My Slate piece is now on-line.
I would like to apologize profusely to Johnny Weir for my casual and wrong comment on his identity which I had read somewhere, but not double-checked. He is a wonderful human being, his communication with our children was perfect, compassionate, affirming. I am ashamed to have made any presumptions about him.
Also I confess to being taken aback at some of the comments, even though some raise valid points. The editorial process shifted the focus of the piece slightly, and the title is off-putting, though perhaps more news-worthy. My use of pronoun reflects the confusion and day-to-day reality of parents struggling with a changing growing child, and a changing growing awareness of that child’s identity.
I am most upset that my own relationship to the word ‘normal’ is so enraging . I have used the word normal to mean “like 90% of the population.” The notion that normal is good, that people want to be normal, is foreign to me, but then, as a white-het-male, if I reject that privilege, I also can’t empathize with what it would be like to be forever denied it.
Great people, artists, writers, activists, persecuted minorities, in my mind, have always been more than normal and I have aspired to be with them; separate and by virtue of that struggle, somewhat superior to the great normative mass of humanity. I know this view is in itself romantic and in its own way, patronizing.
But it is how I feel, and it is where that language comes from.
I want to thank everyone for all their wonderful and moving and inspiring comments over the last few years, and I want to apologize to them for taking the few negative comments so to heart. It’s another flaw in my nature I struggle with, as I struggle with my Bipolar difference, and other things.
Read the piece in the spirit it was intended, if you can. I have to take responsibility for the edit that has gone to print. I did my best.
p.s. I am no longer going to use the word normal in the context of gender; I’ll use CID-tendered. normal is scientifically accurate and culturally unusable. I was in part attempting to capture the parent’s experience of leaving the world of the 90-99 percent majority using a word that that majority understood.
glbtq is natural; natural can be seen as normal, even when rare.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
I loved your Slate article. You seem like a great Dad and your kid(s) are very lucky. Thank you for sharing!
You’re a brave, brave man, and that was a moving and wonderful article. Just remember that others’ anger is about them and their journey, not you and yours. It’s easy for them to make it sound like it belongs to you, but it doesn’t. I read through all the comments attached to the piece, and that was clear to me.
As a queer woman of colour, I went through a period of anger as I learned about racism and homophobia, and anger is, I think, a necessary part of the learning process about privilege and oppression. It’s the first step out of shame and internalization. It’s not a healthy endpoint, but there you have it. Sometimes you connect with people who are still in the anger phase of their journey, and so they get angry.
The specific words are less important than the reasons behind them; the tone of your piece was very clearly supportive and celebratory. And vulnerable, which is why I’m so sorry people took the opportunity to pile on. It’s hard being a semi-lone voice; everybody hidden expects you to speak for them in their own words.
I keep coming back here because I find your words to be a touchstone, proof that all the ‘normal’, cis-gendered white straight guys I run into and am dismissed or misunderstood by – that all of them are capable of change and transformation, and that one never knows what might bring it about. You bring me hope, and I’m not even your main audience. Thank you. And don’t let ‘em get you down.
Folks who read your piece and focused on little nit-picky issues clearly missed the greater point – you are DOING your best. Daily. And your best is clearly better than most of the folks who read your piece.
For what it’s worth, I cried. And hoped that I would have the same level of commitment if either of my children find our modern definition of gender to be too restrictive.
Thank you so much. The people picking at my language all have points which I have to accept. I’ll work harder if I ever write such a piece again, and I will wrestle with every editorial change that could hurt someone’s feelings. Slate is the biggest publication I have contributed to, and I was overwhelmed by the editorial process, unsure of how hard to push back.
I have been mailing with some of the folks I offended, and I’m getting my bearings again. I knew I was putting myself out there for this, but I had hoped I’d done a better job.
The original draft, I see, lacks pretty much everything that drove people nuts in the published piece. I have to take responsibility for what has appeared under my name though. Live and learn.
We all need to keep working at this. I’ll do it, though. I’m going to keep working.
I’m one of the people the author has been emailing back and forth with all day. He just shared an early draft of the article with me and he is correct that almost everything I objected to was missing from his original draft. More than that, the ending in his original brought me to tears and I just can’t stop crying.
I agree that we all need to keep working at this. I’ll keep working at it too.
Your piece was really wonderful and your blog is even better. I’m glad to know that your kid is has a great dad who’s all about love and support. That’s inspiring. I’m genderqueer, and the parenting decisions involved in raising a child like me stagger me. I know you don’t need me to tell you that you’re doing an amazing job. As you kid grows up, my guess is your going to have to up your game. Word-choices are going to be more important. I’ll be honest if you, the way you use “normal” hurt me. I know what you mean and I don’t judge you for it. But I am normal too. I’m not sick. I’m not unhappy. I like sports and I like dancing. I’m just not cis-gender. Sure, I think that folks like me are also more than normal. I think we’re amazing and I can tell that’s what you think too. But I just want to warn you, I think you’re going to get the same sort of responses that you did to your article if you continue to use normal instead of cis-gender. And eventually, I think you might unintentionally bruise the feelings of your child, or just of someone like me. Just something to think about, and a fairly small thing in comparison to the other things you’re doing.
Sorry to have hurt you. I won’t use the word that way again.
Name of the game: don’t let anyone edit your drafts like that unless you want controversy and hurt.
Cid-tendered?
I agree with L, though. “Normal” and “typical” may work in science- but compare scientific “theory” to the way lay people use it. The definitions are miles apart.
Parents aren’t scientists- they can’t treat their children with clinical detachment, only caring about the results of the experiment while trying to ensure that their own biases don’t effect anything. Humans don’t live in a clinical world where “normal” means “statistically more probable” or “average/mean/median” or “within 2 standard deviations”. We don’t even live in a world where most people can remember how to find average vs mean vs median. Humans live in the world of emotions where normal means acceptable and abnormal means freak of nature.
You really need to remember cis. You aren’t just a white het male- your a white het CIS male. White het trans males are well aware of what normal is and where they are in relation to it- and that is EXTREMELY different to where you, a white het cis male, is in relation to it.
If “normal” is fine to mean cis- normal also means white, heterosexual, male, able-bodied, neurotypical, within the acceptable range of height/weight/muscle-mass/attractiveness/income/education level.
Folks? I know that there’s a lot about the language in that piece to get annoyed about. But Bedford has consistently listened and understood and striven to make things better. I think we can all lay off now.
And the main point of the piece was what it’s like for him to be invited into a world he admits he doesn’t completely understand. Yeah, he’s writing from the POV of a white, straight, cis male. That’s not a sin, because the whole point of the piece was not just what his son and these other kids are like and that that’s OK, but about how this stuff changed his perceptions and continues to do so. Let’s not beat the guy up for being where he is when every time we’ve said “what about this” he’s said “You know, you’re right.”
Thanks Alexa; they removed some of the context for my incorrect language, which was often a misguided creative decision and sometimes genuine insensitivity / ignorance from where I stand at the threshold of the trans-family community. During the editing process I lost sight of the forrest for the trees.
I resolve to never use the word normal again in this context; genuine insensitivity there as I have honorary normal status and have consistently disregarded it in a way impossible for those never granted it, for those for whom there are serious consequence for being outside the mainstream. I’ve paid lightly for my oddness; no one beat me to death when I was 18 months old.
Thank you for being the voice for all of us struggling to raise our gender non-conforming boys in world too-slow to change. Thanks for helping it change faster. I wish I could write more, but my 8 year-old son is begging for a manicure to complete his cheerleading ensemble. I’m off to paint some nails:)
@Alexa- I did not intend for that to come off as “beating” anyone up for language, and I’d like to apologize to Accepting Dad if it came off that way. It wasn’t meant to be an attack. But language is important. People in the trans community still use “bio” and “genetic” to mean cis, and a lot of cis people think it’s okay to use “tr**ny” just because “I know a trans person who uses it” without bothering to learn the painful history of it.
A lot of people use “normal” like that without realizing why it’s problematic and othering (or what othering does to people). They’re not bad people for doing this, most people are trained to think it’s okay to other people who are different from you, but I don’t think we should be told off for calling out when language is used like that.
Z,
I honestly don’t disagree with you. I just know from my own experience in several minority communities that sometimes we get really, really caught up in the idea that if a member of the privileged group doesn’t immediately understand everything we’re saying automatically, they “never were an ally” and it’s some sort of revelation of true character. I’m uncomfortable with that. One winds up discarding the chaff, yes, but all too often it means lacking allies entirely.
I didn’t want to see Bedford’s apologies simply rejected as not enough. It seems that I misunderstood you, though, and I am sorry if I did.
Oh come on, people! The name accepting dad says it all; don’t quibble with an ally over the use of a word like normal. I don’t doubt many have struggled with being made to feel abnormal, but that was so clearly not his intention. Save the vitriol for those who truly hate or fear you, of whom there are far too many. Thanks Bedford for fighting the good fight. Your kids are very, very lucky to have you.
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