Danielle

Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday. Aside from the awful history behind it, I am just not a fan of turkey. However, the one thing I like about Thanksgiving is the fact that I get to see my family. For the most part, I love my family very much, and since I don’t get so see them very often, Thanksgiving is a special sort of reunion.

Despite all my love for them, sometimes my family pisses me off. Disclaimer: I am the token liberal of my family. Some of them strongly identify as Republicans while the rest claim to be independent, but hold ridiculously conservative views and vote Republican 95% of the time. Needless to say, I have to hold my tongue around them very often or risk getting into a debate that no one was interested in.

What I most often have to endure are the homophobic comments. Sometimes they’ll tell a homophobic joke and expect me to laugh, so to keep the peace, I just laugh at their ignorance. Sometimes they’ll hold very victim-blaming attitudes, and since violence against women is my “soapbox issue” and they are very well aware of this,  it is especially difficult for me to keep quiet and I usually don’t, but censor myself as much as possible.