Little social justice warriors

Tinika Pasinetti

People who witness our family now always remark about how close we are. These days nothing is off limits, but there’s a lot that we had to go through together to get here. My mum migrated to Australia from London, with Seb and I. She was raised in an Italian household, with lots of gender roles and all of that. She met my step-dad about two years after we’d moved and he was a very strict Italian man.

For a while it was very much me and Seb, and then the rest. Seb and I struggled to be ourselves at home, and it was the same with a lot of our extended family. While we were growing up, we all had so much fun on holidays together. But the older we became, the more we realised the names we would get called were really problematic. We were always getting the blame for everything. We laughed a lot just like we do now, but that was constantly labelled as us being naughty. Seb and I were definitely not naughty. We were kept in line, properly dressed—correct at all times ... I think deep down Mum knew that we were being targeted and wanted to do everything she could to protect us.

When I got engaged, I asked my cousin to be in my bridal party. She’d recently come out as gay and we bonded over that, and I’d moved past a lot of the shit that happened between us when we were kids. Around the same time, I was discovering my blackness and being really open about a lot of things. Sadly, my cousins didn’t agree with that. ‘Your views are outlandish,’ they said. They called us extremists. They would come back at me and say things like, ‘Your family is white.’ But just because we advocate for black people does not mean that we are anti-white. After that happened, I was sick of having those conversations, and asking to be seen and heard. I realised I couldn’t move forward with my wedding day with things the way they were and I removed my cousin from my wedding party. Having a shared history wasn’t enough for me anymore. There was a point where I felt like I might not be able to move forward—it was like the veil had been ripped off and I thought: My family; my aunties, uncles and grandparents, they don’t get it. They don’t see me. I was constantly battling with Seb because he would say, ‘Yes, that is true but we’ve learned that you don’t look for that in your family—they’re not like us.’ But I still felt sad about it. I needed my family to get it.

I finally had a breakthrough one day when my therapist said, ‘They won’t get it, because they’re not black. But they just need to know how to care for you when you need support.’ After that I told my mum everything and put in the work to have as many conversations with my family as I could. I was constantly educating, but my family is worth it. I’m so grateful for where we are now. Our siblings have both come out as queer and become little social justice warriors. There’s not a single thing I keep from my mum, and I feel very lucky that I don’t have to hide anymore. I hid for so long. I was scared. But your parents will love you anyway ... most of the time.