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racism and enbyphobia for dinner in thoughts and stuff

Revised: 05/17/2022 6:11 p.m.

  • May 17, 2022, 5 a.m.
  • |
  • Public

So, dinner time with the family. Dad, grandma, my sister and brother-in-law; the usual crowd on tuesdays. All of us are white, western Europeans. My whole family are cis and straight (or so they say).
After a bunch of regular topics my dad show us an email he got at work from a collegue, he signed it with his name and information, but also his pronouns (he/him). My dad was stunned at the sight of this and had never seen it before, although we have spoken about pronouns before. He says: ‘but i know him, i know he’s a man and that his pronouns are he/him, so why does he even put it in here?’ I try to explain that a lot of people do this actually, because one that way you know someone’s pronouns and how to adress them and before I can even get into number two - the history behind this on social media and the protection of trans people - i am interrupted.
It appears all my family disagree with this practice and think it’s ridiculous to even add you pronouns like that. I start saying people’s pronouns should be respected, especially considering how little the effort is for someone to make these changes when speaking etc. Of course no one is really listening to me, but I try to make my point none the less.
Then I go on saying that it’s ironic to have this discussion today, because it’s IDAHOT. (International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia) At my school there were inclusive pride flags hung up in honor of this day and social media posts about it as well. Of course the only question i get from them is: What the F is an incluse pride flag?’ I show them a photo and explain that the added stripes etc are about transgender, non-binary and WPOC communities.
And then I made the mistake of saying BLM. and the first two sentences I hear are ‘white lives matter’ (my sister) and ‘all lives matter’ (my dad). I try to explain that it’s about discrimination and minorities (not going in too deep or I will lose them) but even this gets no real response. Than my brother-in-law makes a comment about ‘those people in China’ for god knows what reason, and i dont really even know what he meant by that. I am visibly upset, but they all just laugh and stare at me.
I decide to leave the table because I am just sick of having to listen to this stuff every single day. Each time I try to explain something to them, they don’t care, I could be the best public speaker and have the most eloquent way with words, but they never listen. They don’t listen because they don’t want to. They can’t possibly think about something that does not directly effect them negatively or that they have not experienced. As I leave my sister laughs and says ‘it was just a joke’. It’s a joke to them because their rights are not being infinged upon and they don’t suffer the discrimination. It’s not funny! Anyway it just pisses me off and I had to rant about it to someone, so here you go.


Last updated May 18, 2022


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