It's not gay as in happy, it's queer as in FUCK YOU
Ugh, ugh, ugh.
My family comes out with all sorts of stupid stuff. Youngest Sister used to be the virtuoso - asking me to be quiet when I said how hot Freema Agyeman looked because it was “weird” comes to mind - but Middle Sister is - ARRRGH. She’d already said something about how George Michael had “pretty eyes”, so she couldn’t believe people didn’t know he was gay. I said something playful about how I didn’t think that was how you tell; from there we got into her views on homosexuality. Ie, men are gay because they don’t have enough testosterone.
I said this was far from accepted truth, and she shouldn’t be saying it like it was; and that it reminded me of evolutionary pyschology, ie science that isn’t that strong and gets imbued with authority it doesn’t have because it plays into stereotypes. In the case of evolutionary psychology, you have the added problem of no controls, which for my money makes it terrible science: how are you going to find a general sample of people with no social conditioning to compare? My example of this was gender: you can never know how much gendered behaviour is about biology and how much is the product of social conditioning.
Middle Sister said that it wasn’t, using her bemused but superior tone; this is a signal that you’re just wrong, and she can’t understand where you’re getting this from. After all, you’re born male or female.
SO. MUCH. RAGE.
She was saying this, loudly; Mum said “sex is what you’re born with, it’s not the same as gender,” or something along those lines. She was totally calm, and frankly this was not her supporting me - she never does, in these conversations. Still, it gave me a bit of hope: her tone told me clearly that she knew Lily was being transphobic and wanted her to stop saying it.
This was not a turn towards a new, enlightened family. Middle Sister managed to say - clearly with some difficulty in actually saying the words - that “to be honest, I think you only think that because you don’t want to think you’ve got too much testosterone.”
YA THINK?
But this - it isn’t, OH NOES I MIGHT HAVE TOO MUCH TESTOSTERONE, EWW. I said that did affect it, and of course my politics do, but it was still bad science. And this was as far as I got. Further than I’ve ever got before in actually challenging these things, but... I want to be brave enough to really call her out. She’s being prejudiced, and I never say it.
She gets to treat this as some vaguely interesting scientific inquiry. Youngest Sister said she wasn’t going to listen. Well that’s fucking great for them, but this is my actual life, not after-dinner conversation. And my bias does not necessarily make me wrong. Aside from anything else, I pay attention to these things. I have always been more interested in science than her - I got New Scientist through my teens, I considered becoming an astronomer or an anthropologist - and it makes me furious that she’s so condescending now. “You think there’s only one study?” she said with a snicker, when I questioned the science behind “gay men are gay because they have less testosterone”.
I am overreacting a little: there’s history here, and it’s invariably history of me walking away rather than getting in a fight. That history means this matters more than it would from a stranger - they're my family, after all - and that I can't decide it's probably just bad phrasing.
I don’t know why this is the first time I've come close to calling them out as is needed. I’ve never been non-confrontational, but the amount I challenge them is always highly limited - they definitely notice though. But you know what? I am fucking allowed to be sensitive about this. This is not her voting Conservative and me trying to persuade her to the Lib Dems. This is not winning an argument, despite what Mum said to me afterwards. This is about having to not feel strained when I go home, not pretending I didn’t meet my friends at Pride, not having to have my sister be prejudiced and get no support from the rest - in fact, they generally support her with small comments.
Also, my favourite cousin was a total twat about this on Facebook just now. I hate how craven I am with all this. I cannot wait to leave the house tomorrow and not have to talk to anyone I’m related to for four months.
My family comes out with all sorts of stupid stuff. Youngest Sister used to be the virtuoso - asking me to be quiet when I said how hot Freema Agyeman looked because it was “weird” comes to mind - but Middle Sister is - ARRRGH. She’d already said something about how George Michael had “pretty eyes”, so she couldn’t believe people didn’t know he was gay. I said something playful about how I didn’t think that was how you tell; from there we got into her views on homosexuality. Ie, men are gay because they don’t have enough testosterone.
I said this was far from accepted truth, and she shouldn’t be saying it like it was; and that it reminded me of evolutionary pyschology, ie science that isn’t that strong and gets imbued with authority it doesn’t have because it plays into stereotypes. In the case of evolutionary psychology, you have the added problem of no controls, which for my money makes it terrible science: how are you going to find a general sample of people with no social conditioning to compare? My example of this was gender: you can never know how much gendered behaviour is about biology and how much is the product of social conditioning.
Middle Sister said that it wasn’t, using her bemused but superior tone; this is a signal that you’re just wrong, and she can’t understand where you’re getting this from. After all, you’re born male or female.
SO. MUCH. RAGE.
She was saying this, loudly; Mum said “sex is what you’re born with, it’s not the same as gender,” or something along those lines. She was totally calm, and frankly this was not her supporting me - she never does, in these conversations. Still, it gave me a bit of hope: her tone told me clearly that she knew Lily was being transphobic and wanted her to stop saying it.
This was not a turn towards a new, enlightened family. Middle Sister managed to say - clearly with some difficulty in actually saying the words - that “to be honest, I think you only think that because you don’t want to think you’ve got too much testosterone.”
YA THINK?
But this - it isn’t, OH NOES I MIGHT HAVE TOO MUCH TESTOSTERONE, EWW. I said that did affect it, and of course my politics do, but it was still bad science. And this was as far as I got. Further than I’ve ever got before in actually challenging these things, but... I want to be brave enough to really call her out. She’s being prejudiced, and I never say it.
She gets to treat this as some vaguely interesting scientific inquiry. Youngest Sister said she wasn’t going to listen. Well that’s fucking great for them, but this is my actual life, not after-dinner conversation. And my bias does not necessarily make me wrong. Aside from anything else, I pay attention to these things. I have always been more interested in science than her - I got New Scientist through my teens, I considered becoming an astronomer or an anthropologist - and it makes me furious that she’s so condescending now. “You think there’s only one study?” she said with a snicker, when I questioned the science behind “gay men are gay because they have less testosterone”.
I am overreacting a little: there’s history here, and it’s invariably history of me walking away rather than getting in a fight. That history means this matters more than it would from a stranger - they're my family, after all - and that I can't decide it's probably just bad phrasing.
I don’t know why this is the first time I've come close to calling them out as is needed. I’ve never been non-confrontational, but the amount I challenge them is always highly limited - they definitely notice though. But you know what? I am fucking allowed to be sensitive about this. This is not her voting Conservative and me trying to persuade her to the Lib Dems. This is not winning an argument, despite what Mum said to me afterwards. This is about having to not feel strained when I go home, not pretending I didn’t meet my friends at Pride, not having to have my sister be prejudiced and get no support from the rest - in fact, they generally support her with small comments.
Also, my favourite cousin was a total twat about this on Facebook just now. I hate how craven I am with all this. I cannot wait to leave the house tomorrow and not have to talk to anyone I’m related to for four months.