Reblog: #1189: “Fox News, Immigrant Family, and the F******* Wedding Invite List”

[shy_magpie]

captainawkward_feed posted: #1189: “Fox News, Immigrant Family, and the F******* Wedding Invite List”

Let’s review the situation: Your uncle has hateful views that are being used to detain, harm, and imprison people and steal their children, and he acts like an aggressive jerk specifically to you, and the rest of your family is somehow surprised that you don’t want him at your wedding?  And your parents are blaming you for causing an unforgivable rift in the family if one drunk bigot doesn’t get invited, but not blaming him for being a ranting bigot in the first place? Do we have that right?

I am tired, friends.

I am tired of “keeping the peace” with xenophobia and bigotry. I am tired of the words “let’s agree to disagree.” I fear that I suggested them or words like them too many times in safer years when maybe different ones might have made a difference. I am tired of people acting surprised that there might be consequences to the way they treat their family members, that after years of making it clear that they hate everyone who is like you that you might reasonably draw the conclusion that they hate you, too. I’m tired of the people who only use their “free speech” to say the most poisonous violent possible things and I’m tired of the pretense that these people don’t fucking revel in the violence and damage that accompanies their dogwhistles. And I’m tired of reminders of how nice and good the bigots can be to the people they don’t hate, as if their “nice” means anything at all when ICE rounds up another group of terrified families or transgender people get pushed out of the military en masse.

If your parents want your uncle to be included in things like your wedding so bad, why don’t they take it upon themselves to change his mind or at least get him to keep his hateful views to himself for a hot second?In the meantime, I think it will be very useful to you to redirect all attempts at managing the situation back his way – “Quit bugging me! Go talk to Uncle if you care about this so much!”  The not-so-secret secret is that the other people in your family know that your uncle is totally unreasonable and difficult, so they’re exerting pressure on you (younger than he is, female, expected to be more reasonable and compliant) because they don’t want to have to deal with him. Tough shit for them! You didn’t cause this rift, your wedding doesn’t have to heal it, and if they want to smooth things over let them deal with the person who made it awkward.

So I saw the conversation this sparked on twitter about the wider issue of the less hate filled family member being asked to "be the adult/peace maker" and "not make waves". It was healing to see so many people say "fuck that noise". As someone who has been trained to keep their head down and not draw attention, I know it can be difficult to find your voice and stand your ground. You don't have to be the asshole whisperer! Even if you are able to deflect or get them off the subject it is not your job to keep an adult(who you aren't /responsible for/) from attacking you and others. They are causing the problem not you!
TL;DR: You have a right to safety from abuse on your special day or any other day! If asking for that means that a family member can't be around you, it was their choice to abuse that was the cause of the problem not you!