As a culture, our understanding of gender and how it can differ from biological sex assigned at birth is evolving. This is strange and exciting, and it can also cause a lot of confusion among families with a generational divide that makes understanding each other’s views difficult.
Rain Dove is a gender non-conforming model and activist. Though Rain has no stated pronoun preference, I’ll be using the singular “they” in this article.
They have been featured in both men’s and women’s ad campaigns and became a household name through their relationship with actress Rose McGowan.
But their most important cause is raising awareness for LGBTQIA+ causes and helping to create more understanding between various sides of the gender debate.
Of course, this means that Rain gets a lot of unsolicited messages from angry people for “promoting” their “sick lifestyle.”
Rain often shares these exchanges, not to shame the people, but to set an example of how to diffuse the anger and reply with compassion.
The latest exchange they shared has gone viral for the best reasons.
It starts like many do, with an accusation that Rain’s personal choices are influencing the parent’s child. Turning them “sick.”
After a slightly tongue-in-cheek question about the flu, Rain learns that the woman’s child has asked for a chest binder for Christmas, making the mom assume they were trying “to be a boy.”
The key though, is how Rain responded to that context.
After calmly explaining that chest binding isn’t just something for female-to-male trans people, Rain then asks about the mom’s feelings.
You can totally feel in the responses how Rain’s willingness to understand how the mom is feeling and why totally defuses her anger and begins to allow the mom to reflect and listen rather than just react.
Rain knows that many parents are simply confused and scared.
Often, mainstream culture can be so afraid to show lifestyles outside of “the norm” that the only exposure a parent may have to it is through a negative lens. They see editorials by anti-LGBTQIA+ folks that use scare-tactics against parents just like them.
And they see the discrimination and abuse members of the queer community face everyday and they are scared to let their children suffer the same.
The misunderstanding means that they don’t realize that by “protecting” their child, they may actually be doing the damage themselves
In the case of a chest binder, by refusing to fulfill her child’s request, the mom could simply push the kid to secret, dangerous alternatives. The fact that the kid felt comfortable asking in the first place shows a lot of courage and trust that a knee-jerk reaction could ruin.
Rain is compassionate, but also very clear about how the mom’s assumptions could lead to terrible results.
By reacting without fully understanding the entire picture, the mom could cause the very situation she thinks she’s trying to prevent.
Rain is able to educate the mom about binders and their uses without accusing her of being a bad person.
Because most parents really do want to do what’s best for their children. This mom was clearly surprised by the request and confused about its meaning.
Should she have lashed out at a random stranger on the internet? No, but by not reacting in kind, Rain was able to teach her more about gender expression while also reminding her that she is a good mom. It’s simply a situation that she had no experience with.
In the end, Rain was able to alleviate her fears and point her to a place to buy a safe binder for her child.
As long as everyone understands how to use the binder safely, the daughter won’t be hurt and their parent-child relationship will likely grow even stronger.
The exchange was so powerful that Rain asked to share it, which the mom agreed to.
You can totally see how taking the time to actually listen to a person’s words — or read them, in this case — and consider where they are coming from can make a huge difference.
It’s a good lesson to remember in this time when everyone seems to be talking at each other instead of actually communicating with each other.
