RE: LGBTQ Awareness/Help Threade
08-16-2014, 06:19 AM
It's obviously not fair to disagree with your assessment of your father, because I don't know anything about him nor your relationship with him nor your life. Honestly, most of what we hear about him from you is him being a shithead, but I also take that in the context of that's the sort of thing you're mostly likely to want to vent about; "my father and I had a pleasant conversation about a shared interest" just isn't something people share often. So, when I say this, I'm neither trying to undermine or contradict you, just share a somewhat similar experience I had that may be relevant to your life and relationship.
When I first came out to my own father (at the time I identified as bisexual because I had crippling issues with my own sexuality that stemmed from my upbringing), the first thing he said was that he didn't really believe in bisexuality. I have rarely felt more offended, incensed, and betrayed in my entire life. I decided then and there to essentially sever all meaningful ties with him; he simply didn't get it, didn't care to get it, and never would. His reaction came from much the same place as your father's: he wanted me to be happy and knew that bi- or homosexuality made for a harder life, and hoped that I could just settle for being simple and straight, on top of which he (likely similarly) had subsurface discomfort with the idea of queerness, and the only way he could express that was through denial of my identity. Even now, I still think it's one of the shittiest things he's ever done, and there was a period of a few years there where pretty much everything he did was shitty.
But the thing is, a lot of that just comes from a place of confusion and fear. That's where familial denial like this comes from nine times out of ten. Your father doesn't understand trans issues, trans mentalities, trans identities; he doesn't know how to communicate with you, why you could want this, what it means to feel the way you do; he worries that this means losing you or losing the ability to know you or that it somehow invalidates the person he cares about. It represents, to him, a loss of someone important to him, because he's been fed the cultural narrative that cis people are all fed and feed each other, one of how sad and unfortunate and alien trans people are, as well as one of how gross and unsettling and fundamentally wrong or crazy they are. This is exacerbated by the rising complementary cultural narrative of the Fake Trans Girl, the Trans Trender, the hipsterish little co-opter of antinorm identities as a form of countercultural rebellion and paradoxical subcultural acceptance. From the perspective of someone outside the community, and outside the experiences you have had, and the generational and technological gap that have made understanding and exposure so normal and ubiquitous to you, which would he prefer to be the case? That this is just a phase you're going through that he needs to shake you out of, or that you're consigning yourself to a life that probably ends with AIDS and drug use or being beaten and murdered in a bloody hate crime? You say he doesn't understand, and that's true; the depth of his lack of understanding, and the script he has been fed all his life that fill that lack with the opposite of understanding, mean that for him and from his perspective, it's better and easier to believe that this isn't real. All this, on top of the normal human reticence towards change and the unknown.
The thing is, it's easier to change and educate people than you think. Or than I think, at least. It's an ugly and slow process, and the speedbumps along the way will probably hurt and may even hurt more than makes it worth it to try, but it's doable. I know that the invalidation of something you feel strongly about yourself, something that took years and painful emotional awakenings to come to terms with, is one of the ugliest things that can be done to you, and nothing excuses his response or how he's handled things since your first approach; that said, it's not set in stone that this will always be the case. True irredeemability is rarer than it seems, I think. It may be worth it to you, once you've distanced yourself a bit and given things time to set in, to help him learn the things you have. An adolescence and young adulthood with ubiquitous mass communication does wonders for opening people up to disparate worldviews and atypical lives, but it's not the only way to become tolerant and understanding, or even to reverse intolerance and ignorance. I know I would have regretted it if I had gone through with my initial intention to simply drift off and wait for my father to die; you may as well.
Or maybe not! This is all just me talking and my experience filtered through my perceptions and preconceptions. I hope that one way or the other, you find a more comfortable place in your life.
Also, how do you prefer to be referred to? I mean, presumably feminine pronouns (or not, you tell me), but like, username and name choices? I know in your position I would probably find MrGuy and Guy pretty dissonant.
When I first came out to my own father (at the time I identified as bisexual because I had crippling issues with my own sexuality that stemmed from my upbringing), the first thing he said was that he didn't really believe in bisexuality. I have rarely felt more offended, incensed, and betrayed in my entire life. I decided then and there to essentially sever all meaningful ties with him; he simply didn't get it, didn't care to get it, and never would. His reaction came from much the same place as your father's: he wanted me to be happy and knew that bi- or homosexuality made for a harder life, and hoped that I could just settle for being simple and straight, on top of which he (likely similarly) had subsurface discomfort with the idea of queerness, and the only way he could express that was through denial of my identity. Even now, I still think it's one of the shittiest things he's ever done, and there was a period of a few years there where pretty much everything he did was shitty.
But the thing is, a lot of that just comes from a place of confusion and fear. That's where familial denial like this comes from nine times out of ten. Your father doesn't understand trans issues, trans mentalities, trans identities; he doesn't know how to communicate with you, why you could want this, what it means to feel the way you do; he worries that this means losing you or losing the ability to know you or that it somehow invalidates the person he cares about. It represents, to him, a loss of someone important to him, because he's been fed the cultural narrative that cis people are all fed and feed each other, one of how sad and unfortunate and alien trans people are, as well as one of how gross and unsettling and fundamentally wrong or crazy they are. This is exacerbated by the rising complementary cultural narrative of the Fake Trans Girl, the Trans Trender, the hipsterish little co-opter of antinorm identities as a form of countercultural rebellion and paradoxical subcultural acceptance. From the perspective of someone outside the community, and outside the experiences you have had, and the generational and technological gap that have made understanding and exposure so normal and ubiquitous to you, which would he prefer to be the case? That this is just a phase you're going through that he needs to shake you out of, or that you're consigning yourself to a life that probably ends with AIDS and drug use or being beaten and murdered in a bloody hate crime? You say he doesn't understand, and that's true; the depth of his lack of understanding, and the script he has been fed all his life that fill that lack with the opposite of understanding, mean that for him and from his perspective, it's better and easier to believe that this isn't real. All this, on top of the normal human reticence towards change and the unknown.
The thing is, it's easier to change and educate people than you think. Or than I think, at least. It's an ugly and slow process, and the speedbumps along the way will probably hurt and may even hurt more than makes it worth it to try, but it's doable. I know that the invalidation of something you feel strongly about yourself, something that took years and painful emotional awakenings to come to terms with, is one of the ugliest things that can be done to you, and nothing excuses his response or how he's handled things since your first approach; that said, it's not set in stone that this will always be the case. True irredeemability is rarer than it seems, I think. It may be worth it to you, once you've distanced yourself a bit and given things time to set in, to help him learn the things you have. An adolescence and young adulthood with ubiquitous mass communication does wonders for opening people up to disparate worldviews and atypical lives, but it's not the only way to become tolerant and understanding, or even to reverse intolerance and ignorance. I know I would have regretted it if I had gone through with my initial intention to simply drift off and wait for my father to die; you may as well.
Or maybe not! This is all just me talking and my experience filtered through my perceptions and preconceptions. I hope that one way or the other, you find a more comfortable place in your life.
Also, how do you prefer to be referred to? I mean, presumably feminine pronouns (or not, you tell me), but like, username and name choices? I know in your position I would probably find MrGuy and Guy pretty dissonant.