Mum hit with blistering backlash after outing her son as gay before he was ready
Reddit users were quick to slate the mother for making her son uncomfortable. (Envato)
A mum has been blasted on Reddit forum after explaining how she outed her teenage son.
In a post shared to the Am I the A*****e? (AITA) forum, user u/platefoodaway said she’d suspected that her 17-year-old son was gay because he “smells great” and “has his hair fixed really nice”.
The now-deleted post went on to describe in detail how the user’s son cuddled, talked about having children and bought gifts for the friend she’d suspected was his boyfriend. In a bizarre – and stereotypical – move, the mum came to the conclusion that he was gay.
“He now always smells great, has his hair fixed really nice, and dresses nicer, among other things,” she said. Describing how the family was going on a holiday, the mother asked her son if he was gay and proceeded to laugh in his face.
“He got awkward and said: ‘That’s not funny,'” she wrote. “I asked what he meant and he said: ‘I’m straight.’ I laughed and when I realised he was serious, I started laughing even harder.”
‘He hasn’t said a word to me in a couple of days’
The mother then poked more fun at the teenager, saying he was doing “a terrible job” of hiding his relationship with another the man. The post went on to describe how the young man begged his mother not to tell his dad.
“My husband already knows, like I said it was obvious,” she wrote. “Then [my son] got upset, saying I outed him when he wasn’t ready. He hasn’t said a word to me in a couple days. AITA.”
Reddit users quickly voted the poster the a*****e in this situation. Since its first share on the 4 February, more than 13,000 upvotes and 4,000 comments have poured in, slamming the mother’s handling of the situation, according to Newsweek.
Disclosing a person’s LGBTQ+ status is seen as a massive breach of trust, which could have extreme consequences.
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