We Are Not Extensions of Our Parents

And Our Queerness is Not up for Debate

My mother has always been of the view that she knows me better than I know myself — a belief that will no doubt seem very familiar to many young people. So wide-spread is this notion of parental superiority that it even made its way into a Disney film in the form of Mother Gothel, whose ‘Mother Knows Best’ song sent chills down many a spine.

The upshot of this was that when I came out as trans to her, she was taken by surprise, and rather than believe me, she instead insisted I must be wrong because she knew me better.

You find stories like this a lot especially amongst young queer people. Our society valorises parenthood above all as the sole source of morality for a child, so that when children start to become independent and start to form moral views of their own, they are seen as being in the wrong.

These kinds of creeps have made it very clear that childhood is their battleground, and in so doing, they are stripping children and young people of their agency and of their humanity. All while claiming the moral high ground.

The far right have won that battle.

Now they are fully focussed on education around gender, sexuality, and sex. Queer people are their next target.

As we’ve seen, the religious right is already fighting for parents’ rights to force their children into conversion therapy under the guise of the child’s ‘best interests’. What they want more broadly is for parents to be the only source a child has to learn about sex, queerness, and morality.

It is clear that what the right are arguing for amounts to a licence for bigoted parents to inflict their hostile and misguided views on their children. As I wrote in my article on my own culture, this can cause tremendous harm, especially when people are misinformed and fed false, discriminatory narratives. From The Spectator, again; “in general [some] faith groups hold conservative views about marriage, sex, and gender. Other parents who are not religious may still be socially conservative on these issues.” But this is not a question of belief; neither sex nor gender fall into any kind of binary and anybody who tells you that they do is probably selling something (perhaps their right wing kool-aid).

Those parents who might hold conservative views do not have the right to ruin their children’s lives.

Parenthood requires no qualification, no education, and no standard of quality. In contrast, teachers must complete rigorous training and undergo regular reviews to ensure their knowledge and skills are up to date. Why then should parents be the ones responsible for education around these important issues? (In fairness, it’s pretty clear that if people were actually taught these things accurately, The Specator wouldn’t be able to find anybody to write for them, so it’s probably a case of vested interests here).

We need to fight very hard against this idea that parents have the right to dictate what their children think or who their children are. Every child is a whole person who has autonomy and the right to self-actualisation. No parent’s personal belief system can be allowed to interfere with that.

There’s a very good old saying which tells us that “it takes a village to raise a child”. No child should have to rely on their parent(s) to learn about morality or the world, and no child should ever have their identity called into question by the bigotry their parent(s) try and impose on them.

I am not and never have been an extension of my parents, despite their best efforts to force me to become one. Nobody is an extension of their parents. And any ideology that makes claims to the contrary is an ideology intent on the propagation of child abuse. As a society we must ensure this kind of moral bankruptcy is stamped out wherever it is found, for the sake of our children.

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