cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7007283

Basically, I’m planning on having that conversation with my parents soon (who have never even suspected me of being anything but cishet).

My parents are … I’m not sure how conservative or liberal they are in regards to LGBTQ issues (we’re an Indian family that never talks about things like this). I know I’m supposed to be leading the conversation, but I’m not sure how well I can explain even the concept of being transgender to my parents (I doubt they have ever thought about it). They might take me a lot more seriously if I can get an “official” looking document, and it will help with establishing a baseline.

Your help will be much appreciated.

I’m crossposting to here because Hexbear seems to be down

Edit: I’ll just try to gauge their thinking on LGBTQ issues for now. Mentally speaking, I need time to sort everything out. I need to stop panicking.

    • DrainedOctagon@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      9·
      5 days ago

      That’s alright OP. Take your time till you feel comfortable. Maybe you could slightly hint at the topic and see how they react. If you live in a city, there probably has been some Pride March, you could somehow bring it up and see their reaction. And if you’ve built enough trust with them, you could slowly open up and hope that it goes well.

      Also the chances of them being more accepting and liberal to this is higher if their normal politics are leftward I think. Maybe you could have a discussion with them about reservations or affirmative action, social welfare, minimum wage, the whole 70-hour and 90-hour workweek discussion thing going on in India (assuming that y’all live in India or are caught up with the trending stuff). I’m not sure how reliable this is, but better to have some sort of baseline to work off of rather than nothing.

      And if they’re the conservative Hindu nationalist kind of people, then you could do some research and mention about the instances of non-heteronormative in the religion, and also how Indian society was pretty accepting of Queer people until the British came made their existence illegal, and you can make homophobia seem like a weird outsider Western concept that is anti-Indian and was imposed onto Indians maybe.

      All the best!

      • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.mlOP
        3·
        5 days ago

        Maybe you could slightly hint at the topic and see how they react.

        Seems like a reasonable plan.

        Also the chances of them being more accepting and liberal to this is higher if their normal politics are leftward I think.

        Their politics are … not good, not completely insane either. Basically reluctant BJP voters. In the west, they would map to “moderate” republicans who voted for tax cuts but hate Trump.

        The issue however is that they are easily pressured by my extended family, who is much more conservative. My extended family will mock my parents to hell if they ever found. It’s not something I want to put my parents through, and it would likely cause them to react poorly.

        • DrainedOctagon@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          2·
          4 days ago

          Ah, they seem more right than I would’ve preferred them to be. If they were at least INC voters or anything, you could probably point out that their manifesto had some stuff about protecting LGBT persons, and that could’ve probably given some validity.

          And yeah, the issue with your extended family also makes sense, even my family does not let me do a lot of stuff simply because of what they think my extended family, the neighbours and the rest of society would think.

          I guess you probably would have to take the same steps as how you’d radicalise a liberal. Constantly talking to your parents about these issues over a period of a few years and nudging them towards doing research on these topics and realising that this is normal and that there are treatments that would help deal with dysphoria. It’s gonna be very hard but that’s the only method that I can think of right now, rather than going full hard on to it.

          Also, I remember reading like three years ago that conversion therapy was made illegal in India. I do know that the laws that exist on paper does not correlate very neatly in practise, but if the need arises, it might be a helpful info to have so that you could protect yourself or anything.