Can anybody recommend any good resources to give to parents after or during the coming out process? I've been trying to get my mom to understand my queer sexuality and gender for a few months now, and there are a lot of things it's difficult to have a conversation about. It's really difficult for me to keep my cool sometimes, because she says things that are frankly just sort of hurtful, even though she claims she is trying to be supportive. Specifically:
1. She has a problem understanding that I have not recently "changed," and that I'm only recently starting to live the sort of life I've always wanted to (and more recently, sharing it with her). She keeps trying to pick out instances from my childhood that she thinks prove I used to be more straight, masculine, etc. Then I get flustered, because I don't know whether I should acknowledge that in some ways I've changed, or point out that in many ways I was just acting that way as a closeted person, or whether I ought to provide counter examples, or what. She doesn't really appreciate that I'm a real person with agency and their own life.
2. She has a very individualist and, I think, politically naive view. She doesn't really believe in "homophobia" because "people are people, and everybody meets people who don't like them for different reasons." These are the conversations it's hardest for me to have in a collected and rational way, because when I try to explain theories about "oppression" rationally, I am having very intense emotional responses. When I do point out that something I say is homophobic, she says that I only feel that way because I'm autistic and my queerness is like a "special interest" that I need to get over (mind you, I'm 22, and I have not been straight for as long as I can remember).
3. She doesn't like when I wear make up or anything, which she perceives as flaunting my sexuality or shoving it in people's faces. She wants me to continue to act like a masculine man, and she doesn't like when I say that I don't even really think of myself very much as a man. In her mind, I have "man parts," so I am a man.
4. In line with (2), she doesn't understand why I have so many queer friends and want a "community," because she sees that as narrowminded. I tried to explain that I have straight friends, too, but it can be very validating to be around other queer people, and I tried to explain the idea of "heteronormativity," but it doesn't really get through.
The hardest thing is that she often ends up crying and accusing me of being inconsiderate, when I point out that something she said is really offensive to me. This ends up leading to "shouting matches" where I try to explain that I was also hurt by what she said, and that she can't be offended that I was offended. She thinks that I'm "obsessed" with being gay, that I don't have any empathy for her (which she again blames on my ASD), and that I'm going to understand when I grow up. :/ Then she tells me, while still crying, that she does everything she can for me and loves me and wants me to act like a real person and like myself. I feel like this is kind of emotionally manipulative, but it's difficult for me to feel like I can objectively view the situation, because she's crying so much.
23 Apr 2015, 10:03 pm
