Neighbours angry at DS for snapping back and daughter’s homophobia - hypocrisy??

[TheNoisyDeer]

DS, 13, came out in Year 6 at the age of 10 and he has struggled with making friends ever since. His boy friends always used to make him the butt of the joke so he stopped being friends with them. He has a couple of female friends now but he still feels like he can’t be himself around them because they give him the side eye when they talk about boys and he talks about boys too. Due to this he feels on the defence when his sexuality is spoken about.

I invited our neighbours over earlier this evening for chat and drinks in the sunshine and the younger girl, 8, overheard her sister (the older daughter), 11, talking to DS about their crushes. She laughed at him, made a few comments about it being weird and called him a “gay boy”. I don’t know whether she’d picked it up from school or somewhere, but DS was clearly upset. He snapped and called her “a stupid bitch” and to “f off”.

There was immediate anger from her parents because she’s only 8 and they said there was no excuse for speaking to a young girl like that and demanded I tell him off. The older daughter also took her side and shouted at him to not talk to her sister like that. He looked startled, humiliated and ran inside.

I went inside and spoke to him about the language he used and said it wasn’t acceptable, especially to a girl that young, but I also told him I understood why he was hurt and that nobody should mock someone’s sexuality. DS said he didn’t care how old she was because she’d been horrible to him first and then refused to go back outside and apologise. I explained this to my neighbours and the mum said she wanted to leave and won’t put up with her daughters being spoken to in that manner and they left.

Ideally I would have expected the children to apologise to each other, preferably her first as she started it and then moved on but I was shocked by their reaction to just leave. We’ve been good friends for years and now I feel hurt by their lack of accountability for the homophobia and hypocrisy. I wouldn’t like the friendship to end but I won’t be bowing down to them.

AIBU for thinking both children were in the wrong but both the daughter and parents are more so?

its pretty 8yo though isn’t it?
i have an impulsive 11yo boy and if he reacted that way to anything less than a bigger kid punching him in the face I’d immediately remove him from the event. Guarantee his attitude will get bigger kid punching him at some time unless he changed it, and he’ll blame homophobia rather than his aggressive immaturity. If he were able to apologise we’d come back and apologise or we’d leave and apologise another time, but zero chance he stays at any event after speaking like that. Gay boy from a little kid is something he must learn to laugh off, that’s what I’d tell my son. He’s not going to make friends or not without lots of difficulty until he can handle his emotions better and you need to stop giving him a free pass there because of his sexuality. Also, he’s 13, and needs to find things to talk about that aren’t other boys. ‘Yes ds we know you’re gay what else have you thought about or done today? If you were a girl I’d be unhappy with this focus on boys, let’s go through your homework’

My daughter is 8. I imagine the girl is too young to even understand what that meant and its something that she has picked up from older children. Wildly over reacting to call an 8 year old homophobic. Your sons choice of words was disgusting

Would your daughter not know that calling someone weird was unacceptable though?

It sounds like he is making his sexuality his whole personality. That may work as an older teen or adult, but being as young as he was when he came out (and still is!) is going to make most children uncomfortable. My DD is 14 and she is uncomfortable when her straight friends talk too much about sex and sexuality.
Him being gay is absolutely fine, but lashing out with venom like this at children because they are not responding to him like adults would, is not ok.

The… 8yo? He needs to grow up. Put him back in football, be supportive, and tell him to not go into any detail on liking boys, just shrug and say sorry mate not my type, im gay don’t you know (the 11&12yo boys I know do not sit at footy and talk about girls so this wouldn’t come up) Point out to him that you all change together in the locker room so him going into detail about his sexual attraction to boys is much more awkward than talking about girls, they don’t want to feel like they’re being checked out, especially by someone they’re not attracted to, and that’s a good reason to keep it minimum.

I say all this because we cannot tell if he’s joining in normal conversation about boys or if he’s wanging on uncomfortably. You don’t have to join in every topic, every kids friends group has that topic that bores some people, my son has adhd and can be pretty boring, his friends are lovely and let him go on a little but they aren’t joining in or encouraging him. Best to keep the topic pretty light without hiding his being gay, I’d be having some strong words to my sons if I heard them being disrespectful about girls or overly fixated.

Rude, when addressed to a non good friend, but not unacceptable. I’d say friends call each other weird all the time in primary school from about that age. ‘Ok weirdo’

the younger girl, 8, overheard her sister (the older daughter), 11, talking to DS about their crushes.

the older children were talking about their crushes.

I’d imagine this anger and attitude is why he struggles with friends too, not his sexuality.

Yes. You imagine.

Yeah, I mentioned earlier in the thread that I came out as bisexual when I was fifteen.

Christ. The homophobia in this thread is depressing.

Of course what was said to the wee girl was wrong. And the poster chastised her son for that. Told him that it was unacceptable.

I'd be curious to know if the other parents told their daughter that the language she used was also unacceptable.

hes a teen boy who’s told an 8yo girl to fuck off you bitch, he wasn’t sipping his tea saying that’s a great movie while existing as a teen boy so don’t pretend you’ve made a point here. There are very few scenarios I can think of where I wouldn’t assume the teen is wrong, and that’s not because I’m super critical of teens.

Wow…overreact much?! “I think X is best” is not nearly the same thing as “I think people should take authoritarian measures to enforce X.”

I think modern culture doesn’t do well with ambiguity and uncertainty as a whole, and I think it’s a good idea for parents to tell their kids that it’s fine to just take their feelings as they come and not feel pressure to declare a sexual identity.

Since he's having general friendship difficulties OP, have you considered that your son might be ND and this could be why he's having friendship difficulties more than anything? I'm aware that diverse sexualities and identities are more common among the ND community.

I have coffee with a woman every week who is lesbian and I don't even consider our relative sexual orientations. She's just who she is and a lovely person. I think the reason we click so well is that we're both low key ND and have a lot of ND in our families. Sometimes conversation isn't so easy for me if the person isn't ND, whereas I click with people who are.

I agree that no one comes off well.

I do think that your DS holds more responsibility here because he is much older than the girl is - and it’s a huge difference between a 13 yo in yr 8/9 and an 8 yo in, what, yr 3?

A 13 yo calling an 8 yo a bitch is never going to be acceptable, and I also think the two older kids should have been more careful than to talk about crushes where an 8 yo could overhear- straight or gay.

Yes the 8 yo said something very unkind but she is too young to understand the full impact of her words. Whereas I’ve made sure my 12 yo DS knows that I regard using the word bitch as as offensive as using racist language.

A two way apology would be ideal but definitely with your DS apologising first and meaning it.

That would 100% not be left to stand at my kid's primary school certainly not when added to an additional slur. It also wouldn't fly in my home or the homes of those they would be spending time in. Clearly everyone has different standards around things they can acceptably say to people though. Weird gay boy and laughing would get my 8 year old sent to the headteacher very quickly for an in depth explanation of why that is unacceptable, followed by our insistence of an apology and possibly privileges withdrawn dependant on circumstances.

People think that homophobia is a thing of the past. But kids (especially boys) still frequently experience bullying at school because of their sexuality. And it often leaves deep emotional scars that are carried for decades.

Have you looked into whether there are any lgbt community youth groups in your area?

How is calling someone who is gay and a boy ‘gay boy’ homophobic.
He called her far worse and she is only 8 - your son sounds like a bully who is going to play the ‘homophobic’ card whenever he encounters real life problems. Teach him some resilience- he should have replied something like ‘ yes I am a gay boy - so what?’ .

That's been explained a couple of pages back if you want to go back a bit. You'll get accused of being disingenuous by asking though.

No, he doesn’t. She’s eight and he barely knows her. If anything he seems quite secure and confident in who he is considering that he talks about it so much.

There is a well-known and deeply entrenched problem with misogyny amongst gay men and within the gay community. Your son is already displaying this horrible mindset with his vile and abusive language towards an eight year-old girl. Get on top of it now before he’s 16 and aiming his hatred of women towards you.

He's a teenage boy who has experienced homophobic bullying reacting to homophobic bullying...

@TheNoisyDeerthat’s encouraging that he is showing an interest in getting back into football.
I can understand how his confidence has been knocked.
Perhaps suggest other sports he might enjoy trying (rowing, tennis, rugby, anything really). A real hobby that keeps him busy on a healthy interest.
He can’t be spending the rest of his life worrying about other people’s reactions to his sexuality. He doesn’t need to bring it up anymore than other people do. It should not be an all consuming issue for him.
The thing is you can’t protect him from hurtful comments for the rest of his life. He needs to understand that anger will not make him popular with anyone. What if he ends up getting a job in a country where homosexuality is not viewed favourably. Even in America, the reality is that a vast majority of population have a ‘conservative’ view of the world, somewhere like Russia is terrible and so on. He needs the tools to navigate or avoid negative experiences as much as possible and to be and feel safe. It is the world we live in, it won’t change in the next decades.

I mean I’d bollock him for calling her a bitch and explain that later in life women may well be some of your strongest defenders and best allies as a gay man, but I understand why he told her to fuck off. If it was my son I would tell him off, but still be understanding. At the end of the day (unfortunately) he will be called much worse over the course of his life - but he’s young and going through a lot.

It's definitely simmering away isn't it?!

The boy was absolutely wrong and that needs nipping in the bud sharpish. He should make an apology. But people who are relentlessly bullied, and this I've seen firsthand with my eldest, do not always make the best choices and can often end up seriously isolated or start wearing their differences like armour. They can also display immaturity and oversensitivity because they're in constant defense mode and so struggle to form friendships. People here are very focused on the sex element of being gay rather than the relationship part they'd look at with straight children. If people haven't dealt with endless bullying of their children they have no clue how bad this could be. In certain areas of the UK being gay at school is an awful experience even the perception of it is met with slurs and even violence. There's a reason a lot of professional sports people stay in the closet until after their career is done and it's far from the only industry. I'm sad that Mumsnet seems to be filled with it. I'd have thought that women who have to put up with misogyny so often would be more understanding. Clearly not.

It's also telling (read massively homophobic) that posters are making assumptions that DS has made "being gay his whole personality" just because he was talking about boys he crushes on with no other context

When it's far more likely he was in a conversation where the other boys were talking about their crushes on girls and when he tried to join in and talk about his own crushes they were rude (possibly because they felt threatened in some way due to homophobia). Then he decided to try and join in with the girls because they were all talking about boys but they also didn't let him join in

There's absolutely no indication DS was forcing the conversation or has made it "his whole personality" and yet ....

Homophobic bullying oh please...from an 8 year old.

This does somewhat depend how often he hears it along with say faggot, bum boy, nonce and pedo. For my son, where we live, it was an average of 8 times a day by text or electronic message and usually at least once or twice a day on the bus there and back. Often it would get shouted across locker rooms and the school campus in general. The violence that came with it was incredibly disturbing as well. The most recent episode is with the police and required a hospital visit. It's been around since at least the 90's as a slur and frequently used in sports, young farmers and at school in my area. It's not used as a descriptor but a perjorative.