Q&A

Q&A: “my friends told me she decided that “mom” is gender neutral and shes going to keep calling me that…”

anonymous said:

my friend group has always had this thing where they call me “mom”. a while ago I came out as trans to most of them, and one of my friends told me she decided that “mom” is gender neutral and shes going to keep calling me that bc it’s just our thing. but it’s kind of been bothering me lately bc I don’t want that used for me anymore. I feel like if I tell them that, they’ll get annoyed and ignore me and think I’m making a big deal out of it, when it actually kind of makes me dysphoric.

my humble opinion is that you should be up front with them. tell them what you’ve told me, that being referred to as “mom” makes you feel dysphoric/that you aren’t comfortable being referred to as that anymore.

if they’re really your friends they shouldn’t ignore or belittle your feelings. your feelings are valid and they should care about how you feel. granted, if they’ve been referring to you as “mom” for a long time it may take them a bit to break the habit that they’ve formed and refer to you as something else, but asking that of them is not at all unreasonable. they may slip-up and accidentally refer to you as “mom” on occasion, but they’ll get used to referring to you as something else. stay on top of them about it; it isn’t at all wrong for you to do so if they do slip-up.

i’ll say it again, because this is really important. your feelings are valid. your discomfort is valid. if you tell your friends your feelings, they should respect how you feel and act accordingly. if they don’t value how you feel, then imho they don’t deserve you as a friend. <3

edit: also see this response from user @tiredasahi

YouTuber and Blogger, Vesper is an American expat currently living in Japan.

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