My mum has always been strict and traditional and is very uptight about who I associate with. I am a 16 years old girl who goes to an all girls’ school so all my friends are girls. I do know of some boys through mutuals but that’s it.
For some background information, a few years ago I thought I had a crush on another girl, but as I grew up and looked back, I think it was just admiration and not an actual romantic crush. Fast forward to this year, a girl, whom I am friends with and loved as a friend, confessed to me. We didn’t end up dating and even months later now I am still not sure if my feelings towards her did evolve into romantic. I had never dated before so I don’t have a reference to compare my feelings to.
I always knew my mum was judgy about anything that she considers as “deviant” and my dad would always blindly agree with whatever my mum thinks. Also, I never felt that they loved me as they are just authoritarian so I wanted to see if their love would transcend their hate.
I told my parents about the girl and about how much she meant to me and how I didn’t want to lose something beautiful. They called it weird and told me they wouldn’t recommend. My mum got super defensive and gave me the silent treatment for days. I had a planned hang out with my friend and she became suspicious and pretty much implied that I was trying to sneak out to see my secret girlfriend.
I might turn out to be straight I really don’t know yet but I am an ally and I would like argue with my mum about like how its NOT abnormal to be in a same sex relationship. Now I might be petty for this: I would deliberately check my phone more, even when there is nothing to check, just to give my mum the wrong impression. I would also say things like I don’t care what the boys think and that I’m not boy crazy. My mum barged in and I was doing my work but accidentally clicked a button which unpaused a Youtube video in the background and she thought I was calling someone. AITA?
Comments
^^^^AUTOMOD Thanks for posting! READ THIS COMMENT – DO NOT SKIM. This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of copying anything. Read this before contacting the mod team.
My mum has always been strict and traditional and is very uptight about who I associate with. I am a 16 years old girl who goes to an all girls’ school so all my friends are girls. I do know of some boys through mutuals but that’s it.
For some background information, a few years ago I thought I had a crush on another girl, but as I grew up and looked back, I think it was just admiration and not an actual romantic crush. Fast forward to this year, a girl, whom I am friends with and loved as a friend, confessed to me. We didn’t end up dating and even months later now I am still not sure if my feelings towards her did evolve into romantic. I had never dated before so I don’t have a reference to compare my feelings to.
I always knew my mum was judgy about anything that she considers as “deviant” and my dad would always blindly agree with whatever my mum thinks. Also, I never felt that they loved me as they are just authoritarian so I wanted to see if their love would transcend their hate.
I told my parents about the girl and about how much she meant to me and how I didn’t want to lose something beautiful. They called it weird and told me they wouldn’t recommend. My mum got super defensive and gave me the silent treatment for days. I had a planned hang out with my friend and she became suspicious and pretty much implied that I was trying to sneak out to see my secret girlfriend.
I might turn out to be straight I really don’t know yet but I am an ally and I would like argue with my mum about like how its NOT abnormal to be in a same sex relationship. Now I might be petty for this: I would deliberately check my phone more, even when there is nothing to check, just to give my mum the wrong impression. I would also say things like I don’t care what the boys think and that I’m not boy crazy. My mum barged in and I was doing my work but accidentally clicked a button which unpaused a Youtube video in the background and she thought I was calling someone. AITA?
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Welcome to /r/AmITheAsshole. Please view our voting guide here, and remember to use only one judgement in your comment.
OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1. Giving my parents the impression that I am a lesbian 2. I might not actually be a lesbian and I understand that sexuality shouldn’t be used to make a point
Help keep the sub engaging!
Don’t downvote assholes!
Do upvote interesting posts!
Click Here For Our Rules and Click Here For Our FAQ
Subreddit Announcements
Follow the link above to learn more
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
You said outright that you did this to provoke discord and that you want to argue with your parents about the issue. You don’t want to sit and talk. You don’t want to find out where they get their beliefs from. You don’t want to challenge their beliefs in a respectful and peaceable way. You want to argue with your parents about this. You want to give them false impressions about yourself so you can provoke reactions from them and play the victim afterwards. I find that rather fascinating. Your goal here isn’t to change minds. People who want to change minds, speak peaceably with one another and respectfully challenge ideas that they find morally incorrect. I’m quite fascinated and amused by this post. I’m going to save it.
Yes
YTA. I mean, teens poking at their parents is pretty normal, but you’re using their homophobia for your own entertainment, and that doesn’t do anything other than strengthen their hate. You’re not acting like an ally at that point, and in fact are doing additional harm. This topic is bigger than you and your parents. Choose different methods to change your parents’ minds, or you’ll just look like another “misbehaving gay” to them. Do better. For yourself and your gay friends.
I wouldn’t say you are pretending to be a lesbian because it sounds like you are exploring your sexuality. However purposefully doing things to your mom does make yta. If it happened by accident then oh well but focus on your own journey rather than your parents reactions
YTA. Don’t act like you are marginalized or discriminated just to “prove a point”. That’s like someone pretending to be Jewish just to see if others are antisemitic. You obvious don’t understand the actual issues that the community faces and have no fucking right.
Edit: You just have a victim complex.
I’m hesitant to say YTA, but for the sake of judgment…yeah, I’ve gotta.
That said, I empathize a ton. I grew up with very religious parents that weren’t receptive to the LGBTQ+ community. Trust me when I say that antagonizing them isn’t the way. It will only make them double down, and hurt you far worse in the long run.
There’s no easy path here. I would recommend, if you have one, talking to any trusted adult that doesn’t have a bias. You’re SO young and the idea of acting out when you sense injustice is strong. Tame that itch to rebel and antagonize, and work on building a foundation that can possibly help change their perspective.
NTA. It sounds like you’re still figuring out who you are and that’s okay. Are you doing this to really just bother your parents, or are you testing the waters to see how they would react if that was who you are?
ESH.
Your parents obviously, for their homophobia.
But you don’t come out of this with clean hands either.
It’s not clear whether you are actually lying about being a lesbian. Maybe you are, maybe you’re not, maybe you’re bisexual. Sixteen is a confusing time and it may take you many years to work out who you really are and what sort of person you’re attracted to. It took many years for me to work it out. You’re still young and you have plenty of time. I wouldn’t be too worried about pinning a label on yourself at this stage.
But you’re deliberately baiting your parents by dropping hints that you’re a lesbian. That’s an asshole move. You can be a good ally to the LGBTQI+ community without taunting your parents.
I’m not saying it’s always an asshole move to lie about one’s sexuality. Not at all. My number one rule is whatever you do, BE SAFE. If you’re in a homophobic and hostile environment (home, community, state, country) and you fear for your safety, damn right you can pretend to be straight. And vice versa: if a guy is giving you unwanted attention and your instinct tells you that rejecting him will make him very angry, by all means pretend to be a lesbian. I would never judge a person for telling whatever lie they need to tell about their sexuality in order to keep themselves safe.
But you give no indication that you feel unsafe in your home. You’re just trying to provoke a reaction. That’s not a mature way to win your parents over to your cause. Drop the baiting. If you genuinely want to change their minds, be mature about it.
I’m gonna go against the grain and say NTA. It sounds to me like you’re trying to figure out your sexuality and are hurt by your parents’ reaction. Extremely reasonable–your mom giving you the silent treatment for DAYS is absolutely deranged behavior. Exaggerating and playing up the girlfriend thing sounds to me like acting out in a way that shouldn’t even be acting out (if your parents weren’t homophobic), and like it’s probably one of the only ways you can have some control over the situation.
If that’s about the shape of it then no, you’re absolutely not the asshole. I’m so sorry you’re dealing with judgemental parents who call this “deviant” and refuse to talk to you for days because of it. Whether you’re straight or gay or bi and no matter how much time you need to figure that you, you deserve parents who love and respect you for who you are.
NTA, but be careful. As hilarious as this is, your parents can ruin your life pretty easily
YTA. You’re intentionally trying to provoke a fight. If you don’t know, totally fine. Trying to use this as something to mess with your mother is petty. If you do come out eventually, do you want her to believe you? JS, if she finds out you’re doing this just to yank her chain – she won’t take your seriously when she needs to.
NTA. You’re 16 and figuring life out. They sound bigoted and it amuses me that they have to live with thinking their daughter is gay. You could threaten to stop shaving your legs and underarms if you want to rattle them! 🙃 Maybe develop a passionate affinity for the music of kd lang (“Constant Craving”) if you want an old school reference they may recognize as bona fide “lesbian” credentials. Perhaps express an interest in dad teaching you how to do handy mechanical stuff. 🛠️Things like that.
ESH. Your parents for the obvious. You for pretending. You’re young and mentioned you’re figuring yourself out. Okay, fine. But what pisses me off is you stated clearly you are intentionally provoking them. It isn’t about you figuring out your sexuality, it’s to provoke a reaction from your parents. One you know will be negative. You aren’t talking to them for them to learn to understand you or help you while you figure this out. You are baiting them.
If I was your age and we were friends and I learned this… we wouldn’t be. You don’t pretend to be marginalized groups to pick fights with your parents. You’re old enough to know better as to why, you just chose to do this and now that people are calling you out you’re claiming other reasons are involved.
Therapy would be good.
NTA. A major part of the social progress on gay rights that has been made in recent generations was made because LGBTQA+ people came out to their loved ones, which forced the loved ones to grapple with their homophobia so as to reconcile their love for the individual loved one with their prejudice against the LGBTQA+ category that the loved one turned out to belong to.
Even if you weren’t genuinely grappling with possibly being LGBTQA+ yourself, the only ramifications of you deceiving your parents into believing that you’re a lesbian are (1) if they’re homophobic, their homophobia will make this experience stressful for them; (2) they might choose you over their homophobia and become less homophobic as a result; (3) they might choose their homophobia over you and be unkind to you as a result.
Ramification (1) is their problem and no fault of yours. They’ll only suffer if they’re bad people.
Ramification (2) is good. You have the potential to make the world less homophobic.
Ramification (3) is harmful only to you (so you have the right to take that risk) or through no fault of yours (i.e., if they’re unkind to you but they later end up regretting having been unkind to you, it’s their fault and not yours that they chose to be unkind to you).
You are a 16-year-old confronting your parents with their own homophobia. Your parents have immense power over you, by virtue of them being your parents and you being a 16-year-old who is presumably financially dependent on them. You are by far the most vulnerable party here. If you choose to provoke your parents’ homophobic biases by presenting yourself as a target of those biases, you are in no way harming your parents. Any harm they could come to would be a result of their own actions that they could perfectly well refrain from taking.
To the extent that it’s worth questioning whether you should proceed with your plan or not, the person whose well-being you need to watch out for is yourself. You could end up being subjected to hostility from your parents that you’re not independent enough to be able to protect yourself from very effectively. However, it is also the case that you already are being subjected to their homophobia in ways that are making your home environment unpleasant for you, even without your parents necessarily intending to aim their antigay hostility at you personally. So there are potential advantages for you in making yourself more of a direct target, if it helps alleviate the homophobia that is already negatively affecting you in any case.
Choose your course of action carefully. But either way, you’re NTA.