i cracked my egg a couple years ago and have been on hormones for over a year now, but i still havent been able to come out to my parents. ive had a coming out text saved in my phone for months at this point but i havent been able to send it. every time i think about trying i get this horrible sinking feeling like no matter how well i write it, how clear i am, how gently i tell them, no matter what its going to go badly.

as for why, theres lots of reasons. theyre republicans and religious, while im pretty far left and an anti-religion atheist. they were authoritarian when i was growing up and loved to use shame and punishment (both physical and emotional) to pressure me into doing what they wanted. they never listened to me when i was a kid and treated me like i was their property rather than a person who they were responsible for caring for. it always felt like they just wanted me to be a perfect little emotionless robot who did whatever they wanted. im not doing the pain of being their child justice here at all. its honestly hard to describe how bad it was, just like a constant low level psychological torture. after i moved out i got a girlfriend and brought her to visit for the holidays a couple times, but they wouldnt even let us sleep in the same room even though we were living together... like they couldnt even accept premarital sex from their (presumed) neurotypical cishet son, how tf are they going to accept a trans fem poly lesbian neurodivergent daughter? they acted so disappointed and concerned when i showed up with a couple piercings... wtf are they going to do when i show up with boobs?

im really worried that even if i can bring myself to tell them theyll use the same tactics they did when i was a kid. more than anything i dont want to suffer their attempts to talk me out of it, to suggest theres something wrong with me, to suggest im somehow wrong or brainwashed or something. i worry theyll parrot fox news talking points at me which amount to transphobic propaganda. theyve done that for years on other topics like climate change. i doubt even if i can get past all that theyll ever gender me correctly or call me by my chosen name if i ever decide to change it.

so yeah im thinking about going no contact, just cutting them off entirely. i kept thinking i should at least try to come out to them, give them one final chance to show me they arent the horrible people they showed me they were my whole life, but over the months of trying to work myself up to telling them ive come to the conclusion it might not even be worth the attempt. we barely have a relationship at all right now, just one or two short phone calls a year i kinda just suffer through. its coming up on two years since i visited them, and they live literally thousands of miles away. it would be so easy to just never see or talk to them again and theres literally nothing i want from them at this point.

i guess this is more of a rambling vent post than anything. maybe part of me wants someone to give me permission to finally be done with them, but i know i only need my own permission. something keeps holding me back. i guess the societal conditioning runs deep... ugh anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk.

I'm sorry you have to make this kind of decision, I'm honestly not sure anybody would be qualified to give advice here (only you really know your situation). But as long as you understand that, I can try.

I've heard quite a few examples of this from people online, and I always hear it ends with no contact, so you're probably going to be right about their reaction. It's up to you whether you want to deal with the potential fallout, and if you think you can handle it. I think you could also tell them just to spite them, but that's totally up to you, and that probably wouldn't have the desired effect anyway.

You would be justified in cutting them off if you do, and I'm sure whatever you end up doing it'll be the right decision.

Edit: For added context, the example I'm mainly thinking of is in the video IvoryTV made, where she shares her experience around 30-35 minutes in, I'll refrain from linking it, and if you seek it out please know that it's probably not safe for most trans people on here to view due to the long list of heavy subject matter

Okay yeah its clear they arent gonna be cool about it.

Here is what i suggest:

Avoid interaction if possible. But if they insist, and it would create less drama to go along with it, you may decide to interact with your parents. Pretend to get along with them but keep your true self in reserve. Make sure you know how you disagree with how they think. Write it down or whatever you need remind you that you are different.

thats what ive been doing for like 20 years at this point. i havent showed them my real self since i was a teenager and even then it was highly filtered. i honestly cant stand to perform for them for another minute, especially now that im becoming more myself every day.

I'm sorry for you sweetheart, whichever decision you go with is a tough one.

Here have an otter hug 🫂

I'm glad to hear you are seriously considering all this. It means you see yourself as deserving and important, a feat when being raised by magats.

It sounds like you know what you think is best. A few things I can think of that you may not have thought of

Pay attention to if the decision to cut them off leaves you with a weight or a worry, and if telling them, while you are safe, with the power to hang up and never see them again if you need, will be better for you emotionally. If the concern "what if they call? What if I see them?" Weighs on you, it may be better to make a "fuck you, by the way also tits" phone call.

Basically, whatever decision you make, don't be afraid to change at any time. Do what's best for you emotionally. Do not consider their feelings.

One day you will get the call that one of them is dying or dead. Or you will stumble across that information. Do you plan to try and be there at all for that? People are different on their death beads.

I am a firm believer that being terrified of the end and apologizing does not grant you forgiveness, but you might learn some things about them you would have otherwise not learned. You could also just hear a big story about how they are the victim and hero in their lives, trying to convince themselves/you/yhwh that they deserve heaven. You can never know which they will pick until they are genuinely dying.

You know your people better than me though. The family around them won't change much in this time either. So stay safe. And gain, do what's best for your own emotions/closure/relief. Don't go and traumatize yourself if you think you'll be better off not seeing them even then.

You might want to think about it from time to time though until you decide, instead of being surprised when it happens and having to decide in hours. Just as before though, feel free to follow your gut when you find out, even if it goes against what you had planned.

We are different when a loved one is dying. Trust your instincts. It is better to get yelled at so you don't spend the rest of your life thinking "what if", than it is to remain away and wonder until you die "what if'. But if you dgaf, then dgaf. Who cares what they need.

You'll figure it all out. You're already putting you first, and that was the hardest step.

Then perform for 30 seconds. Or quit.

im going to assume this was meant to be earnestly helpful but it comes off as callous and dismissive

My opinion may be unpopular, and I won't say it's the correct thing to do, but I personally don't believe there is value in unchosen family unless they make themselves valuable to you. Growing up, my family was abusive, and my extended family was no better. I don't believe that the concept of sharing genetic ancestry makes them special in some way that should force me to deal with people I wouldn't choose to have in my life.

Currently, I've gone non contact with my entire extended family for many years now. Once I move out and get some stuff settled, I'll probably go non contact with my parents, as well. Not because they're transphobic (anymore), but because I don't see any value in the relationship we have. The years and years of abuse will never go away to me, and they've made zero effort to invest in our relationships to heal the pain they caused. They still believe they did nothing wrong. So I don't see any reason why I should have to put up with people who traumatized me just because we're related. My sister and her family is the only part of my family I don't actively plan on cutting off.

Now, closure looks different for different people. For me, if I was considering ditching someone transphobic in my life, I wouldn't even give them the chance to hurt me again. I don't personally see the value in letting that happen. What value would you gain from it? Perhaps for you, it's closure, but it isn't for me. I think it's important to weigh the options here for yourself. Is there any scenario that could feasibly play out in which you would be happy to have told them? Or do you just feel pressured by the societal expectations of family values to give them one more chance? Why, after all this time, do you believe they deserve another chance? Those are the questions I'd ponder if I were in your situation.

I cut my parents off 6 years ago and have never been better without someone.

Mine were extremely abusive and completely refused to accept the fact that I'm trans, so as soon as I was able to, I cut them off

It sounds to me like you already know that you want to go no contact.

I dont think you owe anyone a chance to hurt you.

I give you permission to be done with them if that helps, but it sounds like you're pretty much already there.

Sorry

theyre republicans and religious

They've already told you who they are, leave. Tell them from a place of safety.

yeah thats the conclusion im coming to, that theres just no point giving them one last chance to hurt me. i used to think that there was no inherent value in blood relatives but over the years i kinda forgot. i guess... being as different from other people as i am (ive consistently found i think and feel differently than other people even when we have a lot in common on the surface), i hoped that maybe the people who are the most like me might be able to understand me in a way others cant.

i already said in the post i live thousands of miles away from them. i couldnt be in more of a place of safety without being in another country.

You seem to know they'll just be abusive already so why bother? If you're already going through a rough time why make it worse?

If you change your mind later in life you can let them know when you're ready. It isn't required to let them know anything going on in your life.

It seems like you're feeling slightly guilty. Id say you have no reason to feel that way if you've been disrespected by them your entire life.

You need to consider yourself and do what's in your best interest.

Oh how dearly and mercilessly we despise those who dare cause distress upon the cuties of this land.

Firstly--

i guess this is more of a rambling vent post than anything. maybe part of me wants someone to give me permission to finally be done with them, but i know i only need my own permission. something keeps holding me back. i guess the societal conditioning runs deep... ugh anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Whatever is or is not the reason, purpose, objective, type, or whatnot regarding the post, it is a valid one, and most importantly, you are valid, to hell(or better yet, away from it so I do not have to see such terrible people) with those Cultists.

Onto the contents of the post itself:

every time i think about trying i get this horrible sinking feeling like no matter how well i write it, how clear i am, how gently i tell them, no matter what its going to go badly.

Dearie, others have posited similar--If you feel as though it will, then they have zero right to know to begin with. Them missing out on their lovely daughter because of their ignorance and spite can burn.

theyre republicans and religious

Oh boy, the greatest combination a hypocrite could ever aspire to be. Gross.

they were authoritarian when i was growing up and loved to use shame and punishment (both physical and emotional) to pressure me into doing what they wanted. they never listened to me when i was a kid and treated me like i was their property rather than a person who they were responsible for caring for. it always felt like they just wanted me to be a perfect little emotionless robot who did whatever they wanted.

Story time if you will spare me a second of archive--I worked alongside an individual once. We sparred many times but nonetheless we saw each other as equal proletariats(and fucked over all the same). One thing he said contextualized a lot, in the raw, honest, detestable hatred that spewed out of his mouth, saying that he would disown his kid if they ended up trans. He wanted his child to be exactly one thing and one thing only, as he viewed his children as his property(something he also had said prior). You are likely not far off-base in thinking that your parents might be in a similar vein.

i doubt even if i can get past all that theyll ever gender me correctly or call me by my chosen name if i ever decide to change it.

If they fail the basic test of decency and can do nothing more than continue to try to brainwash you with tired drivel and deny you who you are, then they do not deserve you. And if you believe they will fail that test, they do not deserve your attempt at extending them a reed they would rather paw away.

so yeah im thinking about going no contact, just cutting them off entirely. i kept thinking i should at least try to come out to them, give them one final chance to show me they arent the horrible people they showed me they were my whole life, but over the months of trying to work myself up to telling them ive come to the conclusion it might not even be worth the attempt. we barely have a relationship at all right now, just one or two short phone calls a year i kinda just suffer through. its coming up on two years since i visited them, and they live literally thousands of miles away. it would be so easy to just never see or talk to them again and theres literally nothing i want from them at this point.

You are well within your rights to cut off your bloodline, and need nobody's permission so to do. Bloodlines can choose to build a connection that transcends this mortal coil, or they can poison the well so that there is no more connection between those sharing it than an analysis nominally concluding a connection.

Let not a single soul dare try to tell you that bloodline's are some magical inviolable link that must always be preserved. What needs preservation is Family, and Family is found; not taught, not forced, not decreed, but found. If the bloodline fails you, then they are the failures. And they are nothing more than a memory to be severed.

Whatever you decide, know that there are many of us in similar camps with our own bloodlines. You are not alone. You have a Family, you do not need rusted, rotted, decayed tools that perpetuate abuse.

similar situation here myself, except i still live with them. at this point, myself and three of my four siblings had already all decided to going no contact with my dad once we move out, and that was already before my egg cracked.

it sounds to me like you've pretty much already made up your mind, and have nearly gone no contact already. all that remains is figuring out how to handle the aspect of you being trans...

theres literally nothing i want from them at this point.

if you truly don't want anything from them, then do not waste your time/mental energy coming out when you already know it'll go over poorly. you obviously know your parents better than i do, but if they're anything like my dad, you already know exactly how it's going to play out (it's because of the woke agenda, the damn libruls and their brainwashing, yadda yadda you know the drill). why subject yourself to that? to what end? so that you can "win" that final conversion with your parents? you already know you won't win, their minds are already made up right now before you've said a word. you cannot win every relationship, but you can avoid hurting yourself to prove a point (whether it be to them or to yourself).

hopefully that made sense, that last paragraph was kind of a stream of consciousness thing

Not to derail a serious conversation but what is that GIF from? Looks cool

my mum used to be very ... manipulative, i'm gonna say, for lack of a better word.

anyways i haven't contacted her in 5 years.

No worries dearie. You can find information about it here.

Why does this sound like AI? Am I going crazy?

i think see what you mean, but i'm reasonably certain they're a human with a slightly eccentric (and quite erudite) writing style.

I'm still boymode in a red state, but your parents sound exactly like my parents. Specifically:

they were authoritarian when i was growing up and loved to use shame and punishment (both physical and emotional) to pressure me into doing what they wanted. they never listened to me when i was a kid and treated me like i was their property rather than a person who they were responsible for caring for. it always felt like they just wanted me to be a perfect little emotionless robot who did whatever they wanted. im not doing the pain of being their child justice here at all. its honestly hard to describe how bad it was, just like a constant low level psychological torture.

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. I've told my therapist that it was like living with the Stasi: no privacy, constant control and dehumanization. I spent a long time compromising and putting myself second with them, even after I left home.

I learned to not bring up friends or romantic partners. I told them nothing about my life, so they'd spend the day trying to find me on local webcams or interrogate people that knew me about what I was up to. Every once in a while, mom would find some asshole in a magazine and send me his picture as a sort of "oh it would be great if you looked like this" thing. I'm autistic and I have dysphoria. I do the bare minimum to be presentable and appear groomed. Sending me pictures of some shitheel with a $300 haircut and a tacky suit is not inspiring. I could go on for days because that's the level of control they thought they deserved over me. And god help me if I didn't answer one of their many phone calls or talk about the bible enough once I'd answered.

I eventually went NC a decade ago because they found out I was dating an atheist and I saw what life would be like if I kept capitulating to them. I think it was the hardest, best choice I ever made with them. It was hard because of internalized guilt, but also hard because they tried literally everything short of showing up on my doorstep. Crazy phone calls, letters, packages, finding family members I hadn't blocked to reach out on their behalf.

They were everything from angry to bewildered to hurt to furious to innocent to... you get the idea. They tried every single fucking button they'd installed in me over the eighteen years I lived with them. I got to see a very ugly side of them and I made it my mission to not reward them for any shitty thing they tried.

I'm not telling you this to scare you, but to let you know that it's gonna be hard either way. I started viewing their control over me like a rabid animal, thrashing and biting and trying everything in its power to stay alive. And I, with a lot of inner turmoil and feelings, stomped it out. And life got better.

I resumed contact two years later on my terms, the night I married that atheist lady, from a lobby in Las Vegas. I decided, rightly or wrongly, that they probably needed to know. And while I think they're still mad (they had someone picked out for me that I truly could not stand), they're a lot more reasonable when they talk with me. We talk on holidays and I try to call every few months to see what they're up to.

It's not perfect and they still try the guilt trips, but it's like I turned the volume way down on them and it doesn't matter as much. And I'm more assertive. Mom sent me a Jack Posobiec thing a few months ago and I flat-out told her he was a piece of shit. When she told me she loved him, I told her to start loving better people. I couldn't have done that a decade ago.

So I'm rambling, but I had to go NC with mine. Ultimately the decision is up to you, and they'll do everything in their power to make you regret it, but my life improved dramatically even with the massive guilt trips. And you never have to resume contact if it doesn't work for you in some way.

Take care of yourself.

A magical girl protagonist of an animated 12 episode drama-action series of lemmy posting. The textual aura farming is off the charts.

Like I don't disagree with what they're saying, but using fanfiction-esque prose and dramatic bold and Bold & italic text, alongside seriously paced sentences you'd usually see in like a novel, and using vocabulary like "bloodlines," "decreed", "severed," "mercilessly," and "mmmooortal coil," all that with random capitalization of emphasized nouns like "Family," "Cultists," the use of vocatives like they're talking to someone in person like "Oh boy," and "Dearie," the em dashes, it's too much for me. It's just too much in any context, like even if a character in a fantasy novel was written like this I would lift an eyebrow.

If your writing style in online posts and comments is so spruced up that it ceases to prioritize conveying information and becomes instead about acting like some persona, you've gotta stop. LARPing is fun, in the right context, you've gotta be able to turn it off sometimes. And when they still speak this way when talking about serious abuse, it just doesn't rub me the right way, it just seems terminally self centered, it gives off the vibe that they're looking straight through what OP described, and just using it as a way to act out their personality in order to self-affirm.

Hey there mate, just got around to seeing this comment thread.

I can assure you that AI was not used in any part of my post, I was overcome with emotion and had to put thoughts to paper as-it-were.

And the words you lifted an eyebrow at seriously are just a part of my standard vernacular, I understand why you would scrutinize it though(believe me you, you are not the first or will be the last that has found my writing and speaking odd).

If your writing style in online posts and comments is so spruced up that it ceases to prioritize conveying information and becomes instead about acting like some persona, you've gotta stop. LARPing is fun, in the right context, you've gotta be able to turn it off sometimes.

One thing I will say is that I do not apologize for who I am. Not going to feign offense for the sake of it, but I will say you need to be careful passing judgement on people being "LARPers," for just existing as who they are, as that can cause offense for people, especially those who already have difficulty engaging with people as it is.

In a sense we are all personas, we use masks in our day to day lives consciously or not to hide the deeper recesses of ourselves. But at least insofar as this post is concerned, I spoke as I felt and typed it in that wise. The post was genuinely written, even if one finds it eccentric.

Hope this helps contextualize a bit, I wish you nothing but the best dearie. <3