I came out to my grandma, and all she said was “let’s talk.” We never did.
She always means well, as my mom routinely reminds me, but it often feels like she’s intentionally looking past my obvious discomfort every time that God-forsaken word comes out of her mouth:
“She.”
Most of my mom’s side of the family leans conservative, but they aren’t bad people.
I’ve shaved my head and dyed my hair green, yet not one of them has judged me. My makeup is quite…different; I’ve done everything from trad goth makeup to a full neon eye to drag makeup. I’ve painted my face pink, green, and orange, and generally treated my face as a blank canvas to decorate and customize how I please. I’ve dressed up as a 1920s flapper. I wear suits to dinners out and Sunday services.
Despite my belief that much of my family, especially the older members, are constantly holding their tongue, I’ve never heard a single negative comment about the way that I present myself. My self-expression is crucial to my happiness, and aside from some initial pushback from my dad, my family has left me alone because they’ve seen how happy I am now that I dress the way I want to.
It’s so easy to write people off based on who they voted for. I do it every day. Some of them, I honestly believe, deserve to be written off. But it’s the few exceptions—the ones who listen when no one else does, the ones standing in solidarity with me, the ones who use the empathy God gave them to care for the marginalized and forsaken—the ones that make having faith in a person’s humanity worth it.
The other day, I told a few of my cousins about how I broke up with my girlfriend. It felt oddly comforting, me relaying the list of all the crazy things she’d done in response to me ending things. The room filled with laughter and gasps while I shared all the drama of the past few weeks. I know it’s the bare minimum, but simply being able to tell them this and being able to bond over my failed relationship was an experience I never imagined I would be gifted with.
The world taught me that I couldn’t be normal because I was gay. It’s just the natural assumption that queer people can’t have a healthy relationship with any of their family. An assumption that at same-sex weddings, dads will never walk their daughters down the aisle. Can I be honest with you? It makes me sad. I have poured out an embarrassing number of tears over this truth. The murders and hate crimes, the Marsha P. Johnsons of history, are horrific and disgusting enough. But even if I’ve never been beaten up, never been concerned for my safety, or never been harassed because of my identity, that doesn’t mean homophobia isn’t affecting me every day in multiple ways.
My grandpa said that it was obviously bad that people were being killed back in the ‘60s for being gay, but that it doesn’t really matter today. He thinks, if anything, it’s straight people who are being attacked by gay people for “having religious beliefs.”
The only proof I need that anti-LGBTQ+ ideas are alive and well is one word that strung all of his sentences together during this conversation:
“She.”
