Karuna Vellino Karuna Vellino and their mother.

Karuna Vellino’s mother called them “baby goat” instead of “baby girl” in a recent text message.

Vellino shared a screenshot of the message on Twitter, explaining that they had recently come out as non-binary.

More than 430,000 people have since liked the tweet, and the message has been tweeted 55,000 times.

Most people hailed Vellino’s mother as something of a modern parenting hero.

“It’s hard for parents to adjust but they’re trying really hard and that’s the most important thing to me,” Vellino told INSIDER.

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Karuna Vellino, 21, could never have guessed how much people would be impacted by a simple text message from a mother.

Last month, Vellino, who is non-binary, went viral after sharing a screenshot of a text message from their mum on Twitter.

“Hey baby goat,” the text read. “How’s today?”

What might seem like a silly nickname was actually the result of an important conversation between Vellino and their mother.

“The night before I got that text, me and my mum were talking and she was like, ‘Hey, baby girl,’ and I reminded her I wasn’t comfortable with that term because I have been out to her for a while,” Vellino told INSIDER.



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“We started talking about how it’s very hard to find gender neutral terms that don’t sound completely strange and ridiculous, so we were spitballing and my mum was like ‘baby goat,’ and I was like that’s perfect ’cause I’m your kid and that’s a gender-neutral name instead of daughter.”

It was also “cute” because goats are Vellino’s mother’s favourite animal.

Vellino hadn’t expected their mum to start using the term right away, so they thought it was nice when this text message popped up:

Vellino shared the screenshot on Twitter with the caption: “My mum has always called me ‘baby girl’ and we’ve been experimenting with gender neutral ways to adapt that since I came out as nonbinary and…”

https://twitter.com/blondbutch/status/1141836183703564288?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

More than 430,000 people have since liked the tweet, and the message has been tweeted 55,000 times.

“Your mum wins all the pride month awards,” one user wrote.

“This is the pride content we need and deserve,” another said.

Others shared nicknames their own parents used when they were younger, such as little chicken, which they thought could also work in Vellino’s situation.

While not all of the comments were kind, the general consensus among those that were was that Vellino’s mother is something of a modern parenting hero.

“Most of them have been really lovely, ‘I wish my mum could be like that,’ ‘this mum wins best mum of the year award,’ wonderful stuff towards my mother which I concur with,” Vellino said. “I think she deserves all the internet fame.”

They added: “There’s so many good people in the comments, then you see something that’s that bigoted [and] I can’t take it so seriously because I know there are so many more people that are supportive, and interacting with bigoted people is not going to make anything better for me or for them.”

Karuna Vellino Karuna Vellino.

Vellino, a writer, actor, and student who lives in Ottawa, Canada, and is also chronically ill and disabled, told INSIDER they came out as a lesbian quite a “long time ago” and as non-binary about a year ago.

“For me, I feel like I’m always coming out as something new or just continuing to come out as what I’ve always been,” they said. “I’ve been experimenting with gender non-conformity and dressing more androgynous and dressing more butch and relating to butch identity.”

Of their family and friends, Vellino said: “They have been so supportive about me being a lesbian so it’s pretty easy to say that I don’t feel like I necessarily fit into a gender category, but I still relate to womanhood in that I am a lesbian.

“They understood because I had told them about my friends before, I had friends come out to me as non-binary, so I was like ‘oh this person isn’t a girl.’

“It has been a process of maybe a couple of years where I had a couple of friends where my parents had to learn their pronouns and learn what being non-binary is.



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“It was hard at first then because they didn’t really understand, me and my mum had some big arguments about it, she didn’t get it right away because it was so sudden it seemed.”

Vellino added: “You need to give people time to work through it themselves I think, especially if they’re your parents and they have known you their entire life.

“The best part is that they’re trying, luckily by the time I realised I was non-binary they had gotten it, but it’s still a little bit of a struggle because I’m not very good at reminding people of pronouns and things because it is a little bit awkward, even if the intentions are good.

“It’s hard for parents to adjust but they’re trying really hard and that’s the most important thing to me.”

Karuna Vellino Karuna Vellino and their mother.

Vellino said that while the tweet from their mother is what got Twitter’s attention, it’s been in romantic relationships they have mostly struggled with “gendered language.”

“It shouldn’t be gendered, but certain things, ‘You’re so pretty, beautiful’… I don’t feel comfortable with those gendered words, I’d rather ‘handsome’ or something like that.”

Vellino added: “I don’t want to make other people uncomfortable and make them feel bad for saying something that made me uncomfortable [but] I’ve been working and doing better at standing up for how I want to be referred to.”

Vellino told INSIDER they believe their message got so much attention because “there’s such a deep need in young LGBTQ people to have parental figures be supportive and try for their kids.”

“It doesn’t happen very often so when it does everybody is super excited about it, rightfully so, but it’s also a little sad that it has to be such a big thing that my mum tried for me,” they said.

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