Dear Ignorant Aunt,

You said you were shocked I would acknowledge error. I suspect I know what you were referring to.

The email.

Years ago now. Obama was still in office, and was trying to protect trans rights. In particular, their right to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, not their sex.

You sent an absolutely vitriol joke out on your send list. It wasn’t that you forgot to take me off the email that angered me. Not really. It was the joke. I remember it to this day. It was transphobic and hateful, and I have people I care about who don’t fit in the outdated gender binary. Thus I became angry on their account.

“JFK put men on the moon. Obama is putting men in women’s bathrooms’.

Maybe-Maybe-I overreacted. Maybe I shouldn’t have outed myself as your bisexual niece to everyone on your mailing list. But you completely denied any wrong doing. You thought it was just funny. You didn’t understand how it could hurt Trans individuals.

It has occurred to me over the course of the most recent visit with you, that this may have been born of ignorance. Granted, it’s hard to figure that out, since you’re terrible at communicating, and you respond to anything critical or contrary to your perception of reality with gaslighting.

(More on that later).

However, I’m going to start with why the joke was transphobic.

The following is paraphrased from Planned Parenthood, and placed in simple terms.

Sex is assigned at birth.

Gender is the expectations of a person based on their

assigned sex.

Gender identity is a very personal thing. It is not mental illness if you reject the gender associated with your assigned sex. Other individuals find their gender identity and does not align with the gender associated their assigned sex. Transgender individuals generally fall under this category.

There is also a spectrum of gender, but I’ll get to that later. Sex is male or female, though this is a gross oversimplification. Gender means man or woman.

The offensive joke? You’re proclaiming that by allowing transwomen to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, men are allowed in the women’s room. You are calling transwomen men. Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. There can be female men and male women. Because gender and sexual identity are not the same thing.

I responded with anger because trans and cis women have both been attacked for being believed to be in the wrong bathroom. Really, no one should be flashing their genitals at anyone in any facility. Women shouldn’t do it to other women. Men shouldn’t do it to other men. No one should be doing it to children anywhere.

For an individual to realize their gender identity doesn’t align with their assigned sex is a challenge. To begin to embrace their true gender is a greater challenge, and it’s impossible for them to convince everyone of their gender. All they can hope is for their social circles and legal status to reflect and accept their gender.

You’ve never had to question your gender identity because your gender aligns with your assigned sex. You are a female woman-a cis-woman. A male woman, a trans woman, has to deal with being insulted and ridiculed. They are called men to their faces. How would you feel if that were you? If I insisted your were a man, and that you were my uncle? That you’re my mother’s brother, not her sister?

And before you go to your knee jerk “don’t be dramatic’ or ‘it’s not the same’-it is exactly the same. To think otherwise is transphobic and bigoted ideology.

That said I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if you were a TERF- trans exclusionary radical female/feminist.

By the way, you gaslight. I have two examples of this from this short visit alone. Less then a week and two sharp moments.

You demanded to know why my mother wouldn’t consider moving to somewhere “more affordable’. We tried to explain all of the reasons why we couldn’t. We can’t afford to move (much less if just mom). The only places affordable in Massachusetts are far to the west, and to do that takes her far away from any medical facilities of note. She has an extreme medical condition that

If she leaves Massachusetts, she has to find a way to cover her medical expenses out of pocket. Due to the absurdity of privatized healthcare in this country, that would cancel out

any savings from moving to another state. In fact, it would make her cost of living impossible to sustain. Due to the medication she’s on, she has to titrate off it-especially at her high dosages-or risk seizures. And even if she manages to titrate off it, then she gets to look forward to a life time of extreme and degenerative nerve pain-that realistically would drive her mad.

When we tried to explain that she might in fact die without Masshealth, you demanded she stop being dramatic. She wasn’t being dramatic. She was being realistic. But because that doesn’t fit into your perception of the world (because you believe there’s always a solution), you deflected. You gaslighted my mother by trying to belittle the validity of her response. You did this to your sister, even though it wasn’t her opinion, it was a fact.

As you’re the best of her siblings, I’m reminded how happy I am to be an only child.

And then you did it again to me at the comedy club.

Given that our politics have never aligned, I was shocked by your decision to take us to see that particular comic. She was fantastic, but she was also a loud, proud lesbian.

This led to her referring to to the current acronym for all sexualities. L for lesbians, G for gays, B for bisexuals, T for transgenders, Q for questioning or queer, I for intersex, A for asexual, and P for Pansexual.

You were confused by Pansexual. So I tried to explain a bit about gender spectrum-cis, trans, non binary, gender fluid, and how pansexuality embraces people of all forms, not just male or female.

You asked, in what was either earnest or a piss poor attempt at humor, “Animals?’

I responded with ‘Wrong, rude, and bigoted’. I want it clear here I wasn’t calling you a bigot-I was calling the logic you’d expressed as bigoted.

You got huffy and declared ‘Don’t you start’.

I didn’t start it. You did. I don’t think you realized that.

For decades, same sex marriage was not legally equal or accepted. Opponents of the notion-bigots who believed there was something wrong with people romantically or sexually attracted to people of the same sex as them-used two central arguments. These arguments were completely illogical, as they are now. But they proclaimed that if same sex marriage was permitted, it was inevitably that next would be legal pedophilia or beastiality.

That is why your comment was fucked up. Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, pansexuals, and even asexuals all want one thing. To have a consensual relationship of sexual or romantic nature with who they wish.

Animals and minors cannot consent. They do not belong in the same categories. They are true perversions that I am not educated enough to comment on. But I can say without a doubt that there will never be a place for pedophilia or beastiality in the LGBTQIAP Alliance.

You do not get to tell people they can’t be upset because you say things that upset them. I am a bi/pan romantic demisexual (I require a strong emotional bond before I can consider sex). And you has basically declared I wanted to fuck animals.

I’m allowed to be upset. You’re not allowed to tell me not to start when you threw the first punch.

I was full of rum and righteous rage and had my mother not been between us, you’d have caught these hands while the lesbian comic on stage cheered me on. Because she’d have understood

where that rage came from.

Your ignorance does not excuse when you say these hateful things. Nor does forgetting you said them.

I’ve tried to explain before there are no walls in the apartment Mom and I share. So unless she goes into her room or the bathroom and shuts the door, chances are I can and will hear phone conversations.

You forgot what you said that upset her one night-that compelled her to end the conversation. I haven’t.

My therapist and gotten on me about my weight management. Being currently poorer then a church mouse, it’s basically impossible to eat well. Eating healthy takes a shocking amount of money, and time and energy to prepare. Or, if you have the money, you can buy it pre-prepared, but that’s far more money then my family has ever had.

Your comment to Mom when she tried to explain part of this? “Well, eating a few less Big Macs couldn’t hurt’.

We. Don’t. Have. The. Cash. For. McDonalds.

We’re probably gaining weight due to the starvation effect and malnutrition. Not because we’re eating too much. Because we’re not eating enough.

We have 196 dollars in food stamps per month. This does not cover hot foot or food eaten out. So no, we can’t use it to buy Big Macs. We have to figure out how to stretch out 98 dollars per person across 30 days. On average, according to our basal metabolic rates (the amount of calories we need to keep our bodies stable at their current size) is about 2000 a day. 96/30=3.2 dollars a day budget per person. 320 cents to acquire 2000 calories. Every 32 cents has to buy 200 calories-or else your body stops buying calories because of the Starvation Effect.

You have this compulsive need to blame everyone for their problems. But sometimes you do the best you can, and you still get screwed. I won’t say it’s not awful, because it is. But you. know what sucks worse?

An ignorant blood relative who doesn’t care to educate themselves.

You know how I’m engaged, and it’s not a heteronormative romance?

Yeah. Don’t worry about figuring out a costume for my costume wedding theme.

That’s only for guests to worry about.

Sincerely,

Your Angry Bi Niece