Cut contact, for your health above all else. You have to deal with enough stress and persecution from society, the people you allow into your life need to be supportive and loving. Cut any toxicity out, no matter how much it hurts, you will thank yourself later. I’ll be your internet mom today and I’m here to tell you that you’re perfect being on the outside what you are on the inside. There’s nothing more endearing than genuine character. Sending you all the mom hugs!

I don’t know if I can deal with another goddamn holiday season of Christian bullshit.

Then don’t. If they don’t respect you they earn no respect back. And it sounds like you’re independent of them, so not much they can hold over your head. Then you gotta tell them straight, “hey, since you won’t respect my life I will not be at any holiday events this year, don’t contact me.”

I’ve heard at least one story in person of a trans person going NC and it sort of waking the parents up to “oh. We just lost our kid because we’ve been assholes. Fuck.”. No guarantees but it could happen, because it can be quite a jolt even to evangelicals who still think they can" fix" their kid who’s “in a phase”.

Sending love and hugs sister (づ ᴗ _ᴗ)づ♡

The bible doesn’t have much in the actual way of positions. This is a favorite rant of Dan McClellan, that the bible (throughout its entire history!) has mostly been used as the proof text to justify the social norms at the time, specifically to preserve hierarchies.

That slaveholders and abolitionists both used the bible to support their positions should be a giveaway. And that slavery is thoroughly discussed as a norm (including lifelong laborers and sex slaves) suggests maybe bronze-age / iron-age social norms shouldn’t base how we structure modern society. Especially now that we’ve imagined the pluralist liberal democracy.

Anyway, it sounds like your parents don’t want an open discussion. They want to stay creeped out and uninformed. That may make them too toxic to suffer.

Consider your safety first, of course, but yeah, you may have to set some strong boundaries about how they’re allowed to engage you, and be prepared to disengage when they cross any line.

Turns out that my parents have been reading books on transgender issues from a"biblical" perspective and ignoring everything I’ve ever lent or sent their way.

ah yes, the loudspeaker configuration: it continues to produce noise but refuses to listen to any input. some people unfortunately are like that.

Yeah that kind of religious programming makes their disciples believe that science, medicine, and even very basic logic is evil. It’s how the religious and their texts can have lots of conflicting information and change their minds about things when it profits them.

Deprogramming that level of religious belief when they have no ability to think logically is difficult. It always surprised me in college that basic logic was a class and that so many people had trouble with it even though it’s just proving without a doubt that if a then b,. Then distracting the flow of thought a bit so there’s not a carryover of thought inertia Then proving to them that a is true and having them agree and asking if b is true without providing direct evidence of that.

And they can’t use that connection that we just talked about to understand it in real world situations. Even if they just agreed on every other part.

It’s infuriating and why I no longer try to convince people of anything if they aren’t capable of logic.

You can lead a horse to water.

I sent my mother lots of articles about the orange asshole’s corruption. She probably never read any of them because she voted for him three times. I haven’t interacted with her since Jan 19, 2024 (the day before he was sworn in for the current term). Fuck her. She’s officially a bad person.

Edit: I don’t want you to have to turn your back on them, but if you do, I hope you feel as good about it as I do.

I no longer speak to my southern baptist parents. They sacrificed my life for their imaginary death god. They learned hate and called it “love”. I will never be okay.

If it wasn’t called “religion,” more people would understand how absurdly dangerous it is to pretend the bible is more truth than fiction. I hope humanity can mature out of harmful superstition.

Wishing you the best. You deserve so much better.

Your dad shouldn’t be a pastor spreading such controlling hatred. My grandpa went to his pastor when I came out, and thankfully his pastor actually follows their own damn religion and taught love and acceptance. What ever happened to “love thy neighbor”, anything about loving " sinners" for otherwise you are one yourself, or just… Supporting people? You’re not doing them or anyone any harm. I really hope your dad can be excommunicated for this… I don’t know much about religion though… Beyond the intense amount of bloodshed and hate its historically caused.

Girlie, they can’t take who or what you are away from you. I’d take the advice of other commenters here… Low contact at most until they’ve taken the sticks out of their asses.

I am so sorry. Honestly I do sometimes wish my trans son had stayed a girl as she was so beautiful, but you know who I don’t say that to? My son. My desires for my grown kids do not matter, why would they? It’s my job to raise them to be themselves, right? So they can be happy and successful in whatever way they want. And courtesy costs nothing, I don’t understand why people don’t just address people however they prefer. I also don’t know why parents think they can control kids like that, it’s crazy. They did their part, you go on and live now, it’s your world not theirs anymore. I hope you can find some way to relate to them without harming yourself, but if not, that’s their loss, you will be fine.

It sounds like You can be independent? If so, drop an ultimatum. Could be like “Is girlie, non-christian me any welcome at this home?” question, yes or no? Drop responsibilities on them lol.

May feel shallow, but… like, none forces anyone to anything. If some pick their own paths, no need to push them to own believes - and that’s for both sides?

Could You accept Your father being a pastor if he do accept Your way of being self (and maybe to not spread ugly lies, that religion priests do say all the time, as if Your dad do that too)? Could he accept accept You being Yourself (and attending xmass tree festive)? So, who’s the bad one? (I believe I well know the answer).

That may be different per region - I’m living in some commonly religious place too, but many managed, to drop christianity from xmass tree festive, still family meetings happen, still giving gifts to close ones, still having spiky shinny tree at home still cooking extras, having day off from works and so on, but without any religious stuff (religious shit) in it. Some parts of xmass were stolen by capitalism, some are just liked and enjoyable.

Stay cute and safe.

sometimes you gotta realize some people just can’t be saved, and the only thing to do is cut ties and run

You could go and let them know that if they don’t start accepting you it’ll be the last time they see you. Or you could just not go and tell them that their beliefs make you uncomfortable and feel unwelcome and go low contact for a while. Get them an actual good book on how to properly accept you and give it to them as a pre Holliday present. Read this and follow it, this is my Bible. I dunno.

Going no contact was not a hard choice for me to make when it came down to it. After so many years of my birth parent pretending to accept me but truly showing me the complete opposite over and over, I don’t care what happens to her.

Sometimes you gotta do what’s best for your own safety. Sometimes having it out causes even more trauma than just letting them know you’re done and walk away. You can always leave a door open if you want to, you can tell them you don’t want to hear from them again unless they are going to stop sending you military shit and truly respect you. If they try and immediately guilt trip you then fuck them. Some parents can be so fucking narcasistic and manipulative especially if you are asserting boundaries. They hate boundaries the most.

If you have a therapist this would be a great conversation to have with them too.

I wish I could give you the magic formula to fix this. It’s so heartbreaking when people who are supposed to unconditionally love you fail over and over to actually do that simple thing. And instead of using their religion in a positive way, and loving you for who you are, use it as a cudgel to tell you how wrong you are about yourself. Just fucking ew.

We love you so much. Please take care of yourself and hopefully you can have a safe Holliday whatever you choose to do about this.

coming from a family of tradcaths, i feel this so hard. sending hugs your way
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

I am so sorry to hear this. I am also from a family of evangelicals, and my father was also a pastor before he retired. As you know, interacting with them is exhausting and demoralizing. I sadly don’t have any good advice for getting through to them. They claim to love me but can’t see past their broken worldview most of the time and it is heartbreaking. I hope you have other, positive relationships that are untainted by religion in your life. I’ve found a lot of comfort in the few older acquaintances and friends I’ve made who were willing to accept me when my parents weren’t. Nothing can replace the feeling of unconditional parental love but a kind word or a hug from someone of their generation is a good balm.

Maybe he would be more receptive to theological arguments, IIRC the US episcopals have good takes on trans people.