Some LGBTQ+ letters

[conuly]

1. Dear Care and Feeding,

I’m the mom of a 30-year-old, and widowed. I married my husband because we were friends, and I felt like it was expected (I grew up Catholic). I knew young that I was romantically interested in women and not men, but I didn’t want to be. It was hard, and I was uncomfortable with the whole topic, as was my husband. We did not talk about gay topics in my kid’s childhood; it was the 1990s!

Now, two years after my husband’s death, I’ve started dating a wonderful woman. My child has always been pretty liberal. I didn’t anticipate it causing any problems, but when I visited and came out, they bitterly accused me of lying their whole childhood, and then announced that they were trans and had been hiding it from me for a decade because of my attitudes when they were growing up.

I was shocked by the reception I got, and said some hurtful things.

It’s been two months, and we haven’t spoken since, even though I’ve reached out with emails/calls/texts. I feel like we have more in common than ever, and this is an opportunity to be honest and close together, but somehow, it’s the opposite. How do I move forward here when my own closeted pain in the 1990s is hurting my child today?

—Out and Sad

Dear Out and Sad,

It seems that the attitudes you expressed when your child was younger didn’t allow them to feel safe coming out to you as trans, and they are understandably hurt by that. Now that you’ve come out yourself, they are likely feeling as though you are a hypocrite. You (presumably) didn’t have positive things to say about LGBTQ people during a time when your kid really could have benefitted from hearing them, and now, you expect to be embraced as a member of the community. And when your child shared their identity and feelings with you, you responded with hurtful comments. With all this in mind, it stands to reason that they are going to need some time to make peace with your news, and with you.

Write a letter to your child, since they aren’t responding to calls and texts. You should apologize - perhaps again — for what you said to your child in wake of their reaction to you coming out. Let them know that you were surprised and that you wish you had responded differently. Talk about your own internalized homophobia and how difficult it was for you to live with this secret for so many years. Explain how your past attitudes about LGBTQ people were a reflection of that, and how you wish you could go back and do things differently so that your child would have always felt comfortable being honest with you about who they are. Let them know that you accept them without question and that you want to work to build a new relationship, one in which each of you can truly be themselves. Be thoughtful and intentional about your language; be sure not to misgender them and to use whatever name and/or pronouns they now prefer. Understand that it may take some time for them to come to terms with what they’ve learned about you and to reconcile their feelings about how you may have made them feel about their own identity in the past. Be patient with yourself, and with your child. Hopefully, this can turn into a beautiful season for your relationship, and you all can support each other significantly.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/05/coming-out-shock-care-and-feeding-advice.html

**********************

2. Dear Care and Feeding,


I (17F) identify as a lesbian and have for a few years now. I have come out to my parents, younger sister and one of my close friends. Coming out to my sister and friend went just about as well as it could have. They were both very supportive, non-judgmental and kind.

My parents, however, were a slightly different story. I came out to them when I wasn’t exactly ready for it, due to a combination of factors. They were very skeptical about whether what I was saying was true, and there was a strong “it’s just a phase” mentality. They were also somewhat upset that I had been “wasting time” by watching videos and reading articles about something that they consider to be irrelevant. For the record, I was never concerned that my parents were intensely homophobic and would kick me out of the house, but I didn’t know how accepting they would be. I would rate them as a tolerance/acceptance on the Riddle scale.

Since I talked to them (about a year ago), we’ve never spoken about homosexuality pertaining to me personally, but I am very vocal about my support of social movements like BLM and gay rights, and we’ve had non-confrontational discussions about it. It feels like my parents are willing to accept that other people can be gay, but not their own child. Coming from my parents, who have always been supportive of me, it hurts that they seemingly cannot come to terms with another part of my identity. My mom keeps comparing me to friends who have boyfriends and referencing a potential future husband, which is incredibly frustrating.

Other than this, I have a great relationship with my parents, and they fully support me in everything else. This is a few years down the line of course, but my relatively reserved, incredibly self-conscious self is terrified of introducing a future girlfriend to my parents. Is there anything I can do to make my parents a bit more accepting, or at least make me comfortable enough to stop referring to a future partner in gender-neutral pronouns?

—I Don’t Want a Husband!

Dear Don’t Want,

I know it may seem like there’s got to be something you can do to change how your parents are behaving, but it isn’t on you to fix their homophobia—nor is there any guaranteed way you could achieve that. Your parents have held their values for years and unfortunately, they aren’t where we’d want them to be on the Riddle scale: support, appreciation, nurturance. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t advocate for yourself to your parents. But I don’t want you to feel burdened with the responsibility of making them change, nor for you to feel that their inability to truly accept your sexuality has anything to do with you. This is all about your parents’ hang-ups, and how they’ve been influenced by their families and society over the course of their lives.

You can let your parents know that you want to talk to them again about what you shared last year, and that you are clear that this isn’t a “passing phase” for you. You can tell them directly that you want them to accept you for who you are, which means no longer making references to “future husbands.” You can remind them that you are the same person you’ve always been, and that nothing should change between you guys. Hopefully, they will see the error of their ways and work to truly embrace you fully. That’s what you deserve. But if your parents aren’t able to see past their beliefs and change, I don’t want you to feel like you failed.

I wish I had a more optimistic message, but it may be the case that you have to navigate your parents’ lack of acceptance until you are able to go out and live on your own. They may not be overtly hateful with their homophobia, but they might continue to refuse to acknowledge your truth. Your job is to take care of yourself as best you can, and to remember who you are, no matter what they say. If your parents never accept your identity, it is still valid and it is still yours. I hope the way forward is as smooth as possible.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/05/best-friend-secret-care-and-feeding.html

*********************

3. DEAR NATALIE: I have been with my wife for 37 years and I love our companionship, but there is something I’m really struggling with. We have not been intimate in a while, and emotionally, I feel as though we are like siblings – close family, who I love very much, but something is not right. My adult son recently came out as gay and I am so proud of him. She is having a hard time with this, because she has always hoped for children from him and a traditional family landscape. He is our only child. This is bringing up a lot for me. He told us he has been out to his friends for a lot longer, and I was not surprised by this. But what I was surprised by, is that as soon as he came out to us, I started to feel almost envious of him and his freedom to make the choices he wants based on his heart’s desire. Now, I’m not sure that I’m gay, but I feel there is something worth exploring here. I have no idea how to talk to my wife about this, and I’m not sure how my son would feel if I talked to him about it either. Help! – QUESTIONS WITH NO ANSWERS

DEAR QUESTIONS WITH NO ANSWERS: Before you talk to your wife or your son, I recommend you reach out to a therapist about this. If you have a part of you that needs to be unearthed and explored, it may be safer and more constructive to do it with someone who is a part of and who therapeutically works with the LGBTQIA+ communities. You may not know where this feeling came from, but the fact that your son’s self-actualization sparked something in your own spirit is enough of a reason to dig deeper. And let’s say that you discover, perhaps, that you are bisexual or gay. Then what? It will be important that you already have a support team in place so that you can work through how you may approach your wife. You have almost four decades together. That is important and meaningful and something to be proud of. Only you know what’s best for your own future, however, so take this one step at a time. Acknowledge yourself and who you need to be first. Then, focus on how your marriage may be impacted. Good luck to you.

https://www.uexpress.com/life/ask-natalie/2023/05/10

Comments

[conuly]

1. Not much to say about the advice. I'd recommend that LW gets some therapy and also ends all apologies after "I'm sorry I said those hurtful things when you came out, and also that I hurt you when you were younger. I should have done better" but meh.

I will say, however, that I was struck by this line in the letter:

We did not talk about gay topics in my kid’s childhood; it was the 1990s!

I actually blinked several times upon reading it. I remember the 1990s. I grew up in the 1990s. We had a weekly current events homework, and we took the bus to and from school, and between both those things and also health class I certainly knew about gay people. I've told my own niblings many times that it was impossible to escape discussion about The Gays back in the 1990s. I distinctly remember being 6 or 7 years old - which would put this in 1989 or 1990 - and asking my mother what the big deal was and why anybody would even care about this. She said directly she was as baffled as I was.

LW states this like it's self-evident, but there's nothing self-evident to me about not discussing the major world news events like the AIDS crisis and everything connected to that just because it was the 1990s. Or even not so major news events, like celebrities coming out. I just don't understand how anybody could just... not talk about it unless they were living under a carefully chosen rock in the middle of nowhere. Even if you're all massively homophobes surely that gets talked about?

Edit: Upon re-read I realized that this LW's child is ten years younger than I am. Which means that they mostly didn't grow up in the 1990s. They turned 18 in 2011, which means most of their childhood, certainly the years in which people are most likely to have memories, took place in the new century. So this LW is even more inexplicable to me.

2. Also nothing to say about the advice, but one thing struck me about the letter, which really annoyed me and isn't even related to being gay at all (unless the parents are using this as a smokescreen, which they probably are):

They were also somewhat upset that I had been “wasting time” by watching videos and reading articles about something that they consider to be irrelevant.

JFC, she's 17. It's not a crime to waste time at 17... or at any age. Not that I think LW was wasting time by educating herself, but honestly.

LW needs to stick with these people until out of college, or at least high school. It sucks.

3. Best of luck to LW.

[lilysea]

My parents didn't talk AT ALL about gay issues in the 1990s (I was 14 in 1990 and 23 in 1999)

because it was understood by them (religious, homophobic)

that it was Too Terrible To Talk About.

I realised they were homophobic because they subscribed to a Christian magazine that openly revelled in the AIDS crisis.

They never raised the subject verbally, but the house sure was full of homophobic magazines.

[redbird]

LW1's post sort of makes sense if what they mean is more like "it was the 1990s in XYZ part of the country, and also my parents thought talking about LGBT issues was talking about sex."

You and I were both living in one of the places where it would have taken a lot of effort to avoid hearing about and talking about the AIDS crisis, and about gay pride and liberation. I suspect LW1 grew up in in a place where people, including parents and their church, conflated AIDS, NYC and San Francisco, gay people, and divine punishment. I think the insult "Sodom on the Hudson" was from the 1980s, as is the dark humor of "if AIDS is divine punishment, then lesbians are God's chosen people," but the idea that even mentioning queer existence is talking about sex was still there in the 1990s, and to this day in some places. From how LW1 writes, that's how she and her husband raised their son.

It doesn't take a lot of offhand homophobia in response to news stories, or laughing at transphobic jokes, to tell a child that it's not safe to come out. The LW is viewing this as "my closeted pain hurt my child too, and that shared pain should unite us," rather than recognizing that they hurt their child, not just in the 1990s but here in 2023.

[mildred_of_midgard]

also my parents thought talking about LGBT issues was talking about sex."

My parents were more okay with talking about heterosexual sex than about LGBT issues! My mother had two children (inc. me) out of wedlock, with two different fathers who were not the man who raised me and fathered the subsequent children, and my sister and I got "You can have sex outside of marriage, as long as you and your partner are faithful to each other, because STDs are a thing and AIDS especially kills" talks. That checked out, because at school we got a million "AIDS kills!" talks. All of which were aimed at heterosexual sex.

So I knew safe sex was okay, but (see below), I *did not* know what being gay was except that it was a taboo topic.

Of note: I was raised in small towns in the American Southwest.

[lilysea]

I was 14 in 1990 and 23 in 1999

The first time I heard about AIDS was in homophobic Christian magazines

The second time I heard about AIDS was because I had joined a left wing political organisation which had a small bookshop, and I had picked up a small, cheaply produced staple-bound/saddle-stitched book because it had an Alison Bechdel cartoon on the cover, and it turned out to be a guide to how to reduce the risk of AIDS while having sex

My high school - Australian, government, secular, suburban middle class area - never mentioned AIDS to me even ONCE

because the school curriculum was that students who were doing two or more science units (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) were almost completely exempted from sex ed/health ed - only students on the "less academically gifted/we don't expect them to get into university" track got more than one unit of compulsory sex ed/health ed.

The one health ed unit that I DID have - and I can't remember if that was because I dropped out of Physics or because all students had to have one unit of health ed - was about alcohol, illegal drugs, and CPR and briefly mentioned relationships and communication, but nothing about contraception, STDs or AIDS.

[mildred_of_midgard]

The first time I remember hearing about AIDS was in the context of Barbara Bush hugging babies to reduce the stigma. I remember being told that you can't get AIDS from being around people with it or touching them, and that you shouldn't avoid people with AIDS. Later on, heterosexual sex was added as a possible cause of AIDS.

The destigmatization efforts against AIDS that I encountered were great; the conspiracy of silence against homosexuality was astounding.

These are the encounters with "gay issues" I remember from adults:

Sixth grade: doing a homework project in which I was required to come up with an adjective to describe myself with the letter "y", and my parents telling me not to use my first choice of "gay" because it had another meaning. I didn't know what that meaning was, but I obligingly changed it.

Seventh grade: The school librarian giving us a lecture on not calling someone's mom queer if you didn't mean she slept with other women. I was SO CONFUSED, because at that point, I not only didn't know what "queer" meant and didn't know that homosexuality existed, I didn't even know "sleep with" was a euphemism for sex! I remember the whole lecture primarily for making me confused as hell.

Ninth grade: Suggesting names for the baby my mother was pregnant with, and being told that we couldn't use "Ellen" because there was a celebrity by that name who was a lesbian.

Late high school/early college, around 2001: two people of the same sex were shown kissing on the news, and my mother erupted, "They shouldn't show that on television!" (In her defense, she has grown as a person since then and is now supportive, but at the time, this is what I grew up with.)

That's about what I remember from the 90s. What little I did osmose was from my fellow students. In tenth grade, a classmate asked me what I thought about homosexuality, and I shrugged. She said, "You neither condemn nor condone it?" and I shrugged again and nodded and changed the subject, because I didn't want to admit that I, the class know-it-all, wasn't totally clear on what homosexuality was.

By eleventh grade, when a classmate suggested I was a lesbian because I was not interested in boys, I knew what that was enough to say no, I wasn't interested in anyone. I didn't have the word for asexual, but I'd had the concept and known that that was what I was, ever since I'd figured out what sex was.

So it was sometime between tenth and eleventh grade that I figured out what homosexuality was. Clearly some parents were talking about it, and others weren't.

nothing about contraception, STDs or AIDS.

Hahaha, what I learned about contraception was that it didn't work, and so abstinence (according to the school) or mutual faithfulness (according to my parents) was the only way to avoid pregnancy and STDs! We had "health" almost every year for a several-year stretch, and I specifically remember being told that sperm trying to get through a condom was like a tennis ball trying to get through a basket ball hoop: very, very easy.

conuly wrote, "We had a weekly current events homework, and we took the bus to and from school, and between both those things and also health class I certainly knew about gay people," but that was a far from universal experience. I never ever remember covering current events in school, I walked to school until high school (1997), and we've discussed how assiduously my health classes avoided the topic of homosexuality.

In senior year of high school, there was a trans kid at the bus stop, and that was how I learned about the existence of transgender people, but I'm not sure I osmosed *that much* about gay issues on the bus even in the years when I rode it. I remember learning what an orgasm was from overhearing bus discussion, but I feel like that's a very hit-or-miss way to learn about anything.

The word "taboo" is extremely relevant here; in my world, anything gay was either avoided altogether (by adults) because the subject was taboo, or embraced as a slur and a way of shocking people (by children/teenagers) precisely because it was taboo and had shock value.

[azurelunatic]

I understood by my father's othering jokes that it was not acceptable for me to be LGBTQ+ in 1994. Or in 1995, when I actually had a girlfriend.

[mildred_of_midgard]

I turned 18 in 2001. We *did not* talk about gay issues when I was growing up. I didn't know what being gay even was until I osmosed it from classmates sometime in junior/senior year of high school. Before that, all I knew about being gay, based on a couple of casual comments, was that it was something you didn't want anyone to mistake you for being...whatever it was. I absolutely did not know the AIDS epidemic had anything to do with same-sex intercourse; it was just presented as part of my "And this is why abstinence only for everyone! Sex kills!" education at school.

There were families that talked about gay issues in the 1990s, and families that didn't.

[feast_of_regrets]

I had the same reaction you did to the 1990s comment, but I think everyone has landed on what that really means. LW is telling on herself. I was in rural Colorado and we had school assemblies on STDs in the 1990s. Don't Ask Don't Tell was current events. Ellen happened. I think my guidance counselor showed DeGrasse High episodes about figuring out being gay in my personal development class? (And it really being the Aughts is even more ridiculous, because goodness knows my parents, conservative and homophobic, had plenty of opinions about civil unions and everything else.) Her daughter was swimming in this water, and LW was absolutely sending signals about how she felt about it.

[cora]

I was born in 1986. Gay was definitely a thing in the 1990s. It wasn't talked about much in my house, though, but I was aware "gay" was a thing (and it seemed more like a neutral thing).

A diary entry from when I was 8 was "I think I'm gay." I had no idea what it meant at the time, and it shows (my next sentence was about a boy I thought was pretty - I used the words 'crush' and 'cute' but nah, I just thought he was nice to look at and didn't know about asexuality).

I definitely picked up homophobic vibes from somewhere because I was worried about lesbians at an all girls school when I was 14. When the Lifetime Movie "The Truth About Jane" came out, my mom & I watched it together. She made it abundantly clear I wasn't allowed to be gay. That was pretty much the only time I can ever remember homophobia at home. My own homophobia didn't last much longer than age 14/15, and I think that is because it was purely rooted in "don't touch me!"* rather than "queer people - awful" or self-hatred for being queer (there was some of that, but that came much later).

It's entirely possible when LW says "It was the 1990s!" her house was neutral on the topic...but given LW's kid being scared to come out, I somehow doubt it. I think it was more "It was the 1990s! We had to have an opinion on the queer agenda, and I chose poorly!"

*I had already been touched without consent by a male classmate, and I was concerned lesbian classmates would act the same as straight men...that part I blame on the 90s and the problematic viewpoints of gender and sexuality that were prevalent at the time, even in the "Queers count as people, too" camps (it certainly felt like "So who is the wo/man in the relationship?" "jokes" were acceptable at that time).

[feast_of_regrets]

I think it was more "It was the 1990s! We had to have an opinion on the queer agenda, and I chose poorly!"

So much this exactly.

[shanaqui]

I actually blinked several times upon reading it. I remember the 1990s. I grew up in the 1990s. We had a weekly current events homework, and we took the bus to and from school, and between both those things and also health class I certainly knew about gay people.

Huh. For me that made perfect sense: in the UK, it was the era of section 28 (introduced 1988, repealed 2003). It covered schools and local authorities, but had chilling effects on all areas of life. Certainly we could not be taught about anything even vaguely relating to LGBTQIA+ issues.

[lokifan]

That was my reaction exactly.

[shanaqui]

Right? Always kinda wild watching people from other parts of the world who say the 1990s was a time full of gay liberation and open discussion. XD I came out (was forced out) in 2002-2003. My school did not cope with it well, even once section 28 was repealed. The very idea that we could've talked about homosexuality in school in the 90s... hahahahahahahaa. Of course we didn't: it was literally illegal.

I did actually get some discussion of it from my parents, mostly my mother. But in the UK it was a thing that you did not teach kids, and "we did not talk about gay topics in the 1990s" makes absolute perfect sense from this context. (Even for a kid who had their teenage years in the '00s, as I did. Repeal was in 2003, but it took longer than that for section 28 mentality to go away -- if it even has now; I don't know anyone going through school now.)

[joyeuce]

This. I turned 14 in 1990. I knew about AIDS because my mother was a doctor and had leaflets about it, but I knew nothing about anything LGBTQ. At school there were a few insults flung around about being gay or lesbian but I didn't really know what they meant. I didn't meet anyone openly gay until university in 1998.

[ex_flameandsong751]

Coming here from my Network page. I'm going to assume you grew up in a more liberal family/part of the US in the 1990s? In various parts of the US, especially more conservative areas and/or religious families, no, LGBT stuff absolutely was not talked about except maybe in passing in derogatory terms, but not in a positive/affirming way. We _definitely_ were not taught about LGBT+ stuff in school when I was growing up in the 80s-90s. I didn't even hear the word "transgender" for the first time before 2008, which possibly maybe would have helped a lot if I hadn't been 29 by the first time I heard the word.

[conuly]

To be clear, this child wasn't actually raised in the 1990s, so unless LW stopped parenting their child at the age of 7, that's a decade off anyway.

[julian]

Yeah, but even so, there are some families and communities where it was still verboten way into the 2000s. (And even now.) But yes, her *saying* "It was the 90s!" indicates the ways she thought, but do not indicate reality.

[kiezh]

I grew up in the 80s and 90s in a (supposedly liberal and progressive!) Catholic family and only came to understand many years later, after I'd found my way to queer community online as an adult, how pervasive the absence of any mention of queerness was from my childhood and adolescence. People in my church didn't say gay people were going to hell; they never said anything about gay people at all. If there was a news story involving queerness, no one found it worth talking about.

We didn't live in the middle of nowhere. There was just this deeply entrenched heterosexism, this cultivated blind spot, that was so normal to the people involved that no one questioned or commented on it. It absolutely boggles me, looking back, that this was going on at the same time as the AIDS crisis! That so many public controversies passed without a ripple in my community! People are so good at building and maintaining their mental filters.

It really gave me a lot of feelings when I discovered the concept of epistemic injustice. Specifically hermeneutical injustice, the damage dealt by not having the concepts and terms available to interpret one's own life. I've come to see that vast absence in my childhood, that range of topics no one ever talked about, in those terms. I had to find out what queer was - what I was! - on the Internet, in my late teens. (Also genderqueer/nonbinary - a thing I was insisting I was all my life, but never got anyone in my family to take me seriously about it. Had to find words and community online for that, too.)

Re: the LW - the fact that she knew she was participating in that conspiracy of silence is definitely something she owes an apology for. I never got that apology from my mother (and I did ask for it). I hope LW's kid does, someday.

[cereta]

I admit, I had much the same reaction, but I spent most of the 90's as an adult in grad school (in English programs, which was one of the places queer studies spent its infancy) and the latter half in fandom (I know I had discovered slash by the mid-late 90's at the very least).

I had, however, certainly gotten a basic awareness during the 80's as the AIDS crisis worked its way into popular culture. It was discussed briefly at my (Catholic) high school, partly during health class (you haven't lived until you watched a Catholic high school health teacher try to explain to an extremely uninformed teenage girl just how gay men transmitted HIV to each other), and partly as a one-class argument during which the teacher tried (badly) to convince us that being gay was wrong wrong wrong, while most of the students were pushing back in a kind of early, "love is love" feeling.

But through ALL of this, it never came up at home. Not through shows and movies of the week we watched together, certainly not through the completely non-existent discussions of safer sex. The whole reason I didn't come out to my family until the last few years was because that just Wasn't Talked About. So once I got past my first reaction, I can see where LW might plausibly have lived in a We Don't Talk About That bubble even in the 90's.

[movingfinger]

LW 1, we talked constantly about gay topics in the 1990's, perhaps you had your fingers in your ears and weren't listening.

[ysobel]

Dear LW1:

If you "said hurtful things", the problem was not just your closeting 30 years ago.

Even if it was just being mad that your kid didn't tell you.

You also can't just handwave away your earlier attitudes with a breezy "oh it was the 90s". Especially since Catholics are not known for being pro-lgbt, so it likely involved homophobia and/or transphobia on top of just ignorance.

[kiezh]

LW1 needs to admit that she harmed her kid with her active cooperation in society's homophobia, and apologize wholeheartedly. Getting a therapist to dig into all the messy history and reasons why she made those choices would be a good idea, too. Can LW1 be trusted not to throw her gf under the bus if it becomes socially difficult to be gay? Clearly she can't be trusted to be kind to her trans child when they're in pain. She may think she can flip a switch and just be out, now, because it's easier than it used to be - but all those years of (terrible, homophobic) habits are going to need work to get rid of. And the damage done can't be waved away with "things are different now."

I think the advice for LW2 is reasonable. Unfortunately, you can't make your parents see you as a separate person with your own POV if they don't want to. Someday, when you have a life that's separate from them, they may be willing to change their attitudes if the alternative is having no involvement in your life at all. But it's incredibly bitter, isn't it, to know that neither sweet reason nor appeals to empathy will move the people you love to respect and listen to you about your own life. It shouldn't take the threat of being cut off to make people willing to listen. But sometimes it does.

I agree with the advice to LW3, too. Deal with your own stuff on your own time with your own therapist, and try to be supportive and kind to your son. Don't try to make HIM into your therapist! Dealing with your complicated feelings about his coming out is not his job. Talk it out with a disinterested third party, figure out what you actually want, and then you can try to figure out how to get there from here.