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Now I know the truth.

Because sure, anecdotal evidence. Data point of one. But my therapist, who I think is pretty excellent. Was SO determined to get me to try telling my parents how I was feeling. And she was CONVINCED that, if I just told them how they were hurting me, that they would come around and we could work on our relationship.

I have never seen someone more disappointed than she was on that fucking Zoom call when I read her my parent's response to my letter.

And this is, by the way. The story I have heard from all of my friends who either do not have a relationship with or have a strained relationship with their parents. Therapists are TRYING.

I think what people who do the whole "hurr durr estrangement is a trend!" thing miss is twofold.

One- that parents have been estranging themselves from their children for FUCKING forever and no one bats a fucking eye. It's not a trend. It's not a fad. It's just what you do when a child is "difficult" (or, let's be real here. When a child is gay or trans or does something a parent doesn't like).

And two- these people think the world revolves around them. So much so that, clearly, their child's estrangement is ALL about them. And about punishing them.

I didn't choose to cut my parents off to punish them. I did so- and it was one of the most difficult things I have ever done, those are my parents!- because I needed to make the best choice for my mental health. And the best choice. Was to remove myself from the presence of people who constantly made me feel awful. My estrangement was about ME.

Estrangement isn't a punishment. Estrangement is a child saying "I need to take care of and protect myself... Even if it is from my family." It is sad and difficult. And I think when people speak like this, especially people who have children who have decided to leave the family dynamic, well.

Well, of course it wasn’t explicit – queerness is rarely depicted directly in mainstream media. It’s almost never afforded the same treatment as a typical straight romance.

Even Will was consistently described as not being gay but simply “slow” to grow up. And yet you expect there to be a clear “Guys, I’m queer and in love with Will” scene from Mike, when they didn’t even have Will explicitly say the word “gay” or directly confess his feelings?

It’s not our fault that you’re not open-minded enough to see beyond your heteronormative lens (and are so clearly bothered by Byler for some reason).

When you dont grow up experiencing differences from other kids, having different feelings, you wont recognize those differences in other people

Obvious right?

The problem is the people privileged enough to not be labeled "different" dont consider the other perspective, its not important to them. They dont see a problem as they've never experienced the problem.

Instead, when people start looking with a queer perspective at relationships in TV shows, if its not explicitly queer, it makes them uncomfortable, since they cant identify with those characters. (Their comfort is their top priority.) Instead, they feed into whatever validates their feelings and we get the same assumptions from 60 years ago made again.

"Its a fetish thing"

Gay people used to be called child molesters. We dont need that kind of assumption making a comeback in the big 2026.

We dont want to fetishize media, its not a fetish, it is life-saving representation, that is also the bare minimum.

We want gay characters because we want representation, we want media where both characters end up together, alive, and happy because we dont get that often. There is nothing wrong wanting more of that in media.

Don't put the responsibility of "proving" characters are gay onto gay and queer people, it isnt our responsibility to explain the necessity of having representation.

It doesn’t hurt straight people to see a gay kiss on screen, but it can save queer lives by having queerness normalized in media.