Got into a huge fight with my mom yesterday. Whoopee.
To preface, I don't fight with my mom. I've got a lot of people pleasing and social anxiety issues and I just don't do conflict. I would rather shove myself into a box while breaking all of my bones than communicate that a behavior is hurting me and that I want it to stop. But every once in a while I'll put on my big boy pants and be brave about it. Usually in relation to issues of racism and queerphobia. So I'll call out my parents for being transphobic or closeminded, but I try to do it in a respectful and civil way. I don't try and tell them they're wrong about these things, I just try and get them to realize that there is no logical backing for their views.
So this all started with the Barbie movie (really it started with the "Disney selling out to woke leftists" but whatever). My mom was saying that she didn't want to watch it because men were presented as stupid so women could be shown as powerful. Me and my sibling kind of pushed back, because that is not the messaging of the Barbie movie and then it just devolved from there. (my mom has a habit of either misunderstanding or flat out refuting basic arguments that we then have to focus on so she can understand the full picture for the main argument, which is how this conversation got so crazy) We tried to explain the objectification of women in media (specifically how women are often not used as full thought-out characters but as tools to further the plot for the men in the movie) and used an example from one of her favorite movies. In it the main dude married this hot successful woman and we were trying to explain that her function in the plot of the movie was to make the main character look successful to other men. She could not comprehend this idea and insisted that since she did not watch the movie that way, that just wasn't true. (And of course, there is something to be said for death of the author and interpreting characters how you want to, but that doesn't erase the objective analytical perspective of character purpose and the near constant objectification of women in media.) This then turned into us trying to explain what objectification even is, because yes "ugly" women can and are objectified too. Objectification is viewing a person as an object, something that all AFAB face to some degree because vagina=sex=object (valuable or not) in our society. Then we had to explain that yes, society is a thing that influences everybody. She genuinely was fighting the idea that there is a societal standard of beauty. I had to explain that personal attraction is different than perception of beauty. You are not physically or emotionally attracted to everyone you find beautiful. There is appreciation, aesthetic attraction, and socially informed views of beauty. And then we came to the fact that everyone is socialized by our SOCIETY and that gives them biases and teaches them behaviors. Seems simple right? Apprently not.
She kept insisting that society did not influence her opinions, ever, and they are all her own, and she has no biases at all. She would admit that everyone else was influenced by their family and therefore had biases and would make assumptions about people, but not her. No, she's special. She doesn't judge people by their appearance, ever. This became a fight over the fact that human brains operate a certain way and that the way process information, especially visual information, is inherently tied to making assumptions about people based on our social knowledge. I kept bringing up like scientific facts about how the brain works, and she was so insistent that it didn't matter. She literally asked me if I took away science, what is my argument here? Like punk? Why is science not a good argument? Why can't I reference peer reviewed studies and anatomical features? Why doesn't that count? But you get to just be like "I believe that my brain doesn't do that"? What? But then she'd make claims about how the brain changes as you grow, like synapses can change, and that means she just grew out of making assumptions about people. Which 1) is a SCIENCE BASED ARGUMENT 2) true in the sense that your neural network can grow, decay, and change based off of how you use it but not true in the sense that you can change the way you process information. I tried using the analysis of your cells can regenerate, but you can't regrow an arm (after a certain point of development in the womb) to show that yes, one fact may be true but it doesn't mean you can take that fact to the extreme. AND THEN....SHE TOLD ME SHE DIDNT KNOW IF CELLS REGENERATE OR NOT. SHE'S A TEACHER. FOR SOMEONE WHO SEEMS TO FALL INTO THE "BASIC BIOLOGY" GROUP YOU SURE DON'T KNOW BASIC BIOLOGY. BUT SHE DOESN'T TEACH BIOLOGY. SO WHY SHOULD SHE KNOW BASIC HUMAN FUNCTIONS. She also refuted the idea of subconscious informing your actions in a way that wasn't just telling your consciousness "that person is ugly", which is not how subconsciouses work at all, but she wouldn't believe me.
She just kept insisting that she was the exception, and that her brain doesn't do that. (Side note, when she said everything has exceptions, I asked her if every functioning human had a brain, are there any exceptions to that, she said yes as far she knew but she didn't learn anatomy in school. Incredulous, we asked if she had ever been told in school that she had a brain. She said no. We asked how she knew she had one then. She said God told her. After some more pushing and prodding, it was like pulling teeth, she finally admitted that she did in fact learn about brains in 9th grade science. Which was where? SCHOOL, SO YES SCHOOL AND SCIENCE TAUGHT YOU THAT YOU HAVE A BRAIN, SO WHY DID YOU SAY NO??????????) And obviously, I don't believe her, because once again that is literally how brains work, and she refuses to believe me because how dare science inform my world views.
It's like she thinks I'm being brainwashed because I use science and my education to inform my views and beliefs. I don't just trust that my brain made a totally great decision for itself independent of any influence and nothing else matters.
UUUUGUUGUGUUGHGGUHGUGHUGHUGUHUHGHHGHHGHGHGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHUHUHHHHFHHHHHHH
I also made her cry because I was trying to explain that growing up in a racist household isn't always being explicitly told that "black people are bad", so I brought up an example of a conversation that happened like 3 years ago in our house which was just a butt ton of microaggressions, and she immediately was like "I don't remember this conversation, I wouldn't have agreed with that stuff." and then after insisting that she certainly didn't refute the stuff my dad was saying and that the conversation did in fact happen (note that I was not calling her racist, I made it clear that this was a conversation that happened awhile ago, and it was just an example that I know she was witness to of a racist conversation not being explicitly about how people of color are bad) and she lost her mind, crying about how if I knew the way dad had treated her and the way she really felt then I wouldn't dare bring this up and that she never agreed with his views on "black people and gay people" and clearly I don't know her as well as I think I do. Which I understand to an extent, I understand that my dad is not a great person for a lot of reasons, and that my mom does not fully agree with him. And I truly hadn't meant to accuse her of racism in that moment. So I apologized for bringing up a sensitive topic and explained why I had. Then we just got right back into it. (She also admitted that she had wanted and implied that she still did want a divorce.)
She probably thinks that I hate her and that I think she's an idiot. She also probably thinks I've been brainwashed by society and that I've been lost to the woke leftists. I'm so excited to leave in a couple of weeks. I'm only home right now for the summer, and I go back to college soon. As soon as I'm gone, I'm going to shave my head and try to forget about all this crap. I just don't know how to act right now. I'm not going to apologize for insisting that she's wrong, cause she is. And I know she won't apologize cause she thinks she's right. I probably should apologize for getting so upset, but I was careful not to say anything insulting or offensive that wasn't just a scientific truth, so I really don't want to apologize for anything. But my family has an absolutely horrible dynamic. Us kids were always forced to apologize to each other and say "it's okay", so know we just don't. I've apologized a couple of times to my youngest brother because there have been times where I've lost my temper and genuinely been in the wrong, but when I get into tiffs with most of my other siblings we just get over it. Which probably isn't healthy, but whatever. I just want to leave and be done with it.
I'm probably not coming home next summer and then I'll be graduating. It's too expensive for me to come back home for smaller breaks, so unless my parents will pay for it, this is probably the last time I'll be home. And I can't wait to get out. I hate being an adult and having to make these decisions for myself and having to get a job and all of that stuff, but I'd take it any day over sitting here in my house listening to my dad rant bigoted crap and my mom make everything about her. I can't wait to get away from the disgusting bathroom no one ever cleans, and the horrific way people clean dishes, and the broken a/c, and the camera in the living room, and the fact that there's animal hair everywhere which gives me a head ache, and the carpets are all disgusting from years of having animals poop and pee and puke all over without getting properly cleaned, and I can't even use the shower because its all so gross, and it's hot here, and there are so many bugs, and I'm allergic to everything, and the only friends I have here are old friends that I kind of stopped caring about years ago, but I still have to act like I want to see them whenever I come back, and I'm just so sick of this place.
