Me and my Uncle fight often. Far too often for me not to take notice of the roots of our problems that I only seem to see. In another argument that me and him had today, it all started because I mentioned knowing a transman. Now, my uncle is quite conservative and traditional, and for him gender and sex are one of the same. I had just woken up, and wasn’t thinking right. So I just started off by saying he was a transman and he gets bullied a lot. And my uncle decided that instead of actually following what I was saying, to say, “Wait, is it a boy or a girl?”
I replied to him saying he identified as a boy. And uncle got further confused. So I explained to him that sex and gender are two different concepts. Sex being what your born with and gender being a society norm for what we label with sex. And that gender is a wide spectrum, from cis to bigendered to genderqueer, etc. This only made him say that he already had a head ache. Yeah, obviously not the best way to prove he’s listening to me at all.
His excuse was that he was raised thinking that boys have penises and girls have vaginas, and that I should consider my audience so he doesn’t have to ask. He further said that I shouldn’t assume he knows. Now, I wasn’t assuming anything. I had just woken up and wasn’t really considering whether I needed to explain it all at that moment. Not only am I getting lectured based on his views, but now also how I don’t “consider my audience”. I’m getting frustrated now.
So he takes that and asks me, “If I meet some transsexual who identifies as something else in the work place, how would I know?”
And right as I am about to answer, he cuts me off and says that how you talk to coworkers depends on their gender. And I immediately said, no it does not. It depends on the personality more than their sex organ. He agreed on that, but further said that him talking to a woman is different than talking to a man. He said because if he says. “Go fuck yourself!” to man, they don’t go to the boss, but he does that to a woman, and they would want him fired. (sexist, much?)
And this is where I said, yes, but the simple solution would be to not say, go fuck yourself. That’s rude anyways. And he got made at me saying I wasn’t listening and forcing my own ideas on this. How the hell else do we have a conversation otherwise, agree with everything you say? Not going to happen. We are HUMAN, not robots who all think the same. And I then calmly made another point saying that I happen to be a woman and me talking to women at the workplace is different because you aren’t one and I am.
He then said, “but I’m talking about men and woman only”.
So I went ahead and said straight out that he was talking to me like he expected me to understand(which I did) that the work place is different than most social conversation AND that I had to agree with him on everything. And I further said that the work place or not, it is a social construct, like shopping or a party. The way we interact may be different but its social all the same. And social knowledge is something we develop as young as children.
And this is what got me mad. He then said to me, “This is why I don’t talk to you about this. You starting spewing bullshit when we talk.” Hell no. Don’t tell me my ideas are BULLSHIT and your ideas are god damn genious. That is plain rude. I told him, I understood but the way he socializes and the way I socialize is completely different, therefore makes the socializing at work a completely different situation also.
At this point I was really upset he called my whole ideas on life, just cause their different, bullshit. And I walked away saying he was too arrogant.
He replied back as I was walking away, “Because you know I’m right!”, like the hypocrite he can be.
I know the reason we fight is because my whole life view is based on a nonjudgemental, sociology point of view. It involves no moral standard or society view. Uncles is based on tradition and narrow view so he can generalize to make it easier. This makes it impossible under any circumstance for us to get along with out a big heated argument. I don’t mind disagreeing, but I do mind some one saying I don’t know anything because I haven’t worked before. Whether I worked before or not does not mean I’m wrong. It’s not about where you work, its about how the individual takes social situations.
Uncle looks for infinite answers. And when it comes to greeting some one who is not cis(identifies with biological sex and has same gender to fit), there is no infinite answer. It all is a very fluid greet that you must ALWAYS take under caution. He doesn’t like the answer, fine. But for him to say I didn’t answer his question. That is false. I answered it. It is just not the way he wants me to answer, and that angers him more than anything.
