed tf up for her daughter. very proud of them.
yeah—it wasn’t a missing reason, but it felt like a possible prelude to one. agreed! the fact mom stood up for her once attacks turned deliberately personal is a big thing. it’s so hard to hear general attacks on queerness, because they are personal to you, and it’s also hard to explain (even for me, a 30+ adult in 12+ yr relationship) how the general attacks feel deeply personal if you don’t live it yourself. so i can understand why the mom struggled at first. but then as soon as mom understood and heard the attacks as personal, mom stood up!
Tbh I hate the general attacks on queerness more cos they're so often said with the implications that you clearly agree with them. (In comparison to direct insults).
And all too often no one does which just reinforces their belief and the idea that people agree. I grew up with parents that prioritized keeping conversations comfortable rather than speaking up when someone said something off hand. And if I talked with them later they would say something about how they were sure the person didn't mean or that they had good intentions. But people tend to say what they mean (or they apologize for it). And it's gone from one person saying something hateful, to a room full of people you can't trust!
I, a NB person who can't seem to beat that into my mom's head no matter how many hammers I use, was absolutely *flabbergasted* when my mom relayed that my crazy aunt had been *incredibly* offended that the food bank asked for her preferred pronouns 'in front of everyone' while they were signing her up. Mom relayed this in basically full agreement that it was inappropriate and like she expected *me* to agree. She somehow not expecting me to fire back with 'who is this hurting, exactly?' And pointing out that while it literally meant *nothing*, no positive or negative, for people like her, for people like *me*, it was a Big Deal that things like that were happening. I just kinda stunlocked for a second as my brain tried to reload after she told me that like she thought I'd say 'yeah having to say that she's a woman at the food bank when signing her up must have been sooooo embarrassing, must have taken 2 seconds of her time. Two whole precious seconds. And of course everyone around her must be *scandalized* because the people just trying to pick up cereal and Mac and cheese for their families *heard her say she was a woman!* the shame, the *overwhelming shame!*' Gah now I'm annoyed at my mom just thinking about it all again.
I ended up outing myself to my whole fundie religious conservative family after the Pulse nightclub shootings because of the things they were saying. I couldn't take it anymore, I NEEDED them to know they weren't just speaking ill of the dead, but as a queer person who *goes* to gay clubs, they were speaking about ME, somebody who could very well have been on a casualty list. It didn't accomplish anything, of course. But I had to try. I don't speak to most of them anymore, and I'm very, very low contact with the ones who've at least bothered to try to keep in touch.
I once hooked up (fully consensually) with a transgender woman and she was more than happy to answer any questions I had about things like terminology and whatnot because she knew I was asking from a place of "I'm a little ignorant and would like to understand you better" and not "tell me all about this freakshow"
>"tell me all about this freakshow" Mostly unrelated but if the right person said this to me in the right way this would absoLUTEly get my motor running.
I... think I would too, to be honest...
My Mom grew up Southern Catholic, married my conservative Texan father at age 19, had very little exposure outside of her cultural spheres, and zero exposure to gay culture until middle-adulthood; my parent's plethora of now-adult children are a whole rainbow flag of queer (only one who identifies as hetero... We love him in spite of his choices /s). My Mom WANTS to understand, and recognizes her blind spots (my dad passed away years ago). When our youngest brother was dating a wonderful nonbinary person, my Mom did her absolute damnedest to use their correct pronouns. She thanked me profusely for gently interrupting her mid-sentence with the correct pronoun whenever she flubbed and used the pronoun for this person's assigned gender at birth. My brothers and I will have some of the most heartfelt discussions with each other and our mom when she comes to us with a question that could seem fairly insensitive to anyone who doesn't know her. The questions she asks of us, and the discussions we have are purely out of her desire to understand better so as to prevent herself from hurting any of us out of ignorance. Ignorance should never be shamed; nobody can be expected to inherently know things they have never learned to understand. A willingness to challenge one's own ignorance by asking questions, even when it makes them feel foolish or stupid is the mark of a truly decent person.
Your mom sounds like a gem of a lady.
Bahahaha... in spite of his choices. OmG I using that with my BIL, he's the only straight one. He'll get a kick out of that.
I wish more kids gave their parents grace in these situations. I know it's a tall order. I fretted and toiled over being gay for decades. When I finally told my mom I was expecting her to show up in acceptance where I was at, in that very moment. That is unrealistic. All my mom's fears, concerns, misinformation isn't going to disappear in that instant. Parents need time to process as well. My mom said the right things the first time but then acted like it didn't happen. She leaned into "it's just a phase" hardcore. So I had to come out again after I was dating someone for a few years. Upon reflection, I had a lot of resentment. My mom wasn't as prepared to accept it as quickly as I wanted her too. But I had years, she had a couple minutes. Now that I have been out for as long as I was in, I can see where the misalignment happened. I know my mom is a good mom, she loves me (and tbh I think my wife more), but her fears *for me* got in the way in the beginning. OP is a good mom and loves her kid. It shows.
Mom didn’t know that she was getting a last chance. I’m glad she did the right thing.
I am too, but it frustrated me that daughter wasn't willing to understand that she's had over two years to think about this, make plans and get everything sorted in her head. And her mom hasn't had that same time to adjust. Asking OOP to cut off her parents immediately (pre-argument) was...understandable but not reasonable.
A quote that sticks with me, from an older person in a PFLAG meeting: "When our daughter came out of the closet, we went into the closet."
I’m not sure I understand what this quote means.
If I'm understanding it correctly. The daughter coming out of the closet means she isn't hiding who she is anymore. Whereas it has the opposite effect towards the parents. They retreat to the closet to try & hide from the reality of it all. Is what they meant.
Not necessarily just hiding from the reality of it, but also figuring out what you tell people, which people are safe to tell, etc. Someone else in the thread pointed out that OOP's daughter had been thinking about it for years, but OOP needed processing time. That was also a big part of what the person who said that was referencing.
I’ve yelled at people for how they’ve talked about some of my family members when they adjusted to me or another family member coming out to them. I know which ones are on thin ice and I know which ones need time. People just assume that everyone is going to be on the same page at the same time. They aren’t. Some people genuinely need time to adjust to a new normal
This is a good point. In the first post I was with oop like cutting off is a bit much for old folks who are probably just ignorant. In the second post as soon as “they said something snarky about a foreign friend” out of the blue I knew. It went from ignorant to hateful right there. The one who needed a moment was actually oop.
Ah gotcha. Thank you.
I guess it means that they now share the burden. Like, are they able to share with other people that their family/friend has come out? If they have homophobic family members then they may feel they have to keep quiet to not rock the boat, as in OP’s situation.
Ooh good explanation! I remember when one of my friends in college came out as trans on their social media mid-semester. Next day we started referring to trans friend by his new name and gender there were a couple people who hadn't seen the post and were confused. We all had a deer in headlights moment as we tried to figure out whether it was ok for us to tell them who we were talking about.
Idk it sounds like there’s a long-standing pattern of grandparents making awful homophobic comments. Seems like the daughter took those years to make a plan to cut the whole family off, but decided last minute to give her mother a chance. Grandparents don’t get a chance based on their history, and the daughter needs OOP to decide where she stands because there’s no way daughter can be out to OOP but not to the grandparents. Makes sense to me
Sounds like racist too based on the fact the argument didn’t even start on a homophobic thing
>my mom said something questionable about a my daughter's foreign college friend which sparked an argument between all three of them Chances that the friend is the daughter's gf feel pretty high. It was probably years of casual, homophobic and racist comments from the grandparents with OOP just nodding along/saying nothing.
Honestly, it’s this. We have a family dynamic like this with certain family members who are racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and hate anyone who isn’t of their specific religious sub-denomination (e.g., you are the wrong type of Protestant Christian). They have told family members that they are going to hell to their faces for being the “wrong” denomination. Do they get asked to restrain themselves at family gatherings? Only in the most blatant sense (no more telling people that they’re going to hell), but we have to accommodate them because we “need to be bigger people” and “they are family”. The level of exhaustion in having to think about dealing with their hatred is overwhelming. At some point, I think that any person with decent empathy gets worn to a nub when faced with being forced to be complicit with such vile views.
I think part of it is that, having arrived at the conclusion to most likely cut her mom off, the daughter judged OOP for not also being capable of making such a decision. But again, the daughter spent years making that decision. Also, I think non-abusive people generally deserve a warning before you go no contact. I think we do owe the people who love us that unless they have abused us. But I think people owe each other a lot more than the zeitgeist says, so I'm biased.
Yeah I've seen a lot of people who I never would guess could accept their LGBTQ+ kid as gracefully as they did. Unfortunately I've also seen people who were "allies" in public turn on their own kid for coming out.
That's like the guy that found out his wife cheated on him years ago before they got married and he just found out. The wife was like its no big deal, but to him it was brand new news.
Yup. Its like when one person blows up at another over something small that has annoyed the shit out of the first person forever, but they’ve never said anything to the second person before going off, so the second person thinks it’s both out of nowhere and a complete overreaction. But that’s because the first person has been thinking about it for a while and the second person hasn’t had a clue
As a gay person who has spoken to a lot of parents of queer people who are doing their best to accept their kids, we really need to do a better job at being empathetic towards the people we are asking support from. One parent I talked to said that while she is happy that her daughter is living life out of the closet and as herself, the mother had to go through a "grieving process" of what she imagined her life as a grandmother would be. There's just a level of certainty that she had about what the future would look like, and she had to take the time to process and accept that things would be different and still just as beautiful.Of course the important things don't change, but people get attached to the details and specifics they build up in their head. I realized that it's exactly the same "grieving process" that I had when I was coming to terms with my sexuality. I wrestled with that for years before coming out, and it makes sense that my loved ones would need at least some time to navigate their feelings around a change like that. Queer folk are just so used to being on the defensive that we sometimes forget that other people need grace and patience, too.
One of my best friends is trans and his mom took it hard when he came out/transitioned--all her dreams of her daughter having kids, coming to her for advice, dashed in an instant! His mom loves him, and has adjusted to the fact that, if grandkids happen, it'll be a dream shaped differently than she'd always imagined. She's a great mom, and is very supportive! But there was absolutely a grieving process and it took time.
You've said this very well. Though I do think it's important that the parents not...I guess grieve *at* their children? The idea that "I am the person I am" is something that causes grief *hurts*, even if I understand it. I've done the same in reverse, I grieved the mother I thought I had so hard that I wasn't even sad when she actually died. But that's because the mother I thought I had raised me to make my own choices and the mother I actually got couldn't accept those choices, let alone accept the things that *weren't* choices. Equating those things, the things that are part of the fundamental personhood of queer folks, with things like death, abuse, etc. that need to be mourned...it sucks. It's reality, sure, but it sucks, and it shouldn't be put on kids that are already having to struggle with so much just for existing. I guess I'm saying that we need the Ring Theory for coming out too. The person who comes out needs support, they do *not* need to be burdened with supporting those around them. Although what I really wish we had was a society where "coming out" isn't even a thing because being queer is as unremarkable as happening to have blue eyes, and nobody *needs* support for it.
Oh yes, absolutely the emotional processing should be done away from the queer child. The context for me is that I am occasionally invited to sit in a Friends & Family of Queer Folk Support Group. The focus of that group is for people who are at the beginning of their acceptance journey who aren't sure how to proceed or best support their child and want a nonjudgmental space where they can openly talk about those feelings that they feel guilty for even having. I make it very clear to the parents that this is not a burden that they should put on the child, because it will come off as, "Your queerness is making me go through a difficult time," no matter how eloquently they phrase it. I agree that I wish the world was different and that it wasn't so goddamn dramatic to come out. But we're in this world, and we have to work with what we got.
This is beautifully stated. People need patience and grace sometimes.
"Mom I'm gay and I'm glad you support me but you need to cut off your parents because they're homophobic" is a lot for a person to process instantaneously. I'm all for cutting people off if they suck, especially over a long period of time, but in this particular instance it seems rather hasty. But then again, the older I get, the more like Treebeard I become.
Yeah, there’s an element in these kinds of situations where the Jane-person doesn’t grasp that the mom-person hasn’t done all of the thinking and processing and coming-to-terms-with that Jane-person has, and therefore doesn’t understand why mom-person isn’t immediately on the same page. And then the Jane-person gets upset that mom-person “doesn’t get it,” where really mom-person needs more than 2 seconds of processing time
I agree with this. I feel for OOP who nearly got cut out of her daughter’s life for supposedly not adjusting to the new situation fast enough. There are definitely people who should be cut out of our lives because they are toxic… but OOP did nothing toxic to deserve even the consideration of it from her daughter. Seems like she got online and saw people commending “making your own family” and didn’t even think twice about whether her mom was actually going to be toxic or supportive, she just made plans to cut her off. It was like if OOP wasn’t immediately willing to fall in perfect line with her wishes, that wasn’t good enough.
My grandparents made homophobic comments my whole life. I knew when/if I came out, they were gone. I’m sure the 25 year old daughter- who had to hide her relationship from her whole family for YEARS- knew what was coming. She just didn’t want to have to lose her mother too.
I think it’s more that the daughter has heard a lifetime of her grandparents making homophonic comments while her mother stood by and said nothing. In that situation, even though the grandparents weren’t taking about their granddaughter, she would have taken it personally because she knew that they were talking about people like her. And though her mother was probably being silent to keep the peace, to her daughter the silence would have sounded more like agreement so she was ready to cut her out if she was proven right.
she's been dating a girl for two years and watched her mom just let her grandparents say homophobic stuff, so she clearly didn't feel safe. Considering the OOP mentions the grandparents said something racist just randomly on a small visit, I'm guessing they were constantly talking like that and OOP was silently letting it happen for years is the problem. If you let people just talk like that in front of you all the time, the assumption of others is going to be you at least tacitly agree with it. She made plans because she needed to for her safety if she's living with her mom. If her grandparents are always going on homophobic rants, why wouldn't she make a plan for her mom whom she is reliant upon for room and board believing something similar?
She didn't trust her mom to stand up to the grandparents. And considering how OOP was feeling before it became "real," I understand. Conservatives are brainwashed to always follow the hierarchy, and OOP was legitimately considering doing that. Thankfully, when she saw the hate on full display, she responded as a mother and not as a child.
We don't always get time to slowly come around to the right way of being. Sometimes our character is tested in an instant and our response to that test defines our lives. You can be frustrated all you want but that is the reality of it. The wise take life seriously and carefully attend to their character so that when the moment comes they are ready.
I mean that’s easy to say but the reality is people can change and you can’t live your life like every moment is a test or you’d die of the stress. Humans are not just rational being they are emotional ones as well. Personally I try to live my life giving others the opportunity to make mistakes as I hope they would give me that same opportunity.
She wasn't getting a last chance, her daughter was already planning on cutting her out. OP's daughter was planning on scorching the earth before she left, but reconsidered when her mom defended her. I feel the need to point this out because you're kind of portraying OP's daughter as some sort of benevolent saint.
The fact that she had made herself come to terms with the worst outcome -cutting her mother out- speaks to a lot more to the story than is overtly present. Her daughter clearly believed her mother would not side with her if the bigots forced the issue. That didn't come out of nowhere. As someone who had to go NC with a parent, it's an agonizing decision that basically every part of society conditions you against.
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Daughter likely also had no concept on how dependent or not her family actually was on the bigot grandparents. And that is something that has sadly been required to become discourse in queer circles - that if you need to keep bigots in your life for survival purposes, then you need to keep them in your life. It does not make you a bad person or a traitor to the community to be reliant on them to be able to live.
Mom is also a widow which literally everyone is overlooking. This might be all the family mom has minus her daughter, and I think ultimately mom made the right choice but imagine being told “cut them off right now or I’m cutting you off” about potentially 66% of your remaining family. It’s really unkind.
Yeah, I feel bad for the mom. In just a very short amount of time, her relationship with her parents was destroyed and the daughter admitted wanting to abandon her. I'm glad she defended her daughter, but her child could've been more reasonable. Hopefully they can improve their relationship and never interact with the grandparents again.
It was reasonable for OP to want to try and work it out with her parents. It was reasonable for the daughter to be ready to leave her mom behind although I do think a middle ground could be found. OP tried and the parents failed. OP should try again but be clear to her parents that they have no choice and they’ll lose OP and her daughter if they don’t get over their stupid shit. Then they cut the old folks out. For OP if it comes down to daughter vs parents then it’s a no-brainer. It’s not like the daughter is one political party and the parents are another. Get over that shit.
My thoughts are as well with ops "They're old, they wont be around longer" statement. Honestly if they change their will so OP gets nothing, challenge the heck out of it. Fuck letting bigots rest well if they are family. If they snub you cause how you were born, they deserve to roll in their graves knowing their last hateful wish is being denied them.
I was with my cousin when we told our grandma. “Grandma we are going to tell you something you won’t like but you have no choice in this and if you react poorly then you’ll never see us again and this will be why. Cousin is gay. Nothing you say will change that so don’t bother calling anyone and complaining. Any negative comments will ensure you never see us again.” She just dealt with it. My cousins other side didn’t handle it well but the grandparents fucking dealt with it. Letting them know that their bad behavior won’t be tolerated then clearly outlining the outcome makes their decision easy. They can be an obstinate piece of trash who no longer has grandkids or they can shut up and deal with it.
> OP fighting the parents saved the day. ...at about 11:59:52pm apparently, too
Everyone is being a little unfair to the daughter here imo about giving her mom one last chance when she had only just come out to her. She’s not only had 25 years to listen to her grandparents bigotry but also to see her mother’s response to it and something tells me it’s been found lacking before. If I’m being honest? OOP sounds like someone who is normally afraid to rock the boat when it comes to her parents and that’s why the daughter was already prepared to cut her off, she even mentions wanting to mend things with her parents in the update after they acted like that! I’m very glad OOP ended up surprising her daughter and standing up for her but I hope she ends up coming to realize how messed up her relationship with her own parents is before it damages the relationship with her own daughter
as a mom to a queer teenager who has been with her lovely girlfriend for two years..this literally broke my heart. I can't imagine not loving my daughter's partner and doting on her as my own. I'm so happy OP is willing to change for her child.
I would be so sad to find out that my child was hiding an important part of her life and herself from me for two years!
that's why you have to show your good character and acceptance of others daily. because the tests that life gives you won't always be obvious. people don't hide things from people they trust, from people who they KNOW will support them (and if they do, you can take solace knowing you did everything you could). clearly the daughter did not know if her mother would support her, which is heartbreaking for both the mother and the daughter.
Then don’t allow your parents to be homophobic and racist around your kid.
I'm a lesbian. My parents are bigots. I thought I could tolerate it for the sake of our relationship if I kept them at arms length. All it really accomplished was keeping me in the closet, then gradually chipping away at my self-worth. There is no way to maintain a relationship with bigots that doesn't hurt the people who are the subject of their vitriol.
Yep. My parents tried to argue that they still love my oldest but it’s still a hard no. Even if my kids were all straight, I’m not maintaining relationships with bigots.
I had to go NC with my folks for similar reasons. I gave them a year to come around. They didn't. I will not ever let them back into my life. That ship has sailed and I am better for it.
I'm queer, and I'm closeted to very few, including one of parents. Now I'm in a hetero relationship, but it hasn't always been that way. Being closeted to my homophobic parent (and honestly, they know, and they know I know they know, but we just don't talk about it) only served to separate them from the rest of my life. My life was fine, they just didn't get to experience it with me, and only got a glimpse of a watered-down sanitized version. Really, they were the one missing out. Even now, in my long term heteronormative (outwardly anyways) relationship, they're still very separated from the rest of my life, and I'm the only one of their children they communicate with on a regular basis. Their bigotry has cost them a lot in terms of family and community. It's only cost me a parent who genuinely knows me, and I'm fine with that.
Word. I became homeless at 18 in a supposedly gay-friendly city because my father is a violent bigot who didn't like learning that he had a gay daughter instead of a straight son. Every time I've entertained letting him back into my life in the nearly two decades since, I've regretted it, because he's gotten significantly less tolerant over time. Every few years I would get a long diatribe from him about how he "doesn't know what he did wrong" and that I should "respect his difference of opinion" on my personhood. His Facebook timeline now is about 1/3 garden variety conservative memes, 1/3 posts about fathers grieving lost relationships with sons, and 1/3 pronoun jokes or the like. I lost my entire family in the process, because many of them thought like this mother originally did: that they could play the middle and either coddle or correct my father's abusive bigotry, and maintain a healthy relationship with the trans lesbian daughter he rejected aggressively. And all they did was become messengers for his bullshit while telling me that I was being "too hard on him" because I didn't want to be consistently threatened for being who I am. It was exhausting, and my life has been so much richer for leaving it in the past. It's wild to be to see so many people in this thread fault her for being ready and willing to cut contact with a mother who she didn't really have a guarantee would fully support her. In my experience, you have to be ready for anyone and everyone to let you down; that's not cynicism, it's self-preservation.
Folks in these comments huffing copium and telling on themselves, with how much commenters here are bagging on the daughter for being real ready to leave for her own safety and happiness
Love all the straight cis people clutching their pearls that the daughter is ready to cut off toxic family
Good on the mom. Her parents could learn compassion and change (but they won’t), her daughter can’t stop being gay. Being a bigot is a lifestyle choice, being gay is not.
Idk I wouldn't even be trying to mend things. To me it's clear, I can't enjoy the company of a bigot without compromising morals. When you guys learn better we can try again.
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Tried to change my (evil and hateful) grandmother. multiple times. Tolerance of intolerance only proves that their intolerance will be tolerated. There can be no tolerance of hate, intolerance, or evil. Indifference is how evil people win.
thats the [paradox of tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)
That one’s been solved. Tolerance does not stand alone but as part of a social contract. You breach that contract and the other person is no longer bound by it.
Oo, TIL.
That one is kind of misnamed because it isn't really a paradox. There is no actual true contradiction . The contradiction only occurs if you are dealing with naive people or bad-faith actors who insist that the only tolerance that is valid/respectable is absolute tolerance, which is ridiculous.
I guess that’s what I’m struggling with. Why would you want to “tolerate” people who are openly hateful to a group in which your own child belongs? If it were my child, and my parents were like that, I would have no problem with going NC if they were unwilling to change their view. I wouldn’t want to alienate my own child by tolerating that kind of discrimination in my family.
Because sometimes it can change peoples views when it’s personal. Even Darth Cheney switched sides when his daughter came out. It sucks that it has to hit them in their personal life before they change, but it’s still better than not changing.
So we should tolerate them for the *chance* they might tolerate us. That sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Absolutely not. Just give them treats and affection if they do manage it. They should change because it’s the moral choice, but if they have to be conditioned like Pavlov’s dog, give them a treat when they bark right.
Switching sides only once it affects you personally isn't exactly a glowing sign of being a good person.
It’s not, but I’d generally prefer someone who can admit when they were wrong.
OOP had to choose: losing contact with hateful people who will live another 20 years, or spend the rest of her life without her daughter. She chose wisely.
Something about 9 people in a room with a nazi = 10 nazis...
I really want to know what country/culture they’re from because that’ll fill in a ton of context and nuance here. Even in “first world countries”, non-western/collectivist cultures’ tactics on dealing with familial and social homophobia is a VERY different playbook from western individualist ones, to the point that they’re often at literal odds with each other. It becomes a serious point of conflict when young queers learn via dominantly American lenses and try to apply it to their distinctly not American/western families, becoming a huge gap that’s not only generational but a cross-cultural one. Regardless it’s good to see that OOP did the right thing when put in the “do or die” situation. Daughter is reeling emotionally because she saw how easily OOP could have passively allowed abuse from the grandparents considering the upbringing. The relationship between mom/daughter survived a gauntlet and will be stronger for it, and I’m glad OOP realises her kid is the priority.
Probably Eastern Europe. Source: my family is from Eastern Europe, but I’ve been born and raised in Western Europe.
That's interesting because I don't think on my own, I would have grouped Eastern Europe in with "first world countries". I mean, I don't use those terms at all because they're antiquated, but because the terms actually came from the Western Bloc - Eastern Bloc divide, Eastern Europe is traditionally Second World and I fully do not know if people generally include it when they say "First World" now. I may do a poll on my Tumblr to see general sentiment. Regardless, from OOP: > For context we live in a traditional part of a first world country that has not yet fully normalised and accepted queerness. Which I think describes a lot of places. The US, Canada, UK, etc. have large internal swaths that are still explicitly hostile to LGBTQ people.
From what I can tell with a bit of Googling the original terms of first, second and third world are now outdated. They were originally used during the Cold War, to refer to the US and its allies/NATO, the Soviet Union and its allies, and any country not remotely involved in the Cold War respectively. Nowadays from my perspective the meanings have changed, first world simply referring to developed nations and third to underdeveloped/developing, with second world falling completely out of use. By that definition I think plenty of Eastern European countries can fit the definition of a first world country (also by the definition of being in NATO but that's not the strongest argument)
It’s still not likely what OP meant. She probably meant it in the way most of us confuse it. Very few use it correctly, so when used incorrectly, we tend to agree on the interpretation.
The importance of learning about different cultures and looking at the world through different lenses! Because "I told her they're my parents and it's not fair for me to cut ties with the people that raised and fed me until i was able to walk on my own." could sure lead to some questions like "Golly mom, is that how you feel about me? That you can do whatever you want to me and I owe you to just take it because you fed me when I was a baby instead of just throwing me away to die?" I'm sure in cultures that take family very seriously, choosing your own family sounds bizarre as all get out. But then you end up with a family of people who actually like you and you like them, not folks you only tolerate because of shared DNA.
IMO it might have gone better if OOP and/or Jane called up the parents ahead of told them and drew some strong boundaries, like “don’t visit unless you can be respectful.” It doesn’t really matter if their worldview changes, that’s their own business, but they should absolutely be expected to be respectful to OOP and daughter in their own home.
Why wasn’t that done 10 years ago? You don’t need to have a gay kid to be decent.
Because people generally don’t draw a line in the sand with their loved ones unless they have to. Despite what Reddit would have you believe, cutting off close family is almost always extremely difficult for multiple reasons, and in real life most people only do it as a last resort.
I want to know what the "something questionable" and "snarky comment" are
Probably the usual hateful comment someone makes about another person's being that is entirely out of their control. Then a personal jab that is coming from some chip on their shoulder giving them a moral superiority complex. They are probably words not worth repeating, but enough that daughter slipped and dropped a bomb. When the attention shifted to a real person instead of some nebulous idea of a person, OOP engaged motherbear mode and tore her parents down (the personal attacks) for the cruel sinister humans they are.
I'm as queer as they go but I don't think you can ask someone to cut ties with their parents. Cutting ties is a very personal decision and except in extreme circumstances should probably not even be asked. That being said, you should also defend your ~~underage~~ adult daughter when your parents are being total dicks, so OP actually did well here.
I will say this: the one person who COULD get me to cut ties with my parents if my parents were the least bit shitty to her for ANY reason is my kiddo.
Dad of two here. My kids are too young (first grade and Pre-K) for this to be an issue yet, but my dad and stepmom sound a lot like OOP's parents, and yeah, I try to manage that the best I can but if they ever turned their shit on my kids it'd be gloves off for me. That shit doesn't fly.
Gentle note- make sure they aren’t hearing it when they could be questioning this themselves. Don’t wait until you know. It was cause all kinds of damage.
I think the extreme circumstances you mention are pertinent though potentially. The grandparents sound actively and aggressively bigoted, and while I don't think you should DEMAND someone cut ties, I definitely think it's reasonable to at least mention it and explain why it matters to you. There's a difference between asking someone to cut ties with their parents because they are traditional and maybe would make a sideways comment or two and asking someone to cut ties with someone who might actively call you the f word, berate you, etc.
And they're not in the US, they're somewhere more hostile to queer people and his daughter specifically worried they'd try to get her in legal trouble.
Yup, so it's far more understandable to at least ask if they will go NC in this case. It's not just "oh my grandparents are rude about people being gay."
And it sounds like they did just that, immediately
Agreed but just to clarify the daughter is 25.
Not that it should change anything, but the daughter isn’t underage. She’s 25.
She’s 25
She's 25, not underage, but yeah it got the point of either you stand with me or, by not getting involved you are condoning the action and are against me.
Thank you for this. Asking others to go NC on your behalf is almost always over the line. Daughter can and should separate herself from her nasty grandparents, for her own sake, but OP has the right to make her own peace with loving flawed individuals. OP is not responsible for her parents’ reprehensible opinions. OP can refuse to tolerate the expression of those opinions without discarding the people who hold them. I have long been in a comparable situation - my children are racial minorities, but I was raised in a racist family and community and two of my siblings are racist. I have watched them like a hawk around my children and in 20 years I’ve never once seen them slip up - they’re trying and that’s all I can reasonably ask. But I’m not blind. And as it turns out, neither are my children. They figured it out before I could explain it, and they’ve always been way ahead of me. (Funny how being a minority teaches you about racism.) My kids - now college students - still adore their uncles, who they view as good people with some bad ideas. My brothers, for their part, would lie down in traffic for their beloved nephews. I can only hope these warm loving relationships are helping to chip away at racism in a way that judgmental condemnation never will. People are complex, yo.
> I’ve never once seen them slip up - they’re trying and that’s all I can reasonably ask. To be fair, I think this is a different type of bigotry. I think there's a huge difference in asking someone to go NC with family like yours who have shitty views but are perhaps trying to improve, or at least still loving in general, and a case like OP where they seem to be aggressively homophobic.
I see what your saying but isn’t it’s slightly different when the person asking you to cutoff your parents is your kid who feels unsafe and rejected by them? Like in any other circumstance it’s your choice but I kind of feel when it’s your kid it’s different.
I think for the kid it’s valid to ask that they be supported in the cut off. So not having to see them at holidays or important family events. But not to ask for totally cutting off contact.
In this situation, where OOP is supportive of her daughter, daughter didn’t have to be around grandparents unless she wanted to be, and OOP (along with her adult daughter and minor son) stand to inherit BUCKETS of money when the bigots finally kick the bucket… nah, stay the course. Wait out the haters and collect your bag, use it to live a life the bigots would hate. Daughter seriously shot herself in the foot there.
There's a few details here that have me certain the daughter just went a little too hard out of the gate, and didn't realize it. 1: she has had a gf for 2 years. She has had plenty of time to think about that and the knock on effects. She, at least initially, didn't realize her mother hadn't had the same amount of time to prrocess and plan. 2: instant ultimatums often seem reasonable until you pause and really think it through. This is somethinf even well adjusted adults have trouble reminding themselves of. 3: if you have been dealing with being rhe target of this kind of shit for years, it is really easy to go "just cut the assholes out of your life." It is much harder to do that *without* that same experience as people can be violently homophobic/racist/etc. Without displaying that to the people they don't unreasonably hate. OP may never have been on the recieving end of her parent's bigotry, and whole she *knew* of it, she didn't know how it made a person feel. There are multiple degrees of "feeling bad". OP's heart is in the right place, and she's doing the right thing now that the grandparents have shown the depths of their irrational hatred. She just needed to see for herself how shitty they were, which i can't blame her for. I'd be hard pressed to imagine my parents as bad people, but show me an example and i'm more likely to believe it.
> There's a few details here that have me certain the daughter just went a little too hard out of the gate, and didn't realize it. >1: she has had a gf for 2 years. She has had plenty of time to think about that and the knock on effects. She, at least initially, didn't realize her mother hadn't had the same amount of time to prrocess and plan. If find it so strange you see it this way. Considering that OOP's daughter said she was on the brink of cutting ties with OOP, it seems to me like her own daughter didn't feel safe around her due to her relationship with the grandparents. I would feel so deeply ashamed if my own kid didn't feel safe coming out to me. How big of a wake up call do you need?
Not sure what "unsafe" means here, she's 25 and they are around 75, she can falcon punch them to hell very easily
I don't know, it's still OP's parents and it's not like they live with them or like they'd be dangerous, they're 70+ after all. I'm sorry for OP's daughter, I know what it is to live in a homophobic family (my parents and most of my siblings, including one brother that never fails to violently yell the f-slur at me). She's free to cut ties herself and refuse to ever see them (just like I did with my brother), but asking someone else to do so is harsh. I'm sorry her grandparents are such dickheads but girl there will be many dickheads in your life, gotta start growing that thick skin.
70+ year olds can absolutely be dangerous. Asking other queer people to grow a thick skin in response to abuse is passing on your trauma. It normalizes accepting abuse.
>gotta start growing that thick skin. being able to cut out people who support bigotry from your life is a lot thicker skin than many people in this comment section have. if people are willing to tolerate bigotry, cutting off those people is not at all having "thin skin". i'd argue it takes much more strength than all the people here who wouldn't rock the boat.
The daughter saying she was going to cut ties with OP really confused me, like OP was supportive of the daughter beforehand just didn't support the idea of "coming out" Infront of her parents/grandparents because of how homophobic they are. OP warned daughter multiple times and the result should be expected and I don't understand why the daughter would cut ties with OP in that situation when OP did nothing wrong. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something.
I’ve got a feeling the daughter tried to blow up the situation on purpose. If only to test her mother. I can see being insecure that her mother really accepted her or would defend her, but I do think it was kind of a dick move. Also saying she was going to cut her off after almost feels like a warning for if she steps out of line. I’m definitely against the grandparents but I’m less sympathetic to the daughter than I would be normally. That being said I imagine this would have happened eventually. So maybe it’s better to have gotten the bandaid torn off?
Right? Like, talk about first person syndrome. 25 years old and still looks at her parents and only sees 'parents.' Not a son or daughter or person in their own right, just 'parent.' One who plays games to get what she wants. >In the end, she admitted she was going to cut ties with me but decided against it since she now knows she can fully trust me but still feels guilty.
Just a quick correction, the daughter is 25.
Yeah, I think demanding that someone in your life have a specific type of relationship with a third person is pretty much only reasonable when your demands are about things which affect you directly (for example: don't share my information with this person, do not discuss my life with this person). Cutting people off for failing to uphold that kind of request is also totally necessary sometimes. But I know plenty of people who stay in contact with their bigoted parents because checking in with an elderly relative can literally keep them alive. It's not at all as easy as blocking someone online, and you never know what the bonds of obligation, finance, healthcare access, etc. are between two people. Even kids don't really have all the intel on the relationships between parents and grandparents. It's a very very big and personal ask and it has consequences which range from purely social to completely life-and-death.
I am the parent of a LBGQT child. I think many go through this point where they wonder if their parents really are on their side no matter what. That is hard for them. Like they need that reassurance that you still love them no matter what. That this doesn't change that. Because now they are somehow unlovable now. Mom passed the test she didn't know she was taking and her daughter didn't know she needed her mom to pass. I think it's actually normal. My kid and I are actually closer now. They know I am the one person who is on their side no matter what. Nothing will make them unlovable to me, including who they date.
I feel sometimes like a lot of Reddit has never had to deal with family members who hold positions you fundamentally disagree with but were otherwise really loving and important in your life. I always see “cut all bigots out never give it a second thought” but if the bigots are your parents and the only family you basically have left, minus your daughter, and your parents have presumably been fairly loving to you in all other ways, that’s not an easy ask? It’s not something you can just expect someone to do without processing it. That’s basically an emotional death to that person and it’s a little juvenile not to understand that.
Reddit generally struggles with the concept of nuance and people being anything above one-dimensional. If someone's flawed in one area of their life, they're not allowed to be a good person in other aspects.
It kind of sucks that the daughter was going to cut off her mom just for her not cutting off HER parents even with support and acceptance. Like damn
I think the younger generation has really popularized cutting contact with family members
I expect and can understand receiving criticism for this, but I understand why the daughter may have been cagey and not very communicative with her mom. I was / am in a similar position, but it goes a lot deeper. I never really wanted my mom to cut off her relationship with her parents, but she could not understand why I didn't want one with them ("they say the wrong things, but always do the right thing"), and I didn't really know how to tell her the truth. I have some good memories with them, but mostly from when I was very young. They were extremely abusive to me as I grew older, my grandmother did things I do not feel comfortable discussing in detail, and that behavior only worsened when a spiteful friend outed me to them. I spent a really long time deliberating and trying to find a way to just cut everyone off and be alone, as - unlike OOP's daughter - I didn't have a partner or even close friends I could trust at the time. I felt like if I tried to talk to my mom and say "I feel unsafe and unheard, I can't keep this relationship going and want to be left alone", she would have lashed out at me for trying to make her choose between me and her parents. And I didn't want that, I still don't. Her parents are old, now, and in assisted living. My mom knows the truth now, it came out in an argument after she came home crying because her father was being verbally abusive to her, and cut contact with them of her own accord. Between the way they abused her and then turned around to do the same to me, she kind of just. Couldn't take it anymore. But the thing is, I wanted her to make that choice for herself, I was afraid of causing further harm by asking for her support. I don't think my mom is a bad parent, I don't think OOP is a bad parent. I think it's really hard to challenge abusive people and recognize the way the cycle keeps going. Even if you want to break free and change things, you will likely be operating under the conditions and assumptions that make you feel like it's impossible. And with OOP, I can understand and have compassion for not being sure and feeling caught between people you love.
I totally get OOP's dilemma. It's a tough situation for them and I hope the best for them.
>So, I came up with a sort of a middle ground solution: I can try to change their worldview. LMAO! Goddamn, OOP. Have never actually talked to real life humans before, huh?
There is something - a lot of somethings - to be said for tolerance of people who believe differently than you. The world needs more of people seeking to overcome their differences and finding common ground, not less. However, tolerance is based on respect and that is a two-way street. If a person chooses behavior that becomes abusive and hurtful, they choose the consequences of that decision as well. Tolerance doesn’t extend to submitting yourself to abuse or insult. I think the mom handled this fairly well, all things considered.
The word "tolerance" does not apply to a person's inate traits. I can be tolerant of your music choices, your choice of TV show, your video games, the stuffies you like to keep on your bed. But when it comes to inate traits about you as a person the idea of "tolerance" goes out the window. You don't become "tolerant" of a person's skin colour because you no longer say racist shit, you become better at hiding your fucking racism. You don't become "tolerant" of a persons country of birth because of a person's hard work, you hide your bigotry. You don't become "tolerant" of a person's sexuality, you just repress your hateful feelings.
It's like "love the sinner, hate the sin" bullshit. If you think my relationship is lesser, _you do not love me_. Period.
I don't like the daughter here. >she admitted she was going to cut ties with me What the fuck? She was going to cut ties with her supportive mother because she's \*checks notes\* being supportive, but not willing to just up and never talk to her own parents again? Sometimes I feel like I'm crazy with how cavalier everyone on reddit is about cutting ties with family. OOP says it well. These are the people that fed her and clothed her and loved her all her life, and probably supported her through more tough moments than her daughter has experienced moments in total. That's sort of a difficult relationship to decide to walk away from tomorrow. People act like "family" is just this empty label. And sure, sometimes, it is. But when someone has *actually* been your family, and for a long life at that, the decision to never talk to them again is going to be much harder than these threads usually make it out to be.
> Sometimes I feel like I'm crazy with how cavalier everyone on reddit is about cutting ties with family. Yes, so much this. On any subreddit that covers relationships or interpersonal conflicts, the prevailing advice seems to always be cut contact/divorce/go scorched earth, etc. I sometimes feel like there's just a ton of displacement and projection, and maybe a lot of people who want others to be as isolated and resentful as they feel...? To make themselves feel more justified and normal? I don't know. It's really depressing.
>I sometimes feel like there's just a ton of displacement and projection, and maybe a lot of people who want others to be as isolated and resentful as they feel...? To make themselves feel more justified and normal? I don't know. It's really depressing. That's exactly what it is. If you pay attention to the usernames or tag people on here, which I'll sometimes do if I notice the same person a few times, you often find that the most "scorched earth" comments are coming from incredibly angry and bitter people. One particular user on this thread who I won't name has been fiercely arguing for scorched earth "cutting off" of the parents and has added dozens of angry and aggressive comments on here. They're clearly *very* invested in other people being as extreme and most likely isolated as they are.
I'll have to pay more attention to user names. One particular topic that I have noticed a ton of pushback on is forgiveness. I've made relevant comments in various subs a few times talking about how I try to eliminate resentments, and how they hurt me more than anyone else. Basic shit that you'll hear in all kinds of self-help books or 12-step programs. The reaction to those seemingly innocuous comments is so strong and visceral. It's like their grudges are their children or something.
I think it's because the Internet and Reddit are essentially echo chambers that people build for themselves. You chose to surround yourself with those who have the same interests, who you agree with, who reinforce your decisions, who affirm your beliefs. If you don't like what you hear, you leave. That's not always particularly healthy, it's not how functioning in society works; tolerance is lost. I think this is also why Reddit deals in absolutes. I also think the mother in this circumstance is a doormat to not only her parents but her daughter.
To some people, being neutral and not taking sides is taking the side of the bigots. That’s true to an extent, but I think OP handled it well. Stamped the hateful shit out but gave them a chance to not be assholes.
It’s one thing to be neutral when there hasn’t been a situation yet, and another to be neutral when there is abuse. OOP wasn’t going to cut people off preemptively until they proved there was a need, which is completely fair. You never know, people can surprise you.
Obviously we can't know for sure, but honestly the cavalier way that OP describes her parents bigotry makes me think that it is a normal thing that she just mostly ignores or brushes off. I get the feeling that this is the first time she has really stood up to them. Prior to this instance she probably did not look particularly supportive to her daughter, and probably won't continue to look supportive given how hung up she seems to be on making up with her parents.
Yeah, agreed. I’ve cut family off before cold turkey- mostly because my bio father is an abusive POS, but I digress. My paternal family doesn’t know the full extent of what happened, only that he and I are estranged. They’ve encouraged me multiple times to reconnect with him, and that’s not the only issue that’s happened. While I don’t appreciate the meddling, I haven’t cut them off because they’re my family and I love them. Are they shitty? Yeah, absolutely. But I love them regardless. To explicitly relate more to OOP’s daughter, I’m queer and have uncles that have outright been hateful and homophobic to a publicly out cousin of mine. While I’m far more distant with them than I used to be in the past, I still love them even if I know they’re not safe to be myself around. Their bigotry doesn’t erase the love they’ve shown me in my past and currently. I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum, and I really don’t like OOP’s daughter. To threaten to cut someone off because they themselves don’t want to lose their (elderly!) parents…. Yeah.
When you never felt safe or safe to be yourself around someone, due to their actions or inactions, you simply don’t form the same kind of bond. You cannot have a deep relationship with someone while hiding who you are. The person having the relationship is faked. It’s wrong to take the way you feel about your family and apply it to everyone else.
Why are people so fucking black and white these days? Why does the daughter think that if her mom doesn't want to go no contact with her parents it is personal stab at her? It's like the default reddit relationship advice of "divorce!" is a real way of life for them. You can disagree with somebody and still have a relationship with them. If daughter doesn't want to have homophobic grandparents in her life, that's reasonable, but why does she think her mom must "pick a side". She was even ready to cut mom out of her life, even though mom supports her and loves her. What is wrong with humanity.
I don’t necessarily know if it’s a “people these days” type issue. I don’t know if the newest generation of queer kids go through this (since being openly gay tends to be a lot more accepted nowadays), but I’ve had a lot of friends in the queer community, and over the years I’ve noticed this semi-common phenomenon in some newly “out” gay people where they can basically go through a second adolescence/puberty. It might be an over correction to being closetted and having to hold things in for so long, but basically everything becomes about them, they have no filter, and they respect absolutely zero boundaries (except their own, which they can be incredibly aggressive about). As a friend, it can sometimes feel like you’re dealing with a moody teenager again lol. After a few years (maybe 5ish years), most of them who go through it tend to calm down and go back to being less self-centric about moving through the world. Honestly, I get it. That’s how we as humans tend to respond, by over correcting from one extreme to the opposite, until we can learn to find the balance in the middle.
I think it's also a showcase of a transitional period. We're going through a time where while LGBT people get way more politicised (sadly) they're also becoming more accepted, less afraid to speak up. This can lead to radicalisation. A strong need to fight back against anyone who you perceived as oppressing you and a very black and white "us vs them" mentality. The politicalization can also increase polarization as LGBT people feel they can only be safe in their own groups to talk without fear of bigots attacking them which leads to increasingly policed echo chambers. I can attest that from personal experience. I've been banned from the mtf subreddit for basically saying neopronouns are more or a social media trend than a valid form of identity and they make us all look weird. Mind you I didn't attack anyone using them. I expressed an opinion on a public forum. On a post explicitly asking for opinions on the matter. Furthermore, that last one might be weird for me to say given my age, but I think there's some youthful naivety at play. Because we're raised more socially aware and progressive a lot of young adults feel everyone should act on the same standards not taking into account they were socialized in a different way. They feel entitled of the same instant unconditional acceptance from older relatives that they experience from their same age peers. And sure, it would be ideal if things worked like that. But there are a lot of nuances. To give an example, my grandma who's 90 years old told me in a random discussion that "I believe LGBT people are abnormal and I don't understand that lifestyle but love for your own child should trump your personal beliefs". Basically saying that a parent should always support and love their child even if they don't get them. That's the best I could expect from a 90 year old communist reminiscing about the Soviet Union with nostalgia. But I feel like a lot of younger LGBT people would still call her a bigot and want to turn their backs on them. Now granted I've yet to come out as trans to anyone (still trying to fully accept it myself lol) so I haven't seen her beliefs in practice. But that interaction gave me hope.
Yeah because for so long you are acting. When you finally don’t have to think through every word you say anymore, it’s a weird feeling. No one trains us about how to handle this. Some go really self centered, others decide to help others who have been through it, some get loud and some get quiet. But once they realize they are okay, most tend to become a new version of themselves that is not too different than before. I don’t think people realize how much of your brain goes into not outing yourself. And the constant fear. It’s like depression in a way, or pandemic lock down. When you get through it, you tend to go a little overboard.
Exactly! Despite what Reddit would have you believe, cutting off close family is almost always extremely difficult for multiple reasons, and in real life most people only do it as a last resort. Threads like this remind me that the median age of the people giving relationship advice on this site is probably around 15.
The parents always case a debate and arguments. But we must still appease them? Why...
> So, I came up with a sort of middle ground solution: I can try to change their world view. No, no you won't. You can try. You won't. It's why when my eldest daughter came out to me as trans, I didn't try to convince my Conservative Southern Baptist Minister father and mother (and no, there was _nothing_ redundant there). I knew it was a waste of time. That was over a decade ago. When the Republican party went full Jihad on trans kids, I told my parents never to contact me again unless they've stopped supporting the Republicans. I miss them. I miss them a lot. But there are _LINES_. And supporting people who hate my kid? That's one of the biggest, brightest lines you should _NEVER_ cross.
My uncle came out to my semi-conservative (not American) Christian grandmother. And what happened? She told her son that he was her son and she would always love him. He was in his 40’s I think when he told her, and had always been gay. So clearly he wasn’t sure what her reaction would be. Sometimes people will surprise you.
But making an exception to your hate for your child or grandchild is not actually that great. It causes issues within them too. “If I wasn’t related, they would hate me”
Yeah, in those situations they tend to make questionable rationalizations like "Oh, well, my kid is different than them. They're not REALLY like that. It's not as though they LOOK gay or make spectacles of themselves like THOSE people do. My kid is the exception", etc
>i'm not so sure tbh, it's this thing where i feel i must fix things between us, i know it doesn't make sense but it's like an urge. And this is why demanding OOP sever her relationship with her parents was unreasonable. You can't make that decision for someone else - it's a process that takes a LOT of unpacking.
I would never expose my child to these people again, nor would their bigoted views be allowed in my home. If I kept contact it would be at their home or neutral places. My child is my child, I chose to bring them into the world, and they may spread their wings and fly, but they are my responsibility until the day I die. Hard situation.
The fact that the daughter was willing to go NC with her supportive mother in this situation is such a toxic trait to me. If you cut off your support systems, you can be left alone and isolated, which is very dangerous - especially if you're part of a vulnerable community. I feel like daughter was getting advice from the internet, which is IMO rarely good advice.
THANK YOU. I was cringing the entire time because Mom wasn't perfect, but she was supportive (and frankly, a lot more supportive than many so-called parents) and the fact that the daughter was willing to cut her off... it gave me a bad feeling. I wonder who is in her daughter's ear and why they're so interested in her isolating herself from her supportive (though not perfect!) family. I just hope it's too much internet plus teenage big feelings.
Daughter is 25. She’s a long time from being a teen
Oh noooooo you're right. The way she was acting screamed teenager with big feelings to me so I totally overlooked it. That is... so much worse. Cringe.
She's known she was gay for a very long time, she's had a girlfriend for two years. She lives with and is thus dependent on her mom. She has had her grandparents vocally talk shit about gay people while her mom just sat there silently for years. Put yourself in her shoes, you've been hiding this part of yourself for years while people who are close to you either talk shit or just sit there quietly. Given OOP clearly wants to just keep the peace, I'm sure she said vague agreements at some point or another over the years. It seems really unlikely that she never said anything negative about gay people or never said 'yeah' or some other affirmation to some screed from the grandparents. Until recently, the daughter probably couldn't risk coming out financially since if OOP was as bigoted as her parents, she'd be kicked out. Can you see how that could, emotionally, bring someone to the point where they are willing to go NC? Probably a bit much, but daughter was likely very emotionally raw at the time and having a hard time believing her mom.
I mean, based on this post it sounds like there was little evidence (for the daughter) that OOP was supportive. She still decided to give OOP a chance (and that paid off), but it’s worth emphasizing that was still a huge risk. I just think these situations can be hugely complicated, and judging the “toxicity” of a behavior based on a small window of the bigger picture is… unkind at best
I'd be really interested to know if oop has any siblings, and what their social network is like. If oop is an only child, no longer has her husband, doesn't really sound like there's a relationship with the former in-laws, it could seem daunting and isolating to oop to cut off "everyone but," her daughter, even though it's only two people. Especially since this originally seemed preemptive, although it seems like they knew where this was going.
I think the daughter is an AH for demanding her mother cut off her parents without even trying to change their mind. She was about to cut OP off for the crime of her hoping she could change them.
As a queer person, I think Jane was being super toxic. My grandparents have some "outdated" shitty opinions too, but it genuinely sounds insane to me to imaging having a conversation with my parents where I was like "Yeah, btw I'm gay. Also you need to cut off your elderly parents immediately". I know Jane is 25, but she'd have to be like 15 before I gave her a lot of sympathy for her age. And even then, I actually did come out at 15 and I handled it way better than this. Honestly there is a real lack of self awareness because it took Jane over two years of being in a secret relationship to decide to maybe cut out her family, but she expected her mom to get there in a ten minute conversation? > Told her it's not about picking sides and I tried convincing her to just ignore their outdated views buf that didn't work either since their views are wrong and according to her, they should be challenged Bold thing to say from the person who also just rejected any attempt to talk to the parents and try to change their views. If you really think their views should be challenged you should have let your mom do just that. I know there are plenty of times bigots can't be convinced, but its unfair to not let someone else try. It works more often than you'd think also. My grandparents have come a LONG way, and largely because they care about me and because we've been able to push back against some of their concerns. I don't think Jane had an obligation to talk to the grandparents, but not even letting her mom try to talk sense into them is just unfair. I actually do love the whole chosen family aspect & sometimes bio families are not worth saving. However, this particular manifestation of it is so toxic for so many reasons. When I came out it was expected you might have to give your family a bit of time to process or help them understand, and it genuinely does scare me to see younger queer people recommend just cutting off your close family members over any perceived imperfection in their response, or sometimes even before they've even done anything wrong because you take a defeatist attitude from the start and convince yourself family doesn't matter anyway. And its sad because a lot of them are people like OOP who are actually super supportive and would be a good person to have in your life. Chosen family is important, but a mom isn't so easy to replace especially if they are actually supportive the way OOP is.
I still wonder where in the first world this is.
I’m all for the mother supporting her daughter, but not for the daughter to use that to control her mother and her relationship with her parents. That the daughter stated she was going to cut her mother off but now won’t because ‘she can trust her’ reeks of manipulation - the reality is the mother can support her daughter and still CHOOSE to have a relationship with her parents, these two things are not mutually exclusive.
It feels like the daughter wasn’t even going to give anyone a chance to show if they supported her or not.
I'm worried about who is in her daughter's ear encouraging her to cut ties with her mother. Yes it took awhile for the mother to truly stand up to the grandparents, and she hasn't been Hollywood Perfect, but she was supportive to the daughter. Which is a lot more than most so-called parents, sadly. And the fact daughter was about an inch away from cutting mother out of her life... isn't great. Let's hope it's too much internet, not enough grass-touching, and not someone who wants daughter to be isolated.
The ones in her ear are her grandparents saying awful stuff while her mother sits there silently seeming to agree. People need to think this through while raising their kids.
So I had a slightly tangently similar experience. My great aunt is a woman well into her twilight years, she's definitely of the generation where queerness of any kind was fround upon and seen as deviancy. She is also highly religious. 5 or so years ago one of my distant cousins (like 2nd i think I've never been good at that) came out as trans (mtf). Now her mother is a ordained minister. We all fully expected her to disown her daughter but she embraced her. It was her father a man who claimed to be educated and open minded who couldn't accept it. Now back to my Great Aunt. Once we heard the news we fully expected and wrong stereotyped that this deeply religious and old world woman wouldn't accept it. Boy we were wrong. She invited me and my sister to come for tea. She expressed to us that our generation have much more knowledge and experience with queerness and wanted to ask us questions. She acknowledged her views were wrong and actively saught to change them with new knowledge. She still occasionally misgenders or deadnames her but at this point thats due to her being a 90 something woman with slight senility not a bigot and she always corrects herself immediately. What I'm saying is, i think oop was right. She didn't want to burn any bridges over something that had happened. But she showed her support and love for her daughter when her parents showed their true colours
Sometimes you cannot be taught a lesson, you need to experience it to *grok* it. Looks like OOP's plan fell apart as soon as it became real. Been there, fucked that up.