As his trans daughter struggles, a father pushes past his prejudice. ‘It was like a wake-up.’

News@lemmy.world – 350 points – 2 months ago

As his trans daughter struggles, a father pushes past his prejudice. ‘It was like a wake-up.’

Dusty Farr is fighting for his transgender daughter's right to use the girls' bathroom at her Missouri high school.

Before his transgender daughter was suspended after using the girls’ bathroom at her Missouri high school. Before the bullying and the suicide attempts. Before she dropped out.

Before all that, Dusty Farr was — in his own words — “a full-on bigot.” By which he meant that he was eager to steer clear of anyone LGBTQ+.

Now, though, after everything, he says he wouldn’t much care if his 16-year-old daughter — and he proudly calls her that — told him she was an alien. Because she is alive.

“When it was my child, it just flipped a switch,” says Farr, who is suing the Platte County School District on Kansas City’s outskirts. “And it was like a wake-up.”

Farr has found himself in an unlikely role: fighting bathroom bans that have proliferated at the state and local level in recent years. But Farr is not so unusual, says his attorney, Gillian Ruddy Wilcox of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri.

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“When it was my child, it just flipped a switch,” says Farr, who is suing the Platte County School District on Kansas City’s outskirts. “And it was like a wake-up.”

I'm really happy for his daughter to have the support of her father like this, but it disgusts me that people like him don't understand bigotry until it happens to someone they care about. And there are so many millions like him who will never encounter it happening to anyone they care about.

A little further down the article goes into more detail about his turn around.

They bumped heads and argued, their relationship strained. In desperation, he turned to God, poring through the Bible, questioning teachings that he once took at face value that being transgender was an abomination. He prayed on it, too, replaying her childhood in his mind, seeing feminine qualities now that he had missed.

Then it hit him. “She’s a girl.”

“I got peace from God. Like, ‘This is how your daughter was born. I don’t make mistakes as God. So she was made this way. There’s a reason for it.’”

Regardless of how he got there, I am glad he did. His daughter's words say it best.

“There was this electricity in me that was just, it felt like pure joy. Just seeing someone I thought would never support me, just being one of my biggest supporters,”

So the key is to convince the person was born this way. Then acceptance follows from "God does not make mistakes." 🧠

I was raised Catholic and was even sent to Catholic school, which of course means that I inevitably grew up to be a hardcore atheist with a dislike of organized religion. Personally, I don't care what mental gymnastics a raging bigot has to make in order to learn care and compassion for those different from him, as long as they stick the landing.

as long as they stick the landing.

It sounds to me like his daughter needs to hope he doesn't interpret God's Word a third way one morning or she'll be right back where she started.

They interpret their religion and their religious texts to ultimately support whatever opinion they want to be able to justify. He wanted to be able to accept and support his daughter so he found a way for his religion to let him do that.

That’s the crux of the problem. Want to subjugate a group, no problem. want genital mutilation no worries. want to discriminate against a segment of the population, cool cool; I can make my god confirm every shitty thing I have in my heart. Luckily sometimes it works the other way.

This. The worst part is that they are somehow convinced that's not what they're doing. That is how you get a pope who calls trans women "daughters of God" but also turns around and says "gender ideology" is "colonizing the family" or some other bs.

I didn't even want to get into the fact that it was far from a flipped switch like he claims, that's a whole other issue.

I found that encouraging. I saw it as a man willing to fight everything he is at his core for his kid. If it had been a flip of a switch then all that would have told me is that him being a bigot was him just being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole and that he really didn't care that much.

It would be nice if empathy was an inherent trait, but it's not. I think the general state of the world is testimony to that fact. Good people are not born, they are made. Sometimes the world doesn't get the opportunity to teach you that lesson, or maybe it happens late in life, but it's a boon to the world whenever it happens.

Likely anyone who holds empathy dear to their hearts has experienced this learned behavior, and benefited from it. To me this is melancholic, it just means that man probably never really experienced the real gift of empathy, at least not until later in life. And just based on his quotes, it does seem that he regrets that dearly.

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Yeah dude I'm usually against forced drugging but some people literally need to be tied down, fed molly, and made to watch Titanic or something to kickstart their empathy drives. Maybe Sophie's Choice...idk I haven't seen it because I have the opposite problem.

They'd root for the iceberg and the Nazis. Because again, it wouldn't be happening to anyone they care out. Of course, the biggest problem is the only person they care about is themselves. They'd have to go through a scenario like the first segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie if we would have even a hope of getting them to have any empathy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_Zone:_The_Movie#Segment_one

They'd root for ... the Nazis.

This is not hyperbole. Lots of them are rooting for the Nazis right now.

That reminds me of this poem:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_

Very much so. Except he's one of the lucky ones because he's white, cis, probably heterosexual and male, so no one will ever need to speak out for him.

It's that privilege that obligates us to speak for others. Because even though I can't speak from personal experience, I'm more likely to be listened to. So I do the best I can to speak for those who go unheard, imperfect as my understanding is.

That movie looks hella rad. Adding to the list.

Edit: apparently this is basically a snuff film because the director got the lead and some kids killed via negligence. I'm gunna skip it, on second thought...

I hope you enjoy it. I always liked it, although some fans of the original show don't.

I haven't seen it because I have the opposite problem.

I can relate to that. I'm one of those people who won't even squash bugs, and even heavy-handed, poorly written emotional moments in movies can make me tear up because I'll inevitably find something in there that speaks to me. Shits wild compared to my friends and family