My Son Absolutely Destroyed a Relative’s Transphobic Tirade

Imagine you had a relative you weren’t close to who’d never met your children before. Now, imagine this relative had formed a negative opinion about one of your children based on their own bigotry and skewed world view — and then actually had the nerve to confront your child the very first time they were introduced.

Oh, I know. The audacity.

Now imagine right before you interjected to put this relative in their place, your child countered their hate speech in such an eloquent, adult, and factual manner as to leave that person so thoroughly outmatched, they collapsed into a fit of childish rage. Reduced to a shrieking harpy, red faced and howling.

I lived this reality a couple years ago when my trans son was just 14 years old.

I have a first cousin who’s well known as a religious zealot, saving her brutal judgements for everyone save her own self. We’ve never been close as we lived in different states and are different ages, but I saw her during some holidays growing up and our interactions have always been cordial.

At this particular time, I hadn’t seen nor spoken to her since her sister’s wedding a decade earlier. So, I was surprised when she sent me a message via Facebook and asked for my number. I was even more surprised when she Facetimed me immediately after I sent it to her. What fresh Hell is this? was my first instinct.

I should have listened to it.

We made small talk and she blabbed about her life for a while before approaching the topic she really had called me for in the first place. She noticed my oldest kid going by his new name, Ollie, on Facebook recently and saw a picture I’d posted of the two of us. She wanted to know how I’m “dealing with all that.” Oh, brother.

Before I could answer she launched into the explanation that the oldest of her eight children had come out as trans as well, and that their family was not having it. They would not acknowledge her oldest as anything but the female she was assigned at birth, and their oldest child’s girlfriend was not anything more than a “friend.”

I would’ve loved to just nope out of the conversation and hang up, but I felt so bad for her oldest baby. I thought, maybe she does want advice and I can help her see things in another light.

Before I could get in a word between her blabbing, however, my son stuck his head in my bedroom door to say goodnight. Before he could duck back out, my cousin demanded, “Is that your oldest? Turn the phone around and let me see!”

I knew how this was going to go, and I kind of even willed it to happen. So, I turned the phone around and introduced them. Ollie greeted her and said, “I love your red hair!” commenting sweetly on my cousin’s natural orange-red curly mop of hair. To which my cousin thanked him and said, “You’re so pretty.”

Ollie took the comment with grace and thanked her politely. Then my cousin took it there.

“Yep, so very pretty. Definitely a girl. A beautiful girl. Why would you ever want to be anything else when you’re so gorgeous?”

Ollie’s polite affect dropped like a stage play curtain after the final act. He saw what game was being played, and he could play too.

He flatly replied, “It has nothing to do with wanting to be anything. I am who I am.”

I wanted to pipe in, but I knew he had this covered. I’d had many conversations with him about people like this, and was confident he could handle this conversation with more integrity than I could. I waited.

My cousin let out a sarcastic laugh before commenting, “Oh, I know, everyone just wants us to accept it but no one wants to talk about it.”

“Oh, no. If you want to talk about it, let’s talk about it.” Ollie looked up at me and without a word I knew this was him asking for permission to speak freely. His eyes said she wants to go there, am I free to drop her off at school?

I smiled and nodded, and he continued.

“What would you like to talk about?” he asked her in the same sweetly sarcastic tone she’d been using.

“Well first of all, you know there are only two genders. I can tell you’re smart. You are either born a boy or a girl. You can play pretend all day, but that will never make it true. I can pretend to be a duck all day and quack, but at the end of the day, I’m not a duck!” was her well thought out point. I cringed inside.

Ollie didn’t miss a beat. “Gender and sex are two different things, but let's set that aside for right now. You say there are only boys and girls. I would point out that’s scientifically not true. What about intersex people?”

“That’s such a rare occurrence. It’s not relevant because the percentage of truly intersex people is so small,” she shot back, unprepared for the slam dunk he’d set himself up for. “It’s too rare to even count.”

“Actually, it’s about as rare as being naturally red headed like you. The percentage of intersex people and red-headed people are right around the same. One you can see and the other you can’t, which is why you don’t realize how common it is.”

And BOOM goes the dynamite. I could’ve screamed. She was so taken aback by this 14-year-old that had just made her sound like she didn’t know what she was talking about. She was starting to anger, and her next point had no relevance to the conversation that she wanted to have in the first place. Her voice went up a couple of octaves.

“See — all you kids these days know about is “’science’ and ‘facts!’” she said, as if that were a bad thing. “I bet you can’t even name the first ten books of the Bible, though, can you? That’s the real problem.”

Now, I could not list the first ten books of the Bible if you held a gun to my head, but my kids went to church with my in-laws for years. I let them go to make up their own minds on what they believed, and to do that you need to hear all the sides of the argument. When they did not want to attend any longer, I didn’t make them go. Because my cousin knows I’m not a religious person, she believed I’d indoctrinated my children to my own beliefs — or lack thereof — because that is what she did. She thought this was a sure “win” for her.

Not just irrelevant, though it was that. Also, wrong.

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians”, Ollie replied with a smile, while counting them off on his fingers. “Would you like the first 5 of the Old Testament while we’re at it? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Though, I’m not sure why or how that is relevant in any way.”

Oh. My. God.

Excuse the expression, but that was a flawless victory if I’d ever seen one. I stifled back my laughter. Someone, however, did not find it as amusing as Ollie and I did.

“You think you’re so smart!,” my cousin shrieked in rage. Her face was fully red, and she looked like her pointy little head was about to explode. “You’re just a smart-ass kid. I’m an adult! You don’t know anything about life yet! You know I’m right!”

This is when I stepped in, turning the phone back to me.

“Oh, no, sweetie. What we’re not going to do is all that disrespectful screaming and rudeness,” I said, curtly. “Just because you’ve been outmatched by my teenager doesn’t mean you get to call me after a decade and scream at my child who you don’t know — and will never have the pleasure of knowing.”

“I understand you’re having hard time coming to term with reality pertaining to your oldest child, but I’m pretty sure you’re projecting your problems with him onto me and my child. That seems like something you should really reflect upon, honestly. In private.”

I could hear her shrieking intelligibly as I pressed the button that ended the call. I looked up at my kid and smiled. He smiled back.

“That was the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen. You make me so proud”, I gushed as we reached out and high-fived each other before saying goodnight.

~Thanks so much for your support and readership. I appreciate it as always!

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-Layla