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Are your grandparents and parents nice or tolerant people?

I’ve just been out for food with parents (60’s) and nana (80’s) and I don’t know why I go as they leave me disheartened every time damn time.

In the short span of a couple of hours they (mainly my nana but parents will have silly views too) managed to comment on the number of black athletes at the Olympics (somehow being a bad thing), shit on the upcoming Para-olympics (quote: disabled people should just accept their lot and not try sport), protesters (of any kind) and questioning if any protests have ever been successful, to which I answered the suffragette‘s we’re pretty successful.

Complaining about people being spoilt these days at the same time as my nana confessing she was given food in a bowl at my aunties and refused to eat it unless it was on a plate (seems pretty spoilt to me). Asking for things to be like when she was younger, to which I asked if she was a fan of Nazi Germany as she grew up post WWII.

I guess I am wondering how can I come from a family that seemingly has no compassion for anybody and even less empathy for anybody different than them. They make me angry at times and I know I can be annoying my always challenging their bullshit views, but I can’t sit there and let people take utter nonsense like this.

I haven’t even covered half the awful stuff they say and their warped ideals.

Edit: The other one that irritates me is them (two women ) shitting on female athletes. Like WTF if a female wants to be a footballer what skin is it off their noses. Unless they just bitter they people have more choice to be themselves now.

Lettuceeatlettuce ,
@Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml avatar

My grandma used to be, but years of Facebook right-wing propaganda has poisoned her.

Now she spouts conspiracy talking points about the “trans agenda” immigration, and so forth.

My parents have always been pretty right wing but covid pushed them even farther.

They aren’t hardcore MAGA nuts, but they are pretty pro Trump, especially my dad. They also buy the propaganda from Fox news hook, line, and sinker.

xilliah , (edited )

Her chip must be malfunctioning again. It happens sometimes with the strongheaded ones.

There.

ulkesh ,
@ulkesh@beehaw.org avatar

My mom is. That’s about it. My grandparents are all passed now, but they were mostly either racist, or highly opinionated with little regard for evidence.

CanadaPlus ,

Parents are tolerant, as are/were grandparents for the most part. Nice is a much more mixed bag.

PonyOfWar ,

My parents, yes absolutely. They are responsible for me growing up to be a tolerant, left-leaning person in a mostly conservative rural area. Being boomers, they might not be up to date with all the current LGBT terms or things like that, but they definitely have/had an open mind and don’t judge people.

My paternal grandparents (born in the 1910s and 1920s) were very religious. My dad had to suffer a very strict upbringing under them. He was not allowed to read comics, watch TV, read sci-fi novels etc (though he did all of these things in secret). I only knew them as a child when they were already in their 80s and they were nice to me, but from what I’ve heard from my dad not necessarily nice people, and definitely not tolerant.

My maternal grandma (never knew my grandpa) rarely ever talked about politics or society or anything. She was a very down-to-earth person. That said, she definitely held some bigoted views in the form of prejudice against foreigners. She had major reservations when some Turkish people moved in next door. She eventually became friends with them though, so she managed to overcome her prejudice. I’d say she was a nice person.

Adderbox76 ,

Mom, yes. Dad, no.

Dad’s a bigot that doesn’t understand why he can’t use “those kind of words” these days so he rants about it in private.

HOWEVER…he would never say it to their face, he’s at least THAT self-aware. And for the most part, he wouldn’t hassle them (or anyone).

While his personal beliefs are most certainly bigoted. He’s anti-LGBTQ+, anti-indigenous (we’re in Canada), anti-immigrant (he himself IS a fucking immigrant…smh)

But his biggest trait is simply live and let live. He doesn’t agree with them, but he has no interest in forcing that disagreement upon them.

He basically believes in everyone minding their own damn business regardless of what they may personally believe.

Crikeste ,

Yepp, pretty typical. I have family that calls themselves progressive and say similar shit to yours.

I pretty much resorted to considering them all dead.

It’s pretty funny when they wonder why I don’t come around anymore. “It’s because of you, you bigoted racist piece of garbage fuck.”

finestnothing ,

My maternal grandmother - extremely nice and sweet, died of breast cancer when I was a kid so I don’t remember much else about her.

My maternal grandfather - convicted for soliciting an underage prostitute (undercover cop), that’s all I know about him and it’s enough. Not sure if he’s even alive.

Paternal grandparents - psychotic religious fanatics (burned our Harry Potter and Mickey the sorcerer books while babysitting when I was a baby, killed multiple of my dad’s pets growing up, etc). Have only seen that grandmother when the grandfather died and at a Christmas party a month later - still psychotic and super rude.

My parents - nicest people you’ll ever meet, I have basically no bad memories from being raised (except my dad only makes broccoli and cauliflower by microwaving it)

AceFuzzLord , (edited )

I don’t have any living ones, but at least on my mom’s side they seem to have been pretty nice people. Can’t say much about my grandpa in his elderly age since he died when I was fairly young, but my grandma was sweet, whether she was just at home or out and about.

Can’t say much for my grandpa on my dad’s side since I don’t remember him, but from what I’ve heard from stories from my parents, he may not have been the nicest person in general. Definitely glad I didn’t grow up with him because I remember a story my dad told of him breaking a dish at his house and then hiding in a closet, not knowing how he’d react to the broken dish or something like that. Something like that. Thankfully my dad is absolutely nothing like how his dad sounded. And my grandma on his side didn’t seem much better, considering when my mom was pregnant with my oldest brother she tried to get my dad to ditch her.

Edit:

I’ve been told before that my mom absolutely wouldn’t let me or my older brothers be alone with my grandpa on my dad’s side.

Edit Edit:

As for tolerant, I can’t speak for any of them that much, but I at least know my grandpa on my dad’s side had to have some degree of tolerance considering he was gay and at one point had a partner. I assume being married to my grandma was more of one of those societal pressures back then. Just getting married in general, even if it ends in a divorce like their marriage did.

ellabee ,

my grandparents have passed away now, but when i knew them they were unfailingly polite in public.

in private, Grandma had reservations about japanese people. i gave her leeway. Pearl Harbor was bombed on her birthday, and Grandpa went to Iwo Jima. i still felt i could bring a japanese boyfriend around, and as long as i was happy, he’d be treated right. Grandpa didn’t even suggest reservations. he took everyone as an individual worthy of respect until their behavior suggested differently.

my parents are in their 60s now, but i don’t have contact with them for other reasons. the last time i looked at my mom’s twitter i thought she had been hacked, the MAGA rhetoric she was spewing was so awful. not hacked, just an asshole.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Mine are dead, because I’m old as hell myself.

But it was quite different on each side of my family, with some minor interesting quirks.

Now, they were all nice enough. Even my one grandfather that was a fairly venomous racist was nice, even to black people. Hell, if anything he was nicer to black people than other whites. It’s an old south thing.

Obviously, tolerance was not his strong suit when out of the public.

And that was true for my grandmother on that side as well. She was less vehement about it, and more of the habitual racist. You know the type, they don’t hate black people, and don’t even really have real problems with them, but they grew up with racism being the default, and see no reason to stop using slurs just because times have changed. But she’d never say anything mean to anyone.

Kinda weird shit tbh. I took one of my friends over to her house at one point, and whenever the subject of school came up, she’d remember him and ask “how is your n****** friend?”. Wasn’t being hurtful in her mind, she was genuinely asking after him because he was my friend. The south can be fucking nuts that way. Which, when I was younger than that time, my parents had sheltered me from the n word and what it really meant, which led to some funny but problematic confusion eventually.

On the other side, both grandparents were legit super tolerant. Like, my best friend is gay, and at one point they thought we were together, so they were inviting him to family gatherings. My black friends were always welcome, nothing ever even mentioned about race at all.

My grandfather was republican, but was a one issue voter (2a rights). He was otherwise progressive as hell. Like, there was this show in the eighties called “Soap”. Billy Crystal got famous on it and played an gay man. He often said after the show would end that he didn’t understand what the problem was, “there were sailors like that under my command. You didn’t talk about such things, but they never bothered anyone, and they served their country with honor.”

I worked as a bouncer off and on as a side gig, including for gay bars. My best friend was/is gay. So I ended up being active in gay rights support. Never had to worry about it being a problem. My grandfather said he was proud of me a few times, and while neither of them enjoyed seeing me bandaged and beat all to hell when either the job or the activism got ugly, they were pissed that people were like that, and never once suggested I should stop.

Now, that grandfather had served during some of the cold war and hated Russians. With a passion. So he wasn’t free of prejudice entirely. That grandmother though, she never had anything bad to say about groups of people. And she’d tell my grandfather to shush his mouth when he’d watch the news and go on a Russia rant lol. Strangely, he never minded me being fairly friendly with socialist ideas. He’d argue the points of it, but never said I shouldn’t believe any given thing.

I loved all of them. I still do, even my racist grandfather. It wasn’t the totality of who he was, and I can love people that are flawed. Maybe if he’d lived longer, he could have changed. My grandmother that was racist did to some degree (switched to “colored” instead after my dad gave her hell once), and my dad and uncles rejected that bullshit early on, so that might have swayed him eventually. Or maybe he would have stayed just as bad, I dunno.

Maeve , (edited )

You said good things here. It irks me that one parent is particularly virulently racist and a spiritual bully (eg, if your belief differs or you don't have a god belief, that belief and probably you, are demonic). Yet they aren't rude to other races*, it's covert racism. But when I think of all my personal shortcomings and the off the wall stuff I went through and my trauma behaviors, I can see that their behaviors are trauma behaviors. The only differences were* a NDE and ego death.

Edited for grammar

Edit 2 for autocorrect

vfreire85 ,

that’s a great testimony.

HEXN3T ,
@HEXN3T@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

“When will there be straight pride month?”

No.

Tekkip20 ,
@Tekkip20@lemmy.world avatar

No? Why?

mutter9355 ,

Name one place in the world where being straight is illegal.

pendulous ,

And we all know you can’t celebrate things that aren’t downtrodden

vfreire85 ,

more or less. my grandparents are already dead, but as far as i remember the last one living of them which i had contact with (my mother’s mother) was ok with lgbtq+ people (as far as defending their right to marriage) and quite concerned with the rights of disabled, but was somehow racist towards black and indigenous people, and could not stand demonstrations of social movements (i.e. sit-ins from landless workers and squatters, strikes and the like). my parents go about the same, but my mom is much less racist.

RBWells ,

Mine are old, but I have in-law and ex-out-law old people around and it’s a mixed bag. Certainly nobody who would complain about the mix of Olympic athletes, but ex MOL will complain about welfare queens even though she herself got welfare to get through nursing school and has to know that statistically that’s how most people use it. And they will gather and whine.

I think my kids see me as progressive, their dad as actively and harmfully regressive, their stepdad (my husband) as old and not able to keep up with change, too conservative but not hateful.

wuphysics87 ,

Depending on how old you are, and whether you are financially dependent on them, I would tell them to go fuck themselves. I’d also tell your grandma the world is changing, she’s gonna die soon, and there’s nothing she can do to change either one. Flip them the bird and walk out.

Obviously, personalities are different. This might not work for you, but you can’t just fight back with facts because they refuse to play that way. If they want to throw this kind of shit your way, you have no obligation, nor should you, play by the rules of “they go low, we go high”. That’s always been bullshit anyway. Especially in a situation like this.

Feathercrown ,

Very. I’m lucky that my family is mostly liberal.

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