[CW: About Deadnaming]
"...which is also why I call Marilyn Manson 'Brian Hugh Warner', Eminem 'Marshall Bruce Mathers III', and 50 Cent 'Curtis James Jackson III'. Also, my neighbor's legal name is Michael, but for some fucking reason, this weirdo says he goes by 'Mike'! What kind of nonsense is that? That name isn't on any of his government documents!
Of course, the notion that I have to call someone by their legal name isn't a real rule; it's an arbitrary standard being enforced by no entity but myself, but despite that, I'm gonna enforce it so harshly that I can't even give a wholehearted attempt at disobeying it!
My made-up rules* come from my very big brain thought process which definitely isn't mental gymnastics! I'm also totally supportive of you being a huge queer, but until you get the court order for your name change, you're [deadname] to me, and that's completely non-negotiable! Sorry, I
don't*literally fucking do make the rules!"
This pathetic logic is literally something that my stepmother and my father pushed to the staunchest degree. They claimed they were allies and got pissed off and aggressive whenever I politely critiqued them on their deadnaming bullshit or anything they failed to accomplish that real allies could.
So glad they're out of my life and never coming back!
Always impressive how people you didn't know care so much about arbitrary rules they've never followed suddenly seem to care about those arbitrary made-up rules when it happens to justify transphobia. Just a weird coincidence obvious. /s
Sorry you have to deal with that.
My parents used to say similar. When I actually did do that, of course, they moved the goal posts. Over time they did seem to get better, and I do actually find that a lot of people that have been transitioned for 5+ years have similar experiences of transphobic family slowly coming to terms. Some family seem to think that if they get super transphobic you might stop being trans
My grandparents were the same way. It seemed as if they operated on the logic that if they just spent time with me and firmly refused to affirm my gender identity, then I'd just grow out of it. I ended up cutting them out of my life, and their literal response was "What if we just agree to disagree and not talk about this subject at all?", and then I highlighted that being impossible because of the real-world differences that they'd have to handle, "What are you gonna do when I start looking feminine?", "What are you gonna do when I ask you to stop deadnaming me?", "What are you gonna do when my voice changes?", and when I asked them these questions, they ended up explicitly affirming that they are not going to be comfortable with these things. This gave me two possible conclusions:
- A) They think that they're not going to have to adjust to these things because I'm not "genuinely trans" and that I wouldn't be serious about my gender identity enough to proceed with these things. This is a plausible conclusion because they, as staunch Catholics, have explicitly said that they don't believe that LGBTQ+ people exist.
- B) They think that their suggestion of "just shut the fuck up about it" will make me not care about the subject anymore, in an "ignore it and it'll go away" kind of fashion.
Either way, the outcome is that I cut them out of my life so that they would get the memo that this is a non-negotiable situation. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Want to be transphobic? Okay, then get the fuck out of my life. Want to be in my life? Okay, then stop being transphobic. Want both simultaneously? Sorry, my boundaries don't permit that!
They were so disingenuous that they said, "So simply because we don't perfectly agree with you on this subject, you wanna never talk to us again!?", and it's so bad faith because they're constantly trying to phrase this as a matter of opinion, opinion, opinion, just fucking "opinions", without regard to the material implications of said "opinions". This highlights that they view this matter on a completely false premise.
I disagree with them on a lot of subjects. For instance, my grandparents are staunchly opposed to abortion to the point where they're practically single-issue voters around it. They wouldn't dare vote for a candidate that's pro-choice. However, despite this, I never considered cutting them out of my life over their views on abortion. In a hypothetical alternate universe where I'm a pregnant cis woman who wanted to undergo an abortion on the other hand, having to deal with my grandparents being the same degree of anti-abortion as they are in this universe, I'd have to cut them out to properly go about my life, and that's the key difference: real-world impact.
Transphobic family members are something else, especially if they're religious.