Exactly. We are LGBTQ AS KIDS. We are appropriate for ourselves. I knew I wanted to marry the princess at 3 but didn’t have language for it & just heard adults calling gay people predators. I didn’t meet another lesbian until I was 20. That isolation made me suicidal by age 9. That’s inappropriate.
Intentionally excluding a people group from your fiction, means that you would prefer to imagine a world where that people group does not exist... with all of the pitch black dark implications that go along with that.
Today, I had to explain to the kid why some people eat meat and some don't and some only eat some meats and the religious and ethical implications of it all and honestly way spicier than "some boys look like girls".
Was worried. But then I worked through the double negative. When my boy was 3, I told him 'sometimes boys marry other boys." And he said, 'that's stupid, mom. I already am a boy.' So I figured he probably wouldn't be gay, and he's not, but he takes gay for granted as a normal thing.
Was more than 40 years ago, but I still remember my father explaining to me that gay and bi people existed. And young me’s response was to be pleased to understand the world better
Honestly can't recall if/when I ever got a similar explanation? Which honestly kind of explains my general "wtf are you talking about, queer folks have always been around" reaction when idiots try to say otherwise
We spent a lot of time with your mom's cousin and her girlfriend while you were a toddler, and none of us pretended to you that their relationship was anything other than what it was. So didn't need to explain it to you - in your world queer folks had always been around.
I explained my daughter some time ago (she's 6 now) that some times boys simply want to kiss other boys and girls want to kiss other girls. and other times, boys need to live as girls, and girls need to live as boys.
I'm sure there are better words, but it was super simple to understand for her
Seriously. When my then 5YO asked us if he would marry a boy or a girl when he grew up, we said he should marry whoever makes him happy. It was super simple to understand.
I talked to my son when he was little about gay & trans because I wanted him to know what the words meant and that they were perfectly fine things to be. I don’t want him learning about things like that from people who spread hate.
That's a good way to handle it.
When my now 20 yo was that age, I would say, Most men want to marry women and most women want to marry men, but some men want to marry men and some women want to marry women. Kids know ALL about weddings.
they are learning the world and those re concept as new and amazing as any other for them. and they they become normal as anything else. the only difficulty is in our heads, we were raised to think in a "normal" that is super narrow
Right, everything is brand new to them all the time! Learning new facts does not phase them! Just explain in super calm tones at an age-appropriate level and they'll nod and go back to playing.
My nephew transitioned when our oldest was 4, so both our kids have basically just grown up around trans people (him and his friends). They have a queer aunt. It’s super normal to them, because they see it all the time, and representation in media has that effect, too.
Yep! My nibbling had my queer example, as well as other family members of different varieties of queer and I think it made their coming out so much easier to know ppl who had already gone through similar things.
One of my female friends from college married a man, who sometimes wore skirts. He visited L.A. for the day, and I had to go pick up my daughter from preschool, was friends with the other mommies, I just introduced him to them as "My friend X."
I phrased it as sometimes parents think a baby is a boy but then the kid explains they're actually a boy. As my kid said about his imaginary invisible horse Dennis, "He looks like a girl but really he's a boy."
Better to get the point across crassly than to make a big deal put of it, for sure. The nuance of it being more "real" than just "living as" can come later, once they can actually internalize why that matters.
If kids can understand Mulan with outward appearances changing how society treats you based on perceived gender along with having to hide the truth in fear of being humiliated, punished and/or killed, they basically do already understand the crux of it.
Once I marry my fiancée I'll be a step-mom (since she and her ex-girlfriend had kids together). The kids will then have three moms. It's uncommon, but it happens! 😅
There's a great moment in Italy's 2025 Oscar submission film 'Vermiglio' where, in the course of conversation, a child suggests that a man might marry two women. His mother tells him that's not allowed and he responds with "What if they stand close together?"
Fr, when I was a kid I knew all about straight relationships to the point where I thought I HAD to be straight because I did not know of any other way. Had I known there was a whole community I would of had a lot less issue with myself growing up.
"I don't know how to explain queerness to my child" is always secretly "I don't know how to explain my hatred and/or disgust at queerness to my child."
I just had some of this fight with my family because they “weren’t sure how to tell the kids”
Um… honestly? Truthfully? Don’t sugarcoat it and try to use euphemisms? Would they rather find out from their family that gay people exist, or in sex ed or on the playground?
It's hard enough for people to adress straight m/f sexuality and just outright body functions. I'm 45 and still learning stuff. Generational ignorance does tend to perpetuate. Progress I hope is faster to overcome than it did to make the stuff than needs to be left behind.
It’s also like, you’re also going to have to tell your child about like, death and stuff. Injustice. You actually have to have lots of conversations with your kids that will make you think a little and use your brain about it and maybe it’ll be a little awkward
from what I've been told by people who know a lot more about it than I do the way to know if your kid is old enough to have something explained to them is if they're asking questions about it. people infantilise kids so much sometimes.
This. I was startled when one of my teenaged friend’s parents suddenly started vilifying me in the 80s, until I realised the existence of me, an academically gifted hockey team captain with lesbian mothers, had made their kid automatically not a bigot and therefore an existential threat to them.
And the visceral disappointment of my friend when she realised her parents weren’t just unquestioningly parroting Margaret Thatcher but were true believer homophobes was the saddest part of the whole thing. They blamed me for turning her against them, never hearing her saying ‘no, it’s your actions’
It really was. I moved to Australia for study a few years later and she moved to Germany for the same reason and we lost touch, but I hope they found their way back to normalcy because hatefulness is so corrosive. She was a high quality friend!
It's a really simple explanation, too, so your summary makes the most sense. Some men want to have a husband, and some women want to have a wife. "Why? Asks the child. Because that's who they love.
even though i internalized a lot of bigoted beliefs about queerness in sixth grade due to my fundie upbringing, i still didn't understand WHY i had to hate my gay cashier that i liked talking to "just because he couldn't have babies and get pregnant with a man's babies because he's a man"---
---and according to my mother, despite me regrettably writing i didn't write gay pairings on my first fanfiction account because "they were against my christian beliefs" (still feel shame about that), i have questioned my sexuality and gender since around 6th or 7th grade consistently
like, if a sixth or seventh grader from a fundie background could have weird bodily dysphoria over not having klinefelter's syndrome (yeah...that is also a bit disrespectful of past me), repeatedly switch between the boys and girls bathrooms, and want a "romantic female friendship"---
---and that demographic is CLEARLY who pixar is writing to, i'm certain a "normal" (putting that in quotes because even if they were representing a weird genderqueer objectgender pangender freak like me i shouldn't be discriminated against) trans person wouldn't be off limits to show to kids
At the dog park a few months ago, two boys were desperately trying to coax my dog into chasing a ball & telling me about their aunt:
“Our Titi Lala used to be a boy on the outside but she’s a girl on the inside so now she wears makeup and she’s our Titi. But she has a really mean cat.”
Kids get it.
Drives me nuts. None of it needs explaining any more than any other type of human or relationship. Kids absorb and normalize whatever you tell them. But bigots have this excuse that straight relationships are like 101 and queer people existing is some university level subject kids can't handle.
Section 28 in the UK has fucked over 80s/90s kids in extraordinary ways. My neighbor's kids told me they liked boys & girls. I hesitated in saying, "That's cool, I'm bi too." Instead, my 1st worry was parents thinking im a creep for talking about lgbtq+ stuff to children 😰
I remember my dad being unsure about if my kids would understand my stepsister having a gf. I just told him to refer to her as Auntie's gf. Wasn't from a place of hatred, (he and stepmum adore the gf, think of her as another daughter) he genuinely thought my kids wouldn't get it. He's learning tho!
The phrasing is because of a press release Disney put out or something like that, I believe, saying why they were cutting an episode because of trans content in it
They make a big deal out of the "first openly queer character" or whatever for the Nth time, but they're always in such a way that can be easily edited out for the Chinese market.
If it can't as was the case with MG&DD, they'll pull the ep or bury the movie.
That's what I don't get about China. What possible group of people could you find with a larger proportion of socialist/communist support than trans people? And they're the ones you need to pretend don't exist???
BUT, the alternative is a coherent position. So, so many people stay in conservative authoritarian cultures because they aren't *aware* of alternatives. Which, to the authoritarians, is a feature, not a bug.
it was wayyyyy more earth-shattering to me to find out, in my teens, that there was in fact more complexity to gender/sex than i had been taught and people had kept it secret for no reason/were really mad about it or whatever
i wasn't kept purposefully sheltered, really, but i grew up in a really weird christian-ish bubble, so i just kinda didn't... hear about stuff. like. for a while. and when i found out it was like
Comments
Or a troll ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Cowardly humans really are a subspecies. They are all the worst of us. Only accepting a cursed, tiny, ignorant, boring, tiny little world view.
Hiding yourself in sociality harms people mentally.
Bluesky moderation: “That’s hate speech and must be censored.”
And my folks are lovely supportive affirming people, and always have been, it just never really came up!
I'm sure there are better words, but it was super simple to understand for her
When my now 20 yo was that age, I would say, Most men want to marry women and most women want to marry men, but some men want to marry men and some women want to marry women. Kids know ALL about weddings.
Me: Sometimes boys wear skirts.
Niece: Oh! *accepts this & continues on her way*
there is, later, a bombardment of stuff that we'll have to deal with and guide them, but again, that's the same with everything else
He chimes in with - sometimes there are 3 mums....
Sure... but less often
I'll let him know, he does like to be right!
Um… honestly? Truthfully? Don’t sugarcoat it and try to use euphemisms? Would they rather find out from their family that gay people exist, or in sex ed or on the playground?
“Our Titi Lala used to be a boy on the outside but she’s a girl on the inside so now she wears makeup and she’s our Titi. But she has a really mean cat.”
Kids get it.
Agreed.
-NO MORE BIBLE TODAY!
WELL SET UP
ABSOLUTELY RIGHT 👉
ARE YOU EATEN FOOD 🍲
SWEET 😴 SLEEP QUITE
Still not a front loader? Booooring.
They make a big deal out of the "first openly queer character" or whatever for the Nth time, but they're always in such a way that can be easily edited out for the Chinese market.
If it can't as was the case with MG&DD, they'll pull the ep or bury the movie.
Disney of all companies has next to nothing to fear with Trump. He can't hurt them, as was shown in Florida. They only care about the money.
BUT, the alternative is a coherent position. So, so many people stay in conservative authoritarian cultures because they aren't *aware* of alternatives. Which, to the authoritarians, is a feature, not a bug.
And to be clear, I am in favor of wiping out said cultures. But knowing why they think what they do is valuable.
oh that makes a lot more sense. yeah that tracks
wait what do you mean people think it's a sin