Earlier this year, my 12 year old "sister"-in-law (who we will call Pinky) was caught by their mother "watching porn" (they were reading an Ecchi manga online, which I'm not sure even counts) and the mom reacted...not pleasantly. Her first response was to ground Pinky from every single electronic device they had indefinitely. Her second response was to aggressively interrogate this poor child for hours and hours on every single possible detail of anything even potentially remotely relevant.

This meant that it came out that Pinky identifies as male (and will be referred to as such from now on), is pansexual, and had several friends online who had encouraged...less than healthy 12 year old behavior from Pinky. Also that neither my wife or I are straight, we have an open and polyamorous marriage, and that my wife had once kissed a woman.

So this revelation leads to my mother-in-law calling up my wife to accuse us of corrupting her innocent daughter. Except, that Pinky knew about himself long before either my wife or I figured ourselves out, and is the one who opened US up to these ideas. Of course, my wife tried to explain that, but got nowhere. We were accused of "encouraging this behavior" and telling Pinky stories that were "vulgar and explicit" (which never happened) as well as showing him all kinds of "inappropriate media."

None of that is true, of course. We went out of our way to make sure anything we put on around Pinky was family friendly, never talked about our sex life at all, and never shared any details that would be considered vulgar by any sane person. All we ever did was encourage Pinky to be who they wanted to be, and we did that at all times.

After all of these accusations, the big one finally comes, and we are accused of grooming Pinky. Oh, and not just that, but my wife, who is a victim of rape at the hands of one of mother-in-law's exes, was accused of being "predatory" towards them men in MiL's life, and is told that she started it.

Lastly, before we cut her off forever and renamed her the cuntasuarus rex, she decided to blame me for EVERYTHING. I was the reason her "daughter" identified as male, I am the reason they aren't straight, I am the reason her oldest daughter (my wife) got raped, I am the reason her marriages didn't work out, and so on, and so on. Why? Because apparently I have been a corrupting influence on her whole family since the day I showed up. I am the villain, because I refused to judge people and tell them how to live.

Am I the asshole for providing a safe space for my family to not feel judged and to express themselves freely?

(Obviously this means nothing really, no one in the family is on Reddit or cares, I'm just venting. Thanks for any engagement.)

Edit 1: DMs related to this post exposing hate will be reported. Thank you for understanding.