The next generation may be more accepting of gender and sexuality than the ones that came before it, but that doesn’t mean their parents aren’t still trying their best to put an end to that with their own bigotry.
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A 19-year-old is sharing her own experience with her family losing their minds after she told them the guy she had been seeing for eight months is trans.
Elyse, who goes by @enoblehere on TikTok, posted a video to her account explaining that she had been kicked out of her parents’ house after trying to talk to them about her boyfriend. She was packing up her whole room, she said, and had to be out before her father got home, as he refused to come inside with her still present.
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After that, Elyse backed up and posted two snippets of an audio recording she took when the initial conversation with her parents happened. In them, her parents pull out a number of tactics familiar to anyone who has butted heads with religious parents over coming out as LGBTQ (in other videos, Elyse herself appears to identify as bisexual and pansexual).
Her father repeatedly tells her that she has a choice but that she’s making the wrong one, putting the onus on her for ripping apart their relationship rather than realizing that they, as parents, are ultimately the ones making the choice not to accept their daughter for who she is.
“I’m sorry, but you put a major, major, major wall between us,” her dad chastises.
Despite Elyse’s pleading and insistence that she loves her parents and isn’t trying to hurt them, they’re only interested in their perspective, claiming she’s “willing to give up” her family for her boyfriend. “I don’t want to push a part of myself away,” she explains.
At one point, her angry father pulls the whole “this is not the way we brought you up” and explains that losing her home and her family are the inevitable “consequences” of her choice.
“You knew this was going to happen sooner or later,” he says.
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The anger and guilt-tripping put forth by her parents are a harsh reminder that for all that’s improved in society over the past decades, there are still people who refuse to lead with compassion and acceptance over arbitrary ideas of “right” vs “wrong” as regulated by religion.
And it was particularly heartbreaking to hear how much Elyse clearly cares about her parents and how they feel when they can’t seem to muster the same for her.
Because their all powerful loving god really hates and is afraid of a lot of things. The same things they are afraid of. Weird.
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Less Sane
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One commenter summed things up well when he told Elyse “the fact that he’s making it seem like you have to choose him or your family is horrible. Your dad chose that, not you.”
And while some did focus on the wrong thing here and expressed “concern” over Gen Z’s propensity to share everything online, the outpouring of support Elyse is getting from those who experienced similar manipulation and rejection from their families after coming out as LGBTQ is exactly why it’s good that people have the ability to turn to the internet in times like these.
If bigots want to be bigoted and reject their children, well, that’s their choice, but they don’t get to control the narrative or keep it shrouded in darkness anymore. After all, those are just the “consequences” for their own choices.
*First Published: June 7, 2021, 6:31 am
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