Veda talks about deciding not to speak with their Indian parents about their gender identity. And, Sree Sinha, co-founder of the South Asian Sexual and Mental Health Alliance, helps us figure out when, if, and how to talk about identity and sexuality with loved ones.
Featured Expert:
Sree Sinha is co-founder of the South Asian Sexual & Mental Health Alliance (SASMHA). Sree is a doctoral candidate at the University of Denver, pursuing a PhD in Counseling Psychology specialized in romantic relationships and multicultural counseling. Sree is also a Minority Fellow with the American Psychological Association, having been recognized for her work serving minority mental health needs, especially for South Asian Americans and QPOC (queer people of color). Sree previously worked in community mental health, serving a chronically homeless population with severe and persistent mental illness in Washington, DC. Prior to co-founding SASMHA, she was busy bringing sexual health education to an undergraduate community by founding Sex Week at Maryland. Her passions also include advocacy and awareness around sustainability and environmental psychology. She has been recognized for her leadership and involvement with the 2019 Outstanding Doctoral Leader award, 2015 Wilson H. Elkins Citizenship Award, as well as the Martin A. Taylor Award for Distinguished Service. Sree describes herself as a queer brown cis woman, and more specifically, a Bengali bisexual babe. Learn more about her organization here, and find their podcast, Brown Taboo Project, here.
Sree recommends this UN map on gender and sexuality across time and culture, and this PBS map on diverse genders. If you loved this episode, be sure to listen to Overcoming Shame to Love Who You Are, and Coming Out to My Family.
We’d love to hear your stories of triumph and frustration so send us a detailed voice memo to hello@talktomamipapi.com. You might be on a future episode! Let’s connect on Twitter and Instagram at @TalkToMamiPapi and email us at hello@talktomamipapi.com. And follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams:
Hi, everybody. Today, I’m speaking with Veda. Veda has decided that they’re not gonna talk to their family about certain aspects of their personal life, like their gender identity and being queer. Veda’s family is South Asian and based on earlier attempts at conversations around their sexuality, Veda is now very clear on where they want this boundary to stand. Let’s get into it.
Veda: My name is Veda. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York. I’m from a small town in Northern Central Florida called Ocala. And yeah, I call my parents mom and dad. I had put in my pronouns in my email signature as I encourage anyone who’s hearing this to do, and it was she/they at the time. I had been actively going in and deleting the they and changing it to her specifically when I emailed my mom, but one time I slipped up. And this was last summer, too, when I was having a full meltdown, like a full pandemic meltdown. But anyway, she was like, “Wait, what is it? Why does it say… What does this mean?” And I was like, “Oh, it’s just pronouns,” like I just thought she’s not gonna dig deeper. She probably really doesn’t wanna know.
So, I was like, “Oh, that’s just pronouns. Everybody just puts their pronouns on things.” Like, “You should too.” I said something like that. I didn’t think to explain the they aspect. I thought she would just be like, “Oh, that’s just some language thing that I don’t… That’s just some lingo.” But no, then she was like, “Oh, you have your pronouns like that? Why do you do all of that? I hope you don’t have that on your resume, right? When you apply for jobs, people are gonna see that.” And I was like, “That’s a great idea.” And then I put it on my resume.
That’s all I said. I didn’t… You know, I just was just like, “I’m making an active decision not to engage. Not even to defend myself.” I haven’t found it in me to talk to my own family about my gender, for example, and this is because I learned a very valuable lesson when I came out to my parents as queer sexuality wise. I learned that there’s no need to romanticize an experience like that, like there’s no need to romanticize a milestone like coming out. It can be deeply traumatic for people who aren’t white or people who are white. It can be horrifying, actually. Even if you manage to recover from it, and heal, and you all go to therapy or whatever, there’s still gonna be those memories of sharing something that maybe you didn’t even really want to share with your parents because some of us don’t talk to our parents about our sexuality, period. No matter what it is.
Some of us don’t talk to our parents about our dating life at all until we’re ready to get married. That’s just not expected, and it’s not ever been promoted in our household, so I do think that it was an inorganic way that I came out to my parents properly. I had been voicing feelings to my mom since I was a little kid, actually. But she easily dismissed them, and I don’t even really hold that against her. For her, it was like, “You sound so scared of this and this is probably something you learned about, but I really doubt that you actually relate to this identity.” It was dismissive, yeah.
So, coming out to my parents about me not being cis, it’s just something I do not even see on the horizon. That’s because I don’t think I want to have that talk with them. I don’t want to take on that emotional labor. And I think that that’s my prerogative. It’s like far more beautiful and poetic to be completely open with your family and be able to… These were Western ideals, though. Basically, I thought that there would be a happy ending that I’m supposed to pursue. With my gender, oh my God, I would have to decolonize their minds and do I have it in me to do that? Do I have it in me to teach two cis parents what being non-binary is? No, hell no. I have time for other things, not this.
What came from me coming out to my parents in the first place, it did alter my relationship with them permanently, and I’m glad for the clarity it provided me because it also brought me a lot closer to my sister, who was a huge pillar of support for me. It also woke her up to something that I had been going through my entire childhood, frankly, between me and my parents. The fights that would go on at home. The fights were just brutal. That feeling… I feel it physically when I think back on it. It’s like a visceral, like crying myself to sleep.
The clarity it brought us both was that our parents are human, deeply flawed, just like every one of us. They’re people. And they hurt me. And they’re also my heroes, they’re like remarkable people, and my love for them, it’s just… I’m not gonna be able to verbalize that. I am a very family-oriented person. It brings me a lot of joy to be around my family. If their input is somehow harmful to my values that I feel like I now have a more concrete understanding of, then I will have to take breaks, like breaks from visiting, breaks from talking.
I don’t see that happening, though, because my parents have changed also since I came out. They’ve made an active choice to be figures of fun and less authority in my life now. Actually, just be tender. Now, we just play, and drink, and watch things, and don’t talk about anything serious, and I think a little bit of that is because they’re like, “Let’s just not get into anything political. Keep it light. Keep it light all the time.” That’ll be the trajectory of our relationship from here on out.
Lantigua-Williams:
I really admire the clarity that Veda has about how they want to manage their relationship with their family. I also really respect the resolve to prioritize their needs and to put themselves first in the situation. That’s hard to do. And of course, it made me think about so many other conversations I’ve had with guests who are trying to also set these types of emotional boundaries, and it got me thinking. How do we move forward in our relationships when we decide there are conversations we’re simply not open to having? To help us figure it out, I called in an expert.
Sree Sinha: My name is Sree Sinha. I hold a Masters of Arts in Counseling Psychology and I’m currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Denver. I work in sexuality, relationships, and multicultural counseling.
Lantigua-Williams:
You heard Veda’s story. What did you hear as you listened?
Sinha: The story was deeply personal in the sense of being able to really identify for yourself what you want to share and whom you want to share it with. I loved that so much. It was refreshing, honestly, to see someone who is really able to carve out for themselves what it is that they are ready to share, and when they want to share it, rather than feeling like sharing some piece of your identity is a requirement, as if you have to put it out there for everyone all the time.
Lantigua-Williams:
Let’s talk about that a little bit because that is definitely the general sense I get from talking to people who have to make a decision about what to share, when to share it, whom to share it. In your work, what do you find are some of the pressures that people put on themselves and allow others to put on them around this topic?
Sinha: Oh my gosh, there’s so much pressure that comes from it. We talk about it both in terms of the external pieces, right? So, what’s the pressure that’s coming in from society, from parents, from work, loved ones, whatever that might be. And then all of the pieces that are internalized, as well. What are the things that we tell ourselves about, “I’m not gay until I come out,” or, “I’m not really officially non-binary until I use they pronouns.” You could be non-binary and still use she pronouns, right? You could still use he pronouns. You could use whatever.
But it comes back to these pieces of what we tell ourselves of what something “should” look like. And when you’re comparing yourself to that image, you’re never gonna fulfill that, right? That’s not gonna be your true sense of yourself.
Lantigua-Williams:
So, how do you help someone overcome that?
Sinha: So fun. Well, some of the things that I love that Veda was talking about in this clip was really being able to make it personal, right? Like we said, there’s no need to romanticize a milestone like coming out. And to really be able to come to those decisions yourselves… I mean, I think that’s some of that beautiful long work of therapy and also the work that we do in our organization at SASMHA in terms of really trying to dive deep and help folks unpack, unpeel, really get in there into some of those layers to try to understand, “Okay, which of these are things that are more I learned growing up in this white supremacist country and culture? These are things that I learned growing up in cis-sexist and heterosexist cultures, versus these are the things that I find as my own authentic values.” Right? And what are the ways that I want to live that are gonna be congruent to that? These are the things that I love that I got from mamí and papí or I got from ma and baba, and these are the things that don’t quite fit for me.
Lantigua-Williams:
So, there’s that part of you choosing, right? But then there’s the part of someone like Veda being still part of a family that they love, that they are so dedicated to, and having to navigate the dynamics of choosing how to be and then also having expectations, cultural, familial expectations that are put upon them. Tell me about ways that people can navigate that.
Sinha: One of the things that I really loved was hearing the way that they’re able to parts that they care about. Feeling so close to their family and being like, “Okay, let’s watch movies together. Let’s do the music, and the song, and the dance, and food,” and all those things about all our cultures that we love, “but I’m gonna leave the baggage at the door,” in kind of a mutual decision, it seemed. What did really make me sad about hearing that was even though I so respect Veda setting these boundaries really for themselves, but it did make me a little bit sad to hear about them leaving some parts of themselves behind and feeling like they can’t fully engage.
And I think that is the part where the strategies in terms of being able to integrate those often comes from the fact that sometimes we really don’t give our parents enough credit. I feel like a lot of times, even to leave that culture of origin and come here, I mean the guts, and how innovative, and how courageous you have to be to even be that kind of person, you’re probably not totally fitting in in your culture of origin if you are choosing to immigrate. And so, I think sometimes when it comes to trying to approach these conversations, trying to integrate, sometimes it really comes down to, “Okay, what are the cultural examples that I can think of that might fit for you to understand it,” if they ever choose to go down that route. And so, in a South Asian cultural context, some of the things that I’m thinking of… Well, it sounds like they watch a lot of movies together, so who are celebrities, what are different movies, so starting to use some of those examples that are gonna feel more relevant.
And this part really gets me. What Veda was talking about of like, “If I have to go into this, I would have to decolonize their minds.” That is, of course, so insanely much to take on, right? That’s a project, and that’s not Veda’s job, but that means that us collectively really uncovering our roots, because our roots are actually not based on a gender binary, are not actually necessarily cis sexist. I mean, there’s definitely instances of prejudice and discrimination against Third-gender people, against for example Hijra culture in South Asian context, but really being able to point back for example in mythology, in Muslim as well as Hindu mythology, so many stories that exist of fluidity in gender, and embracing, and the power of that, really seeing people who defy gender norms or gender roles as powerful, divine beings. You know, it’s like all of these things that we have taken as truth, that’s not necessarily the truth of our cultures or our communities, and that’s not necessarily our truth.
Lantigua-Williams:
So, let’s stay with that, because I think that sometimes in the myth of the immigrant that we create, we tend to drastically cut off millennia of history that formed and informs who we are. But let’s take sort of like a really practical approach. Because a lot of our immigrant parents literally don’t have the words with which to comprehend, right? And even a pronoun change can be very confusing to them. So, tell me about how a person who is willing to engage in these conversations with their parents up to a certain extent, how can they approach the education portion of it in a way that is scaffolded based on where their parents are?
Sinha: This is so crucial, to really be able to ascertain the level that someone is coming in at, right? And honestly, kind of dial it back to thinking about what is it that I’m trying to communicate? Who is my audience? And what is gonna be the most effective tools to use in this situation for me to be able to communicate my objective? So, really, like, I mean taking it back to what did we… like persuasive essays in fifth grade. In a conversation, for example with your parents, you know them pretty well. They might surprise us, but you also probably know, like is it gonna be more the ethos, the pathos, the logos that works for me? Is it gonna be feeling compelled about me personally in some way? Is sharing a book, or a movie, or an article gonna work best, right? Is me feeding them the information right or are they more a self-learner and I can give them some websites? Or are they like, “I don’t want to do that stuff, just tell me in your own words what this means.”
And that piece you said on scaffolding, too. Really wanting to build that over time, right? Reassessing. And I mean, I’ve had this conversation with my own mother, for example. I came out to her when I was in ninth grade. They kind of just laughed at me, like, “Okay, that’s nice. We think you don’t really know what you’re talking about.”
Lantigua-Williams:
Ah, okay.
Sinha: And it’s been really incredible, honestly, to watch my mom over like 15 years, right? Her understanding, for both of my parents, really, their understandings have changed. The world has changed. So, having those conversations with my mom now is very different, quite honestly, and that’s the piece of scaffolding of sometimes she surprises me, really. She gets stuff more than I thought she would. You know, she’s learned too. We’re all learning and growing kind of at the same time, and though it’s still sometimes obviously invalidating, or frustrating, or just to protect myself I’m gonna choose to not share parts, sometimes we underestimate how much our parents can take.
Lantigua-Williams:
My last question is please share some resources, including your podcast, where people can follow up, learn more, hear more stories from folks about how they’ve handled these situations, please.
Sinha: There are two different actually interactive world maps that I personally love to use. I use this when I teach. One is focused just on gender, and that’s a PBS world map, and then there’s another one that kind of gives examples of both sexuality and gender of diverse sexualities and genders from around the world, and really bookmarks it back to when we have evidence of any type of non-heterosexual or non-cisgender experience. And it literally goes back to I think the earliest one on there is 13th century BCE. And so, that’s part of the decolonizing your mind.
Lantigua-Williams:
Right.
Sinha: And the other thing that I would recommend is absolutely seeking community. And that’s what we at SASMHA are here for. We work in the areas of mental health, sexual health, and sexuality, but all issues relating to really any of these kind of hyphenated identities, right, like that immigrant kid experience. So, our website is www.sasmha.org. We also… You know, can find us on social @SouthAsianSMH and on our own podcast called the Brown Taboo Project.
Lantigua-Williams:
You’ve been such a joy to speak with. Thank you so much for coming on.
Sinha: Thank you. I’m so excited and I’m so grateful to be a part of this journey.
Lantigua-Williams:
All right, let’s recap what we learned from Sree. Identify your personal pressure points. Notice what’s driving your decisions to engage or not engage in these difficult or taboo conversations. Consider whether these messages from society or from yourself fit with your values and how you want to live your life. Draw on cultural examples. Point to people and events your loved ones can relate to and use these as entry points into these conversations. Turn to contemporary culture and also to your family’s ancestral roots that may have been hidden or forgotten. And remember, know your audience. Your parents are your audience, so use the communication tools that they tend to be most receptive to. Whether you are appealing to their emotions, or their logic, or citing credible sources, use what works best with them.
In our episode notes, you’ll find a list of resources recommended by Sree, including her organization, the South Asian Sexual and Mental Health Alliance.
Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing us. Thank you, thank you, thank you. How to Talk to [Mamí and Papí] About Anything is an original production of Lantigua Williams & Co. Virginia Lora is the show’s producer. Kojin Tashiro is our mixer. Manuela Bedoya is our social media editor. Cedric Wilson is our lead producer. Jen Chien is our executive editor. I’m the creator, Juleyka Lantigua-Williams. On Twitter and Instagram, we’re @TalktoMamiPapi. Please follow us and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Goodpods, or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. Bye, everybody. Same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua-Williams, Juleyka, host. “Talking to Their Parents about Being Nonbinary”
How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] About Anything,
Lantigua Williams & Co., June 21, 2021. TalkToMamiPapi.com.