There is a huge, huge difference between "the details of my sex life" and not being able to introduce my parents to my wife without a political discussion.
Your statements about "approval" come off as condescending. I don't need anyone's approval of my partner, but I'd like to have her join me at the family dinner I'm hosting without my mother throwing Bibles at her. Informing my parents that my female life partners exists, and will be present, in my life and at my dinner party, is only polite.
I do not want to condescend or mimimize anyone's pain about their parents' problems with their sexuality. In fact, I recognize that even the most supportive-seeming parents may be struggling against deeply buried homophobic feelings and problems. But to agonize about it past a certain point seems to me to be granted it all too much power. Ultimately, we and our parents - no matter what our issues are - have to go and live our own lives.
I think that some of us may be too concerned about what our parents think... period. If that observation is somehow politically incorrect, I'm sorry, but that's what I think. I support rm and if her parents do not deal with this as well as we would hope they should, I will be disapointed with them. On the other hand, I would hate to think their failings would influence her one tiny but more than they need to.
"Politically incorrect"? Why drag that in? The fact that people are disagreeing with you doesn't mean they are being "politically correct," which is what you are implying. "I'm sorry if I'm being politically incorrect" is one of those phrases that subtly dismiss the disagreer while attempting to claim a veneer of brave truth-telling for one's own thoughts. Just go ahead and engage with what people actually say, and leave the motives out of it.
Anyway. People's interactions with their parents are widely variable, and not really subject to a hard set of rules. I don't know how well you know rm, but she doesn't seem to me to be asking for advice on dealing with her parents: just reporting what's going on, and the difficulty of it for her. I assume there is very likely no position regarding her relationship to her parents that she hasn't already considered at a lot more length than I can for her, and with a lot more information. Maybe that's just me.
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Re: Ann Landers
Date: 2006-04-11 07:38 pm (UTC)There is a huge, huge difference between "the details of my sex life" and not being able to introduce my parents to my wife without a political discussion.
Your statements about "approval" come off as condescending. I don't need anyone's approval of my partner, but I'd like to have her join me at the family dinner I'm hosting without my mother throwing Bibles at her. Informing my parents that my female life partners exists, and will be present, in my life and at my dinner party, is only polite.
?
Date: 2006-04-11 07:46 pm (UTC)I think that some of us may be too concerned about what our parents think... period. If that observation is somehow politically incorrect, I'm sorry, but that's what I think. I support
Re: ?
Date: 2006-04-11 09:19 pm (UTC)Anyway. People's interactions with their parents are widely variable, and not really subject to a hard set of rules. I don't know how well you know
Re: Ann Landers
Date: 2006-04-11 07:47 pm (UTC)