First of all, this has almost nothing to do with religion, almost all of us are hardcore communists/socialists, and completely anti-imperialist/west, it has more to do with places where we come from in general, this also doesn’t have anything to do with my conservative ‘‘father’’ and his family from which we severed ties long ago. Me, my mother, brother and sister are from Balkans btw. All of this also doesn’t apply to asexuals.
To start with my mother, she’s pretty Yugonostalgic and communist ever since she was a kid and in Tito’s Pioneers, she’s staunchly anti-west and anti-imperialist and (with an exception of western white people) loves and supports all people, nations and minorities equally, even though she’s pretty much agnostic, she still respects all religions and cultures, critically supports governments like Putin’s etc, pretty much every based opinion you can think of except, about LGBT… She says that while there have always been gay people(i.e. Caesar, Alexander the Great etc), they kept it ‘‘to themselves’’ and didn’t bother anyone about it until ‘‘Westoids started pushing it with parades after Sexual Revolution’’, that everyone should keep that stuff private now that they have rights and don’t make parades where they go almost naked and make their sexual orientation their entire personality. She’s alright with gay people if they don’t talk about their orientation and she doesn’t see it in movies, same thing with straights tho since she’s also against showing sexuality in public in general and is especially against it ‘showing it to children’. She also by far tolerates gay and bi men a lot more than gay women, because she had an experience where colleague of her friend abroad needed to remind everyone on job that she has a wife and talk about her sexual orientation constantly every day, along with experience of meeting some sexist women and thinks that everyone is like that because of them.
Then most of all, about trans people, she said this exactly, quote word for word: ‘‘if someone started walking on all fours on the street and howling on full moon, is he a Werewolf? Maybe he thinks he’s a Werewolf and feels like a Werewolf, but the fact is that he is not a Werewolf. Same thing for people who think they’re different gender’’ Her stance is basically that people are either born male or female and gender and anatomy can’t be changed because ‘‘people aren’t frogs’’ and males can’t get pregnant etc. She supports Kadyrov about this stuff and laughed her ass off while she watched his interviews with westoids where they talked about LGBT in Chechnya and Muslim countries. And she likes asexuals and not only because I am one, but she liked us in general even before, so basically only 2 acceptable orientations for her are straight and asexual, same thing stands for other family members.
Her husband(my stepfather) is from an Arab country from North Africa, pretty self explanatory, he’s literally the nicest person you could meet and be around until LGBT is brought up and he’s also an Islamic socialist.
My older sister literally gets pissed and hates words ‘‘cis’’, tbf I myself didn’t know what that means until recently, but she said that she’ll strangle anyone who calls her like that on street if it happens(it won’t, we’re on Balkans) and why should anyone who’s not trans call themselves ‘cis’ just because of 1% population. She can literally go from treating me and my twin like small brothers to this. She also made a joke about ‘‘2 girls doing stuff’’, like said it in the same way my friend would say it in 5th grade, before spitting on ground in disgust.
My twin brother literally doesn’t give a shit until someone bothers him but he’s like that in general for a lot of stuff so nothing different.
Our cousin from Russia supports CPRF and other communist parties(even if they’re not perfect) which of course explicitly includes their stance about this.
The thing is, everyone from my family I mentioned is the best person you could meet in terms of hospitality, friendliness, based political opinions etc, all of that while you’re either straight or asexual and until LGBT is mentioned. The change of personality and stance out of the blue is legitimately insane.
So how do you deal with this and do you have similar experience?
I do not know much about the Balkans historically, but like your mom said gay people (queer people) have existed for forever. In some countries, like Russia, they were actually very open about it until it was made illegal. I think it’s hypocritical and ass backwards to say that being gay is okay as long as its so private to the point that it can’t be shown on TV, but the same sentiment is not shared about straight people. Except your mom is a little funny in that she hates, what I would call, PDA in general.
The hatred towards western Pride parades might be due to prude-ness and a lack of knowledge about why Pride parades exist in the way they do. My favourite argument for accepting queers is from Michael Parenti, I cannot find the video anywhere except on twitter: https://x.com/yellowparenti/status/1740511885735133543
I think queer people in Eastern Europe and other countries that are not yet friendly have a tough battle. I don’t know what to say as a western queer/trans person, I do have incredibly transphobic family members (not all of them thankfully) but they’re also politically far-right so I don’t feel the same conflict that you do.
You have a family of socialists, so maybe arguments have to be tailored around that. It might also be helpful to try to separate western imperialism and queer identity, yes the west does use us to subjugate others but that is not an inherent quality. I don’t not think what I have said here is helpful, sometimes its just not worth it to fight but if you feel the need to (I know I do even though I know it will never change minds) then go for it. Are there any local LGBT organizations that you could connect with? Maybe they could help provide education or something.
Edit: I can’t believe I forgot this but does your family know any amount of queer history? Do they know that queer people (gay and trans) were victims of the holocaust? I’m not saying to weaponize this tragedy but it is something that needs to be known. I add this because yesterday, during a conference, we watched a documentary about the fight for gay rights in Canada and a Jewish lawyer made references to the holocaust in his argument presented to the Supreme Court. Just some food for thought.
Yeah she knows about like Rome and Sparta, but has a big deal of parades and it being shown or ‘forced’ in public. And yes, she hates is in general, including for straight people, so beyond like a wedding kiss, she’d be against it.
She hates parades because she hates ‘‘seeing people walking half-naked in streets’’ and sees no point in it in the countries where they got their rights. Everyone sees it as western thing since the west advocates for it(not for the reasons they think) and most parades and organizations either come from the west or are western aligned so that definitely doesn’t help.
It has always been like this in Eastern Europe in general, doesn’t have anything to do with right wing nor communism and politics since it was exactly the same in Yugoslavia.
My mother knows about it but she always says that biggest victims of Holocaust and WW2 as a whole were Slavs and other people of Eastern Europe, Chinese, Jews and Roma and doesn’t even mention LGBT since she pretty much shares Stalin’s opinion about it