Bully for You...

It's a sad truth that often a child's first bully is their parent.

Sometimes the parent thinks they are doing the right thing. Toughening up the kid so they won't have as many vulnerabilities in the real world. Or trying to fix the kid so that they won't be so wrong. Don't wear that, don't talk like that, play with this toy not that one... They often think they are doing the right thing.

But it's still bullying your child. And that's sad.

I've talked about this before. That growing up in the 80s the first reaction from a lot of religious parents of gay kids was to send them to conversion therapy. In fact in the church I grew up in I would say that it was more likely than not that the answer would be to pray the gay away rather than embrace your child as a perfect reflection of god's love.

It's a large part of why I left the church.

There isn't much worse bullying that you can do to your kid than to send them to therapy to fix something that isn't broken. To cure them of something that isn't a sickness. To tell them that this thing inside them that they know to be true is evil and that they are somehow making a choice to hurt you. Even though the majority of gay kids raised in a conservative church spent hours and hours trying to pray away the gay themselves. Please, I'll go to church every Sunday, I'll do a mission this summer, I'll go to seminary, just let me wake up tomorrow and be straight.

Years and years ago my brother and sister-in-law found a box of my things that had been stored in their garage. On a visit home they gave it to me to sort through and keep what I wanted. I found my old diary. Oh my goodness how embarrassing. I was very dramatic as only a 12 year old can be. Then there was a time jump and high school me was writing. And I was worried. Like deeply worried that I might be a lesbian.

I think I've written about this before a little. All of my friends would talk about this person or that person made them so horny. And there was nobody that made me horny. Like sure that guy is kind of cute but there isn't a drive to sleep with him. I noticed his attractiveness in the same way I noticed my female friends attractiveness. (this would be foreshadowing if I had been paying a bit of attention)

But it was worse than that. I felt nothing when I would makeout with whatever boy I happened to be dating at the time. Or sometimes worse than nothing, there would be like a low level nausea if I paid too much attention to the fact that I didn't really want to be there right then. I didn't want to be kissing that boy. I wanted to be anywhere else. Disassociation for the win to make it go away.

But because of that I was worried that maybe the problem was that I was a lesbian. Sure I didn't have any urge to date women either, but maybe that was it? I notice both sexes as attractive. So what if that was my problem? I was worried. I wasn't just exploring the idea. I was deeply worried. Worried I wasn't normal. Worried that I was broken. Worried I was gay.

Well, I wasn't gay, not strictly. I'm bi. And I have to have a really solid connection to someone before I feel sexual attraction. It's just not there unless we already have something else going. I cannot tell you how relieved I was when Brent and I were making out and I thought...oh my... OH MY! THIS IS IT! I'M NOT A LESBIAN!

Kids today have so many words to describe the spectrum of sexual attraction, if I had had that language and understanding as a teenager I wouldn't have been so worried. If I had had that language and understanding as a teenager I never would have thought being a lesbian was something to be worried about at all.

If I had realized and told them they would have sent me to counselling to fix me.

When Katie came out to us as trans we were worried. Worried for her safety. Worried how the world would treat her. Worried that she was now embarking on a journey that would be scary and unsafe. Not because there was anything wrong with her, but because the world sucks. I think that the worry is an honest reflection of love from parents.

If she had come out as a gay man we would not have been worried. (at the time) Because the world has gotten a lot better for gay men than it was when we were growing up. It would have been met from us with a shrug and a hope that she would meet a nice guy who treated her well.

I think as a parent your first obligation is to love your child. The next is to try and make the world a better place for them. Teaching them life skills, teaching them how to navigate the world. Giving what help you can give.

I think about this a lot now. With the new government taking over my country her world is so much more dangerous than it was. And it's being led by someone that I have something in common with which is always weird to think of. Just the one thing, but it's a big enough thing that it should have mattered.

Elon Musk has a trans child. When she came out to him he didn't worry about her safety. He didn't worry how the world would treat her. He made the world worse for her. He has all of the resources you could ever imagine. He could have made the choice to make her life safer. To spread awareness and education of trans issues. He could have done so much good for his child.

But often a child's first bully is their parent.

And now their second is their government.