Teaching cis-het family and friends about our community.

I never found any way. I know lots of people who had accepting families and many who have unaccepting families, the conclusion that I have reached it that you should give people a chance and if they decide to remain bigoted that they should be walked away from. I wish that I could go back and tell myself this and shut my family out back in the 80s.

 

The Gingerbread Person is a good visual aid. There are YouTube videos using it, in case you don’t feel comfortable presenting it yourself, or the people you want to show are distant from you.

 

I have never found a way of truly explaining my sexuality or gender to some of my family members.

The sexuality (bisexual) is bad enough for them to understand but I find the gender (non binary) far more difficult for them to accept.

None of my family are homophobic or anything like that and accept everyone. They have gay/ lesbian friends etc etc but for some reason, some members of my family can’t accept me as a member of the LGBT community!

I have been on the phone explaining and they seem to get it and accept it only for a few weeks down the line to completely ignore it all and I’m back to square one.

They see in me what they want to see and that is that. In their eyes I’m a woman and I’m straight lol. So I live my life and let them think what they like, it’s not my problem. Bugger them I say!

Having said that, I’m really glad you have progressed with your mum! That’s awesome! My mum completely shuts off everything I have explained to her and so I have to keep going over it again and again only for her to blank it completely the next time. She’s almost 80 and she sees me always as the person she wants me to be. I don’t bother explaining any more.

 

I seem to remember that your mom at least does want to know and therefore might be an active participant (rather than a hostile audience the way all of my family is) a good source at least for the Gender portion is "The Gender Book" by Mel Reiff Hill.

 

I think this is really the major issue at play when it comes to explaining LGBT topics to cis hets. Whether you're explaining on behalf of yourself, a friend, or just in general - they see what they see. Sometimes it's not a matter of how supportive or not a person is, it's just a difficult thing to shift your understanding of somebody once you've formed it.

So, less a way of explaining to the cis hets, and more a way to equip yourself for the challenge...patience.

I'm also a fan of turning dumb questions right back around. Curiosity can make people ask some terribly invasive questions, and being asked them in return can really shake them up. I'd advise this route with people closer to you in age, because people much older than you will likely read it as confrontational to some degree. I had a coworker ask me about how I had sex once, and I responded by asking her right back. In under two minutes, she understood that there is no "normal" sex, and that she crossed a line and asked something inappropriate - she just needed to grapple with being the target of the question to get it.

You can't force it. It's like that thing about horses...you can lead a horse to water, but you can't teach it how to fish. If someone wants to learn, they will! I have some really close cis friends who still send me some cringey things on occasion, because they just honestly didn't read them as cringey. They're learning! I don't blow them off, or blow up about it. I just use the learning opportunity for what it is.

This means I generally don't start the conversations, I just help to guide them once they're already started. I'm not "pushing an agenda", I'm "seizing teachable moments".