Prejudiced Family Members and Acquaintances

Post Reply New Topic

I did go to the dance, but without a date.
I stood there in the corner like a self-conscious, terrified, lump of clay.
In the photos I have my shoulders look so tense I could have been a quarterback.
I was actively frowning.
That was my ASD, and the fact I'd lost all my friends in the Kristy debacle.
Also my mother made me wear stilettos, so I couldn't even walk.

I don't remember even knowing that boy who asked me.
I was really excited because I had no other friends and was afraid to go alone.
I don't remember if he even went to the dance (alone), or if we danced at all.
I think I only danced once, with Dave *Kristy's bf who I'd always liked*

Insert Journey - Open Arms.

I had lots of black female friends starting at a much younger age than 8th Grade.
I really can't explain what that comment was about.
I could ask my mum but I'm sure she wouldn't remember.

Oh, I didn't take it as criticism. It's just something that I've thought about before. However, yes, I suspect that there probably wasn't any getting through to her. It's still a wonder though, at the back of my head.



I remember what it was like going to school during the marriage equality debate. Writing pros and cons lists for same-sex marriage. Pretending to have no emotional attachment to the outcome. Being told that gay people shouldn't have sex by my sex education teacher. My biology teacher / sex ed teacher sometimes called people gay as an insult.

Being called disgusting, spat at and beaten as a teenager...I hate that memory. At least the distorted fragments I can remember. Not much really shocks me. Sometimes it helps to laugh.

However, I will say that I think it's gotten much better. Teenagers now are able to be open in ways that I was never able to. They have shows like Heartstopper. There's even gay cartoons. I didn't even know the term LGBT until I started asking Google 'Am I gay?' I only knew of gay and straight. Now I see pride parades and representation. It's nice. There's a bitterness where I think it's a shame it didn't happen sooner, but I am glad that it's improved.

That situation must've been horrific. I'm sorry that you experienced that.

I'm glad that you brought up prejudice towards people who are LGBTQ+. Sexism is another one that I should've mentioned in my initial post. Both are still huge problems in the world as a whole as are other forms of prejudice.

I come from an extremely racist family.

Rising above it is something to be very proud of.

It was my life's work to get away from them.

Childhood indoctrination can be very hard to overcome. That's why the cycle of abuse so often continues. I've seen it happen firsthand.

Oh yeah I don't disagree. It was a generation to generation thing with my family.

I can remember when my daughter was very young and how difficult it was to teach her right from wrong in that situation. It would have been so easy to just go with their way but there was something inside me that just had to fight.

I always struggled with the way I had been disciplined as a kid and felt like it was wrong, but when I saw a young toddler being beaten when I was a teenager, I was appalled and became firmly convinced that I wasn't just being rebellious - that it was, without question, wrong. I had always been taught to question or doubt my instincts about things. It's something I still struggle with in a way, but at least, I didn't abuse my own kid. He told me yesterday that I was an "amazing mom." I'm not, but I try.

To tie this into the main topic, he decided to dress as Abraham Lincoln for Halloween this year. Of course, one year he dressed as Darth Vader and the next the Emperor. I'm hoping that it all balances out.

May the force be with him - for good or evil.

When I told my extreme Trump-supporting Pentecostal friend about my neighbour's obnoxious ways, he said, "I bet he's a Democrat." Somehow I doubt it - my neighbour (now deceased) had tried to hurt my feelings by yelling "Renter! Renter!" at me. He was an owner-occupier. So am I, in the UK, but he didn't take the trouble to find that out. I've also heard acquaintances declare that atheists hate God, homosexuality is an abomination, all Tories are fascists, and most people are bastards.

It's tempting to be prejudiced against the prejudiced though, as if it were some deliberate moral choice that they made, when in truth, honest deliberation cuts through prejudice like butter. Personally I think it's perfectly normal and natural, and comes out more among less-educated folks who have never really mingled with people outside of their own homogenous group. Though I'm not saying it's always harmless of course.

I grew up in a very polarised family, who were for the most part very religious. My mum's family were part of something called the Brethren, which is basically as close to a cult as you can get without actually being a cult (imagine if the Westboro Baptists and Jehovah's Witnesses were combined). So my childhood was a ton of indoctrination, guilt-tripping, reasons I will likely end up in hell, reasons why women are sh*t and should be seen and not heard, strict discipline (physical punishment considered illegal today was totally fine), judgemental crap towards anyone who wasn't part of the in-crowd, and various explosive arguments between different family members. My nan then committed suicide when I was in highschool and I ran off abroad at 15 to live with a pedophile in order to escape the drama back home (and various not great things happened to me as a result). So judgemental/prejudiced people were my 'normal' for a long time. It took until my mid 20s for me to even start questioning if my childhood was weird in any way, as that's all I knew. At nearly 40, I still have to occasionally stop and think 'hang on, that's not how everyone else does that'.

For someone autistic, the one positive thing about growing up in that sort of environment is having such strict rules about what is/isn't acceptable. There is a clear hierarchy, you are told what you are supposed to think and do, there is zero room for interpretation (at least as a woman), and you have very little autonomy. If you do make a mistake, there is very clear punishment so you know what you did wrong. I actually missed having such strict rules for a while after I escaped and it took me a long time and a lot of studying to create my own to replace them.

In hindsight, I wouldn't wish my childhood on anyone and I do my best to protect my younger family members from it now. I would happily go to jail to defend them from the type of people that I was exposed to and the older people still alive in my family are well aware of my views. They can learn about cults, pedophiles, abuse and other fun stuff when they are old enough to mentally deal with those subjects. However, the experience did make me very good at a) quickly picking up on other people's energy (since I had to in order to survive) which made up for my lack of communication skills a bit, b) acting as peacekeeper between other people (since I witnessed so many fights as a kid), c) perfecting a non-emotional poker face and mentally zoning out when SHTF (since reacting was always a bad idea), and d) bouncing back whenever bad things happen to me that would likely floor other people indefinitely. I have more lives than a cat! It also makes a lot of the everyday things that happen to me as an adult seem less of a deal in comparison to what I went through as a kid/teen and I think it made me more empathic as I know what it's like to be constantly judged on everything you do/say/think and told it's never good enough. So there's definitely a silver lining. Although I went too far the other way for a while and had to unlearn being a pushover!

Fortunately things have calmed down a lot these days and I tend to stay far away from structured religion (although I don't mind the aesthetics and some of the spiritual stuff if it's positive - cathedrals and temples are beautiful places). But I still have an allergic reaction to anyone who crosses over from 'this is what I believe/think' to 'this is what you should believe/think'. I'm a fairly extreme libertarian and don't have time/energy for people that want to control others (outside of kinky bedroom stuff! ).