I’ve just watched a YouTube video which basically boiled down to ways to fawn to relatives while trying to get needs met, or at least superficially respected.
Bull.
You do NOT - legally, morally, ethically, or spiritually - have to the presence of people who are abusive, bigoted, or offensive simply because they are relations.
In fact, trying to accommodate their flaws is harmful as it allows them to continue to wrongly think there are no consequences for their abusiveness.
No, you do NOT have to, for example, come up with a socially acceptable excuse if your child is autistic or introverted or HSP or psychic and needs to avoid the energy of abusive, bigoted, offensive, passive-aggressive relatives.
No, you do NOT need to do the same for yourself.
Of course, there may be ramifications, but is reduced contact with a white supremacist or misogynist a bad thing?
How would you behave if that person was not a relative?
There is a similar thing in workplaces - especially when said workplace tries to claim it is family.
There is obviously a personal element to this: as a teenager, I got exposed to some awfully small-minded rellies - stereotypical macho IPOCs (the worst of remote, regional areas), and similarly in the ultra-conservative, small-minded profession I worked in for half a century - although that got much better in the last 15 years.
And that last point is where the hope is: there is a major backlash right now, but the world is still a better place than it was in the 1970s, when I was a teenager.
And there have always been good people, places, and events.
One of the uncles I had contact with in remote, regional Queensland was a wonderful human being.
And occasionally there have been gems of people at such events - and always there are the GOOD relatives (who I regret not being able to see more of).
If I choose to go to a family event, it is because of those good people.
You too can make a cchoice: you do NOT have to go, although you do have to accept the consequences of not going if that is what your choice is.
You can also do some negotiation about attendance, which is a test of those people you are talking to, and whether they are decent and caring enough to put your needs above arbitrary social conventions and trivial desires to experience arbitrary stereotypical events/conditions.
PS - it should not be forgotten that the abusers I mention in this post have often contributed to suicides and other mental health problems - as it is well documented that as bigotry and similar problems behaviour does. This is not about some ... allegedly “harmless” eccentricity!
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Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”..jpg)
