Trauma and Being LGBTQ

I knew Genevieve about nine months. She was very bright and actually applied for the Thiel Twenty Under Twenty program and made it to the interview stage though she wasn't selected. 

My understanding is this put her in the top ten percent of an extremely elite group. So she was drawn to me in part because I raised and homeschooled two twice exceptional sons and was involved with The TAG Project 

I was fairly uniquely qualified to help a troubled youth with enormous potential and she had an unusual depth of knowledge about anything that interested her, including all things trans related.

She dumped a huge list of trans resources on me which I later reposted to a shitty discussion forum of classist assholes that was "a safe space" for LGBTQ individuals and they imagined they were smart and talented and didn't know one tenth what I knew from having had a brief but intense relationship to a very gifted trans youth.

The single most positive piece she shared with me was called Mom, I need to be a Girl.

 It describes a best case scenario where the immediate family was very supportive and things overall went well.

My own biological twice exceptional kids were always quirky and one identifies as asexual. Genevieve told me that ASD kids like mine trend towards some flavor of LGBTQ and nonbinary.

My oldest is seriously handicapped, including having various eyesight issues. He likes bright colors in part because he can see them and discussions on TAGMAX suggest that's the norm for color blind boys.

Their love of bright yellow or fuschia or similar says nothing about their sexuality or gender identity. It just says "I'm damn near blind and this is my favorite shirt because I can SEE it."

So at one point my oldest owned a clamshell pink Nintendo DS, in part to distinguish it from his brother's black one and in part because he likes colors like pink and orange. 

He knew that a boy with a pink portable gaming system was practically asking to be picked on, so he mentally practiced comebacks along the lines of "So you're sufficiently insecure about your masculinity you can't have a pink DS?"

And then no one ever said one word to him about it. 

He did a lot of weird stuff that seemed to draw no comment. I think it went that way because he felt comfortable and people pick on people signaling their emotional vulnerability with body language and he didn't have that.

I believe that trauma in the LGBTQ community from family that simply cannot accept them is so common that most people cannot distinguish the damage done by abusive bullshit from "LGBTQ."

If you are a parent, I suggest you get with the person in the mirror and get over your crap.

If you're LGBTQ and your family just couldn't accept you: It's not you, it's them, and it's really not about your sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Some people Have Issues and psychologically speaking "shouldn't have kids." There are plenty of people with abusive parents and they aren't all LGBTQ. 

Last, when I used to argue with buttheads on the internet who would quote some figure at me about "The 5 percent of kids who were abused as children are THIRTY PERCENT of abusive parents. It dramatically increases your risk! Like SIX FOLD!"

I just politely sneered at them "So you're telling me TWO THIRDS of abusive parents weren't abused kids and have no excuse?"