Since my brother and I are living at our father's house next week, we're staying at my mother's house for one more night tonight to celebrate Christmas with her side of our family at her house tomorrow. That's all fine and dandy. We'll get to talk with people who live elsewhere in the state that we don't get to see very much, and we'll get to eat terrific food (my grandma's making a delicious holiday dessert with layers of brownie, raspberries, and whipped cream, and my aunt is bringing lasagna). But although I love my (biological) family, they each seem to share the same flaw, which would be their unacceptance of my gender and sexual status.
What seems to be interesting to me, specifically about my grandmother, is that, when I identified as a Lesbian, she kept pushing me to find a guy that I might fall for. But I kept pushing her right back because she was putting too much pressure on me. And now that I'm dressing like a man, and acting like a man, and since I responded to her positively yesterday about the fact that I might want to be with a guy, like she wanted, she wants me to date a girl! Ugh....even elderly women are confusing. I know that I have to keep in mind that she grew up in a time when it was proposterous to think that men could have relationships with men, or that women could fall in love with women and be with them. But I'm her grandchild, and I don't think that her childhood and background and her own lifestyle are valid excuses for her pressuring me to be something that I'm not. Am I really being hypocritical of her, and the rest of my family, by requesting that they try to understand where I'm coming from?
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4 comments:
Elliot, I don't think you are asking the wrong thing of your family, but my mom often reminded me that it is a hard transistion for most parents.
Their minds need to be renewed. They only have years of negative images about queer folks of any sort. They have memories of terrible things happening to the town dyke or fag or queer. They often have no first hand experience of happy queer folks. They need to learn some new tricks, and for old dogs, that can be tricky. Not impossible, but it takes time and patience.
You have had months (years) to think through these isssues and do so in conversation, blogs, reading, thinking, writing. They have not done this work and don't understand how you are wired inside. So much of it doesn't make sense to them yet.
Often they speak out of ignorance and decades of conditioning. They may also remember how uncertain they were at your age, how unprepared for the world and wonder how a young people can really know himself so well, especially in a world so much more complex than their own.
This is not to let them off the hook, but to encourage you to give them some line and reel them in slowly and carefully and lovingly, like you want them to deal with you.
It can feel hard when it seems much of the outside world around us is against us. When we need allies at home, they seem so unwilling. But they will see your intelligence, your integrity, your wisdom and hopefully time in (maybe sooner than you can imagine) they will celebrate you.
In the mean time, I celebrate you and wish you a wicked good Christmas.
Wow....you should write a book. Thank you for all that. Thank you for everything you've ever taught me, which is a lot. You're a great blessing to me. So, I celebrate you, too. Have a great holiday, yourself.
It is very hard on our families, for me what counts is that they are trying. Yes they get the pronouns wrong and yes they still call me Don. However, I can tell they are not doing it on purpose, but I know they want to do the right thing.
I can get rather comical sometimes; my brother calling me he and Don, my sister-in-law calling she and Diana and my nephew calling me “D” all in the same conversation.
elliot, you are very welcome. So glad I can contribute something.
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