#tho my grandfather on the other side it also oretty nice

[thesquidkid]

So I talked about my grandmother (and other family members) at New Year's, who did not believe in climate change and who generally annoyed me while I was there

Now I need to talk about my other grandparents, who are the polar opposite of the other ones. Whenever ppl tell me to be open minded towards older people not understanding new things or whatever, I think of my grandparents.

My grandparents who live in a very conservative part of England, yet who still participated until very recently in labour activities (they participated less after Brexit was voted due to being pissed off at the world, and then stopped due to covid and health reasons)

They are still very politically engaged, despite having most of the people around them being Tories

Of course, they don't know everything, and we don't always agree. But we listen to each other, and we learn from the different experiences

As an example, my grandma told me just the other day that she didn't agree with the Scottish bill on gender recognition. I asked her what she knew of the bill. She repeated what she had heard on the news: it's going to allow men to hurt women.

I told her that no, it only allowed people to change the gender written on the birth certificate, and that it was already possible. We went together to look up the official statement on the Scottish Government website (neither of them are very good with googling stuff), and they read it, and when we talked about it again later they said that they didn't see the problem with this bill.

When I cut my hair and started dressing "more masculine", my grandparents, without asking, took down any photograph of me with long hair, or me "feminine". When I asked about that, my grandfather said that I looked much happier now, and there was no point in having pictures of me unhappy.

It was that simple.

(meanwhile my other grandparents still have pictures of me with long hair, clearly looking uncomfortable af)

All this to say, old people are generally closed minded because they are old. Old people can be open minded, it only depends on the person in question.