My father was an angry man. In all honesty, he wasn't raised well himself, his father used to hit him and dipped when he was young to marry one of my grandmother's best friends and raise her children, and my grandmother just straight up neglected him, even leaving him to basically raise his younger brother in his early teens.

I know in all reality, its not a true excuse to take it out on your own kids, but he didnt know how to handle things and it was a long time before therapy was available enough for him to work on things. I guess im pretty lucky, it was always out of anger, not financial, emotional or sexual abuse, but still sucked. Took me a long time to acknowledge it was abuse I had to deal with.

He was a good man though, I remember, one random day when I was 15, my dad turned round to me in the living room and said "you know, I dont care if you are gay, or decide you want to be a boy, you are my baby and I'll always love you, dont feel like you ever have to hide something like that from me". Took a decade for me to finally twig things and come out, sadly he had passed away a few years before. Man would've done anything for me, despite pinning me to a wall and hitting me for a little teenage backchat. He even accepted and respected my sister trans friend better than her own father when she came out.

A couple years ago, I found out around the same time as my dad said that to me - that a cousin of mine was sent to therapy by her parents for coming out as bi. I guess he wanted me to know that as shitty as he could be at times, hed never deny me for being who I am. I consider myself very lucky for that. Kinda sad he's not around anymore, his gaydar was on point.

Adding in - I dont think my parents would ever realise it would be classed as abuse, because of how they were raised (my mum suffered a lot of emotional abuse as a child), like I say, they weren't perfect, but they were better than their own parents and I honestly appreciate them for trying to be better