I have to come here and vent a bit, sorry for the long post. I was on holiday with my parents recently and found out they are big trans supporters and I outed myself as a terf to them. I kind of suspected it as they both treat everything they read in the guardian as gospel and my dad is on bluesky but I always tried to avoid the subject. But they asked what book I was reading and it just so happened to be a Robert Galbraith novel which I told them and my dad went “urgh, that’s Jk Rowling isn’t it, I can’t stand her!!” I said “why not, I think she’s great” and he said because of her transphobia. So I said, “well I actually agree with her to be honest“ and they were both aghast! I said basically if you actually read what she’s said in her own words, she’s actually very fair and moderate and her position has always been that people are free to dress, speak, act, call themselves whatever they want but they don’t get to impose on others or get them fired from their jobs if they don’t believe someone can change sex etc etc…..
Then my mum chimed in and said have I considered people like her friends adopted daughter, who had a really awful traumatic start in life and had loads of problems but now she’s “male name” and she’s happily settled down with her girlfriend but where is she supposed to go to the toilet now!! (My mum used female pronouns while telling me all this, by the way lol) I think I planted a seed though as I said, “I have you noticed how it always seems to be the girls who have had traumatic lives and who are gay or just don’t fit in with what society says a woman is ‘supposed’ to be like, do you honestly think they all just happened to be born into the wrong body or is it more likely to be a coping mechanism like anorexia or self harming that a lot of troubled teenagers go through” And she did sort of go hmmm yeah maybe. And then my dad said that actually in his last couple of years of teaching (he’s recently retired from being a secondary teacher) he has a sudden influx of letters to staff saying “so and so is now using he/him pronouns and wants to be called “boy name”” and he thought it was a bit odd how it’s suddenly such a common occurrence when it never used to happen at all. He did also say though that he thinks the recent Supreme Court decision was ‘ridiculous’ and he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about with toilets, I said well it’s not just about toilets and the “fuss” is understandable when you consider that the vast majority of rapes/assaults are done by men to women which my mum thankfully backed me up on.
We ended up just kind of agreeing to disagree before changing the subject. I didn’t argue too much or give my true opinions as I just wanted a nice holiday and I didn’t want them to think too badly of me. I feel like I could have said so much more and pulled out receipts etc but it’s my parents and I love them and I don’t want to fall out with them or for them to dislike me. I’m so worried they think an awful bigot and a disappointment and will be gossiping about how horrible I am, I wish we never had that conversation, but maybe I planted a tiny terf seed and they might question things a bit more and not just believe everything they read on bluesky.
He's getting increasingly creepy isn't he.
