2007-11-12 - 5:19 p.m.

Occasionally I do feel like a complete stereotype of my generation. "Gee, Mum, you just don't get us hip youngsters!"
I was once talking to my grandmother about transsexuality and trying to explain the concept to her, when she told me one of her school chums was transsexual. She'd known her as Joan, and years later talked to a friend who said she was actually John now. I felt like a bit of an idiot for assuming that she wouldn't even know what transsexuality was. What's more, she was totally supportive of it and didn't think it was wrong, or anything like that. In her mind, if Joan was a guy, well, okay then. I guess it helped that this person had actually been a physical hermaphrodite, but all the same, I'd sort of expected her to be less cool about it.
We talk a LOT. Just so you know. So it's not like I've only spoken to her for an hour in the last decade and that sole hour I spent talking about transsexuality.)
Another incident, a few weeks ago: we're (my parents and siblings) talking about gay marriage, and I mention the French medieval "affrèrements". While I'm explaining them, my father starts telling me that it shouldn't just be two men, two women, or a man and a woman who can get married. It was evolved past his angry little "Why does it have to be about sex? Gay people are obsessed with sex! Why don't they fight for two brothers who are caring for their retarded sister, huh?" (Which, actually, Australia's largest gay marriage coalition is fighting for tax-sharing rights for such arrangments and in my experience it's not the GAY ones who get obsessed about genitals... but I held my tongue then, and I do now!) Anyway. It was evolved past that. He actually said he thought that if a ménage à trois wanted to get married, then they should be allowed to. That society should recognise their romantic relationship and housing arrangment. I was too busy picking my jaw up off the floor to squeak out "hoorah!"
Well. He did go on to say that all of those, along with gay marriage, needed to be made as something separate to marriage and that he just saw a need for the acknowledgment... because gay people are different... but oh well. It still made my eyes bug out of my head! We young moderns assume a lot about older people's opinions, I guess.