Went to the Valley and saw Wildwood today. It was great. Highly recommended.
But the movie's not what I want to write about...
I went with my parents. In the past few years they've dropped some guilt on me because I don't invite them to go to the movies with me. They won't go on their own, but if I'm going then they'll go to. Also, they said they would drive the 70 or so minutes there and back.
But that's not what I want to write about...
There's a scene in Wildwood, a homecoming. Warriors come home and their families come out to meet them. Lots of guys hugging kids. Then Niamh, the (only?) female warrior hugs a grown woman and my mom leans over to me and says, "Of course they had to that kind of a hug."
*sigh*
10 years ago, she never would have made a comment like that. NEVER. If she had noticed the moment in the movie, if it had bothered her, she never would have said anything. She would have let it pass.
She doesn't do that anymore.
My dad has become the same way.
All this is to say that they refuse to call my nephew by his chosen name and insist on calling him by the name he was given at birth. They refuse to call him him. They refuse to accept him as he is.
They came to me a month or so ago, when they learned the my nephew had started binding his chest. I told them that I didn't know about the binding, but I expected it was coming because of what he wrote in a blurb a year ago. They asked how I was okay with this... change. (They're word.)
I said that first and foremost, it's not about me. It's about him. It's about giving safety and, hopefully, love to a young person by accepting him as he is.
They both kind of looked at me like they were surprised at my statements. My mom said, "I guess you're just a better person than I am."
"It's not about being a good or better person," I said. "It's about my nephew and making something that's hard to do at anytime being done at a hard time in life and making sure he knows that there is at least one place that he's safe."
The conversation ended there.
My parents were so pro-homosexual when I was a kid. When other kids were using the word "gay" to mean something bad they sat me and my brothers down and explained why we shouldn't use it that way. There is nothing wrong or bad about being homosexual, they said. They said that if we used it that way we would be harming both ourselves and those who were gay.
I'm grateful they took the time to do that then.
I don't think my parents would do it today.