this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Yep. The people that argue for conversion therapy are generally not the kind of people that are convinced by actual proof. Sadly.
You misunderstand.
This is proof that conversion therapy works because their goal is to kill us.
Exactly. While many reich-wingers – being the spineless fucks they are – won't say it out loud, they do want us all dead.
Somewhat oddly I respect an honest bigot more than a bigot who tries to pretend they're not one. Not to say I respect them very much, just that I respect them more than their fellow bigots who lie about what they are.
I have emphasized this a lot between the distinction of how my grandparents are bigoted towards me being queer and how my parents are bigoted towards me being queer.
My grandparents will outright be like: "We don't support this shit, and that's that. No compromising."
but, my dad and stepmother have been like: "Wow! We're such genuine allies for sure!"
and then when my parents get constructive criticism on something they're doing wrong and should amend to be a better ally, they get hostile and distance themselves form me. My stepmother went a whole month without talking to me while I was living in the same house as her because I deemed something she said "transphobic".
It got to a point where my dad went mask off in a vicious homophobic/transphobic rant where he called me things like the f-slur, the r-slur, a "cancer" to his life, and emphasized that he doesn't want me to do anything to affirm my gender or act upon my sexual orientation.
My stepmother then tried to still push that they're both allies, went as far to say they couldn't be BETTER allies, and his comments were justified because he said so them out of "anger", from which she derives the conclusion that "he didn't mean it".
I hate them, and yesterday, I saw them for the first time in a while after being no contact with them for the longest time, and then they said "Why haven't you been calling us? We worry about you." while deadnaming me and shit, so I just shrugged my shoulders and left at that point.
Bottom line is that my grandparents are better. They don't pretend; they're honest, and I like that a lot more.
Damn, I'm so sorry you had to go through that.
Yikes, that sounds terrible. I'm fairly lucky that despite being nonbinary or possibly some flavor of trans (fucked if I know 😅) and attracted to generally feminine people and not just women, I approximate a cishet dude so I haven't had to get into any sort of gender- or sexuality-related discussions with my parents who are just a hair under 80.
My mom would probably be fine with me regardless, but my dad… well, not so much. He's conservative enough that he probably wouldn't take things too well if I went and came out of the closet to him, so I've just figured that I'll spare both me and him the heartache and just keep this stuff to myself. We're not close so I feel like it's really none of his business anyhow
My parents briefly discussed sending me to a military-style boarding school because I was not the greatest kid at the time. This one wasn't the "kidnap you and force other kids to watch you pee," kind of place but it did bill itself as structured and instilling discipline.
Naturally, they googled and researched it and places like it. My mom found stories about the stress that such places out on students and research concluding that kids often end up with more behavioral problems rather than less. After that, they never brought it up again.
This kind of research probably isn't going to change minds in an argument, but there are parents of transgender kids who are exploring treatment options. They very well might be convinced by research when it comes down to sending their own kid to conversion therapy.
We can certainly hope that parents unaware do do the research rather than falling for the sales pitch, for sure. I'm glad you dodged that bullet thanks to your parents' actual attempt at researching it.