Yesterday my stepmom made a comment about how "weird" trans people are that was so assholish I'm not even gonna post it here, and today my stepbrother said that Pinterest allowing a custom gender was ridiculous. I want to argue with them but it feels so hard because like what can I say? They'll just call me naive or weird or... I dunno. I want to change their minds, but like, my stepmom is an asshole in so many ways that I'm not sure where to even begin with her, and my stepbrother is cooler with that stuff, but I can't really bring up the conversation without it being really uncomfortable, not to mention the fact that I've got no idea what he actually thinks about stuff, and I also don't want to be too abrasive and preachy. I want to help but I don't know how, besides the general "Hey, maybe it's not cool to say mean stuff to people" but other than that... I have no idea.
idk i think the "hey let's be nice to people" is probably the best course of action, like, convincing people of things via confrontation tends to... not work out so great especially if they already have a stance on the topic. also: one step at a time. if someone doesnt understand/respect binary trans people then there's no way they're going to understand/respect nonbinary trans people. i do not recomend jumping straight into the deep end when it comes to trying to get people to be less shitty about trans stuff. hmm. maybe going with the whole "this doesn't affect you, but it makes other people happy and that's good" might be a way to curb some of their intolerence? like, expanded gender options on social media is a thing that really doesn't impact cis people unless they want it to. so i guess i recommend: 1) encouraging being nice to others and discouraging any actual harassment of trans people. 2) a possible emphasis on a "these are other people living their other people lives in ways that do not affect us, so we should leave them to their devices" sort of thing.
Yeah, I know, it's just a really weird situation where there's... I don't know. They have 2 very different perspectives on things. I've all but given up on my stepmom except for the occasional "Be nice to people" but like, her son, my stepbrother, I really want to help him not learn any more bad stuff from her. I think he's accepting of binary trans people, at least in a "weird brain genetic randomness" kind of way (which, to be fair, is really all gender and sexuality are in the first place so). But I'm not really that close to him, so it's not like I can just randomly bring up the subject :/ But yeah, if he makes a comment like that I'll try to kind of slide in a little "Is it really that bad?" comment, and hopefully try to, like, ease them in.
