ROFL Yeah, my dad lacked imagination, but my open-minded mother left room for the possibility of me being gay. Her head canon was the most flexible, while my dad struggled with the idea for years due to being a hardcore Christian.
Haha I didn’t even bother. It came out of the blue and I said “ok, well I’m not going to, but good to know you wouldn’t be surprised or care if I did.”
For being almost 80, he’s pretty chill about social issues. His gf is an “I got mine so fuck y’all” sort though..
In this hypothetical you are trans and gay, and your parents nonetheless continue to persist with the cis and straight mental model they have of you in their heads. It’s an incredibly common experience among queer people. The post isn’t about how remarkable it is that parents generally assume their child is “default”, as you put it.
Is there some reason to not assume they'll be cis and straight?
Does this change your behavior at all toward them?
It's not like we're out arranging marriages or setting up our kids. They'll figure it out on their own and teaching a cis, straight boy to play baseball is no different than teaching a cis, gay boy or a trans, straight boy or trans straight girl or any other combination.
If a kid doesn't like baseball, that just means the kid doesn't like baseball.
I don’t know why parents need to assume anything once their kid is old enough to display agency. And sexuality doesn’t need to be assumed, parents should stay out of the sexuality of their children for the most part.
But yeah I don’t see how gender is any different than figuring out if your kid likes broccoli. Just push them a bit to experiment like you would with food. Push them to try on all types of clothes. Show them all types of movies. Buy them toys of different types. Have them make friends with kids of other genders.
Allow them to participate in activities that cross gender norms. But most importantly force nothing and go with what sticks.
I aim this particularly at parents in the US who essentially pretend that their children have little to no agency until they’re 13 or so. Give your child that agency and you’ll stop having to assume who they are at all.
I knew a kid growing up that was about as cis boy as they come but his mom kept trying to raise him a girl until around kindergarten (kids dad was out of the picture). And when he started leaning into boy stuff as young boys do, especially when they start making friends, she tried raising him as gay. Last I heard he got emancipated (this was probably 10 years ago). That poor kid likely needed years of therapy.
Oh, is that why my parents abused me? Because of a probability model? Tell me, was it Bayes' theorem that made them teach me to repress my gender, and to misgender me for years after I came out as an adult?
