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?

What if its an 8 year old calling you weird, autistic and laughing at you?

Was the boy 8?

I would imagine OP's son would not react in the same way to his 13 year old "friends" taunting him - I doubt he was calling them "stupid bitches". Its much easier to retaliate when your opponent is basically a baby.

@localnotail yes I bet he terrified her. It's bizarre how much some posters are vilifying a literal 8 year old on here. World's gone mad.

It's still not OK.
8 year olds are well aware of hurtful actions

Ye 13 year old boys never fight...

If anything he'd likely react stronger and more violently.

Homophobic behaviour needs calling out

No he was 13 and he was accompanied by a 12 year old. The kids had both been accused of homophobic bullying before it started at primary school. They demonstrated a pattern of uncorrected homophobic abuse from a young age.

The children who did it had a history of homophobic bullying stretching back to primary school. It was left uncorrected by their parents who to be fair appeared to know very little about it. The kids were younger than my son.