So, for people who don’t have the best dynamic with their family and/or straight up has a toxic family (like me) I have a question.
(If you do have a good family dynamic, you can still answer this. I just notice that my question relates to not so good families often.)
Do you have a family member that is borderline conservative/alt right with their views? Like overall, they seem like a nice person but once you get deeper into specific topics, the red flags start popping up.
Like for example, they don’t care if anyone is LGBT+ and supports equal rights for them. Yet, they turn around and say some problematic stuff that contradicts their “support”. I’ll provide a quick example. When I came out, my parent stated that the non-binary “stuff” was nonsense. I would also like to state, they often dismiss sufficient information I provide with factual evidence and often dismiss the minority as well.
The thing I’m confused about is that my parent is a decent person on the outside. It’s not like this parent is faking being nice, I think it’s the fact that they often believe harmful misinformation and refuses to be educated if my and my parent engage in such topics. For example, we had a “family friend” who was an evangelical bigoted Christian. If she ever found out someone was trans, they would deliberately misgender them and deadname them. I would like to state that I heard her often speaking badly about gay people when I grew up as a child and both of my parents decided to still stay friends. This detail is important because whenever I brought it up to my parent (the one I’m talking about) I was dismissed because “it’s just her opinion”. And by opinion that LGBT were “sinful”.
There came a time recently where I was able to make a decision on my own when it came to her and I discussed it with my parent because they would ask me why I refuse to visit them. I explained why and again was dismissed yet…
I realized I had to frame my words in a different way to make this parent understand my reasoning. I said “yes, it’s her opinion but she actively treats the lgbt community badly” and then I gave the example of how she would intentionally misgender a trans person and such.
My parent then goes “oh, why didn’t you tell me sooner then” and I’m thinking to myself “are you fucking kidding me”. Anyways, the root of the problem is that despite my parent not giving a shit about what other people do or identify as, they’re willing to still be friends with a bigot. They actively refuse to be educated and I think half of it comes from the fact that I’m younger and still their “child”. I brought this up because I’m genuinely confused. On one hand, my parent is always trying to improve themselves and treats people nicely. Like my parent isn’t faking being nice to others and is trying to support me and overall, cultivate healthy habits when it comes to any form of interaction. Yet, once you get to know my parent and end up discussing their (political?) views, all the red flags start popping up.
I don’t know if anyone else has a parent like this or knows someone like this but it leaves me conflicted about my parent ya know?
