Dealing With Transphobic Family and Friends
Coming out isn’t that fun at the best of times, but it’s even worse when you find out that the people you’re supposed to be able to trust aren’t actually okay with who you are.
Which would take a toll on anybody’s mental health, but add the difficulties with transitioning, and that makes things a whole lot more stressful.
Transphobia can appear in multiple ways, to the point that sometimes it’s not even easy to see that it’s happening to you until it’s already over.
You might hear things like:
‘It’s just a phase.’ – It’s very often not just a phase, and that’s an excuse parents normally tell their kids when they don’t want to acknowledge their identity long-term.
‘You’ll grow out of this.’ – Again, a lot of young people get told this by adults, but even older adults get treated like children when it comes to sexuality or gender identity. Even kids know more about who they are on the inside than they get given credit for though, and language like this can make your experiences feel like they aren’t being taken as seriously as they deserve to be.
‘We’re just finding this really difficult.’ – Turning the language onto themselves is a way of making you feel bad about your ‘choice.’ It’s obviously not a choice to be trans, or to not be straight, and you shouldn’t be made to feel bad about who you are.
‘It’s just your [insert any mental illness] that’s causing this.’ – Blaming it on other issues is unfair, mental health issues can coexist with gender identity and sexuality, as they can in straight and cis people. Mental health issues can’t ‘cause’ someone to be gay or trans, but certainly can arise from other people treating you badly because they can’t, or won’t, understand how to be an ally.
Language like this is often used to justify not using the right name or pronouns, not allowing you to wear certain clothes or cut your hair if you’re a minor, to cover up transphobia under the guise of trying to be useful or ‘concerned,’ or to prevent you from trying other gender affirming things that are perfectly fine for you to explore.
And there are genuine friends and family members who are actually just trying to understand or be useful, but they’re the ones who are often willing to actually change and grow and learn from their mistakes, who will remove their transphobic language when they’ve realized how hurtful or harmful it was in the past.
Anyone who refuses to change or keeps burying further into themselves when you tell them that they’re hurting you or being transphobic – that’s how you can tell who actually cares and who doesn’t.
Let me repeat myself – people who care will change. They’ll change their language, their behavior, whatever they need to if they actually want to be in your life. Anyone else is most likely trying to get you to not be who you are, and that’s not something you have to put up with.
I’m not saying to drop someone from your life as soon as they make one mistake, like accidentally using the wrong pronouns but then correcting themselves.
But if you’ve put in months or years worth of effort and they still won’t change, that’s when you need to do some thinking about how much transphobia you’re willing to deal with.
It shouldn’t be on us to educate other people all the time, but unfortunately it sometimes has to be, if we’re just coming out to people for the first time and they happen to have a lot of questions.
It shouldn’t be on us to bear the burden of deciding who to keep and who to get rid of in our lives because they refuse to change, but sometimes that also has to be.
Language like in the above list of examples is harmful and unnecessary, and being in a transphobic environment over a long period of time will eventually wear down your mental health in a way you don’t deserve.
There are ways to deal with transphobic friends and family, but your options aren’t easy:
Be clear with your boundaries – Tell them that the language they’re using to describe you hurts and that you deserve basic respect, i.e. them calling you by the right name and pronouns. If they use the wrong name and pronouns, or any other transphobic language, ignore them. Turn away from them, don’t reply to what they’re saying. They’ll get the message eventually that doing the wrong thing means they don’t get to talk to you.
Distance yourself from them slowly over time – This one may make them realize what they have to lose – you, if they don’t treat you properly. Say no to meeting up with them as often, for example. You don’t have to lie, in fact, being completely honest with them as to why you’re distancing yourself from them might be more beneficial than expected. So telling them that you don’t like how they’ve been treating you for a while is actually better than lying or ignoring them completely.
Cut them out of your life completely – It’s harsh, I know. But if you feel like you’re in danger, if they might out you to someone you’re not ready to tell, stuff like that, then it’s okay to just cut them out of your life without an explanation. It might hurt you, because family and friends are obviously people you hold near and dear and close to you, but cutting them out might be what’s best for you in exceptionally bad circumstances.
The above options are for the worst of cases, where a lot of effort has already been put in over months or years, but no positive change has been made.
Things like people using the wrong name on Christmas cards may just require gentle reminders, unless the person in question has been doing the same thing for years in a row.
And not everyone is okay with being confrontational – I know I’m not.
This is why it can sometimes make things less stressful if they can be done through online communication, such as texting or talking to someone over the phone. Letters work fine, too.
I know there might be a lot of things in this post that seem really, really harsh, but sometimes it’s in your best interests to be that way, and I say all of this as someone who avoids confrontation with as much effort as possible, someone who tries to be as empathetic to the mistakes of others as I can.
But sometimes that’s just not a viable option anymore.
