clatterbane:

I saw something about the benefits of growing up QUILTBAG in a more liberal and not so religious family. I didn’t want to hijack that discussion, but it did get me thinking again when I should have been getting to sleep.  🙂

My mother was, unfortunately, one who managed some pretty raging mental health concern trolling styley bi- and transphobia without any kind of religious framework to try to hang that on. She also relied on some transphobic Second Wave thinking there. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some of this before.

It was better not to be lesbian or gay because life is inevitably harder, but they couldn’t help it so they were basically OK. She also believed that many lesbians’ orientation is a result of abuse, but they still couldn’t help that. (Somehow bi people who had also mostly been twisted by abuse could help their orientation, however. I’m still not sure how that works.) Still a very condescending kind of homophobia, but she really did have lesbian and gay friends who presumably didn’t know about her attitudes there. A couple of my friends who were acceptably queer and having problems with their (mostly ostentatiously liberal professor) families also lived with us for a while. That was fine, and their families should be ashamed of treating them so badly.

Anybody she *did* perceive as being able to help it was seriously mentally ill by definition. She actually warned me to stay away from several “crazy” out bi/pan acquaintances in high school like it was catching (she may have had suspicions about me then). And I got threatened with being committed and she *did* force me into more therapy and meds when a friend outed me as bi my first year of college. Because I only thought that because of my terrible mental health. It might be fixable craziness from horrible abuse (that never even happened).

That is a major reason I am not fond of heavy reliance on the “Born That Way, so please don’t hurt me!” arguments. Because that can also be used to abuse people, over things that are nobody else’s business in the first place. I can see where some people are coming from with that feeling comforting, but yeah.  It does not always help people.

My longterm best friend at that time (a lesbian) also had two ostentatiously liberal atheist parents, and her mother acted awful and withheld funding until she changed universities to get her away from Teh Gay. That was quite a feat, considering my friend had an educational trust set up by her paternal grandparents, and it wasn’t even Mom’s money and she wasn’t involved in admistering it–but, she somehow made good on the threats and held up those funds anyway.

That’s when my friend ended up back in town, enrolled at the university where both her parents taught and where Mom could keep an eye on her. In the abstract, at least LG people were cool. When it was her kid, however… 😐 I could also tell that her mom assumed we were involved before that, though apparently I was less of a threat than her known girlfriend at First University. Even with some added classist horror there. Known GF was very threatening.

My friend also ended up getting forced/coerced into psych treatment. And they found a totally secular shrink who was willing to diagnose her with Dependant Personality Disorder. Which indicated cutting off all contact with her girlfriend, for therapeutic reasons, and basically letting her parents tell her every move to make For Her Own Good. Because unhealthy dependence on the GF. Yep. I only wish I were kidding.  She was suddenly suicidal a lot, caught in that kind of situation, which obviously justified that treatment. Her dad didn’t agree, but did nothing to intervene, probably because he was also afraid of her mother’s abusive behavior.

I haven’t talked to her in years, after she tried to make a new start in a different state. And I hope that helped her get the space to recover some.

So, yeah. Certain strains of religious involvement really encourage treating people like shit,  but atheism is definitely no guarantee against finding other excuses for not so great attitudes and behavior. Some people just want to act judgmental and abusive, though it may still be good that they aren’t being directly fed as many excuses and encouragement. A lot of them will still come up with their own excuses, though, even if they have to rely on the DSM instead of often odd interpretations of religious texts.

A post old enough that I was at least still hoping (the pronounceable) QUILTBAG would catch on, which just got a note.

Only part of what I was talking about recently with having very little patience anymore for Zombie Bad ‘70s Politics, from too much exposure. But definitely part of it.