About Accepting Dad
I’ve been a lot of things in my life; the most important of those things is a father of two boys. Both have special needs. One’s needs are more uncommon than the other’s.
For the last five years or so I’ve belonged to a few wonderful on-line communities supporting parents of gender-nonconforming (or gender-variant, or transgender) children. The lonliness, isolation, and sadness I’d felt without understanding, was lifted once I found these fellow travelers, and I found that writing posts seemed to help both myself, and the people reading them.
I’ve made the time and space to document my child’s growth, development, and my own journey to acceptance of transender, in the broadest sense of that word, not just as transexualism, but as the breadth of the world outside the gender binary.
As a straight, white, ‘professional,’ male father of an intact family, with two boys, one gender non-conforming, one not, I have felt called upon to speak for the community of accepting parents from this position of empathy with more conventional families. I speak to the straight, heterosexual majority as one of them. I speak to the homophobic and the transphobic as one who was, at one time, both of those things.
The posts will be added over time, non-chronogically, as I mine them out of the list-serv’s archives, and edit them of identifying personal information.
If you know of a father who is struggling with his son’s (or daughter, but I speak mainly to my own experience here.) gender identity, sexual preference, gender expression, send them here. There is illumination in dialog; salvation in confession; solace in community, as we become the people our children need us to be.
I write this out of the love for my son, and my love now for all sons, all daughters born as sons, all gender-nonconforming youth who have lost their families for being who they had no choice but to be. I write to say, (as almost all writing exists to say) that human change is not only possible, but inevitable. Just hold your love for your child in your heart as you ask the age old questions—
What is a boy? A girl? A man? A woman? What does it mean to be human? To be different?
And listen to your child’s answers.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
My name is Del, and I am a contributing editor of TransEnough, a blog addressing life from the point of view of the transgender,
genderqueer, intersex and gender non-conforming communities. We host several regular monthly columnists as well as playing host to monthly guest columnists. I am familiar with your work around these populations, and would be pleased if you would consider writing a guest column for us.
You can read more about the TransEnough project at
http://transenough.com and find further information about our parent organization, Gender (Free) For All, at http://genderfreeforall.org
Thank you for your consideration, and please let me know at your earliest convenience if you would be interested in writing a column for us.
Warm Regards,
Del Mulhern
Contributing Editor
del@genderfreeforall.org
TransEnough.com
GenderFreeForAll.org
My name is Elizabeth and I am a graduate student in sociology. For my Master’s thesis, I am conducting interviews with parents of gender variant children, namely learning about parents’ thoughts, feelings, experiences, challenges, and triumphs in this area. One interest I have developed in this area is the growing online community of parents, specifically as it relates to the more public sites that are popping up on the internet (parents’ blogs and web pages). I was wondering if I could ask you some questions about your site, via email, for my research. I also would be happy to explain to you more about my research and answer any questions you may have. I would be grateful for your thoughts and input.
If you might be interested in this, you can reach me at: erahilly@umail.ucsb.edu.
Thank you so much for your time and dedication in this area.
Best,
Elizabeth
Hi there,
I just want to say that reading this here has moved me to tears. I’m 32 and I’m one of those GV adults. I’ve always been GV. It’s a weird headspace where I am as I identify as a femme male, but I am both physically and genetically female. My partner of 4 years identifies as a femme female, but is physically and genetically female. I read this blog aloud in our office and we were both laughing and crying. We both wish our parents had been as strong as you are.
Thank you for just existing,
Dean
Thank you! Just existing is one of the things I’m best at! Heh.
Ambiguity is very hard for us to accept, to deal with; a healthcare professional I know told me a story, of how infertile couples who are told they CANT have kids deal with it, adopt, or move on. Couples that are told the have a very very slim chance do much much worse; they struggle for years and years, never knowing, never deciding…
If it’s hard for us on the outside of the gender mystery, it must be harder, on the inside. The not knowing. But we are all mysterious, you know. Even to ourselves, sometimes, even us normative types.
It is good to think that love transcends all this (though sometimes I guess it doesn’t.) Mine has, so far. My transphobia has become a kind of transphilia.. I don’t know, at some point, you stop worrying, what other people think.
That’s when you can really start to figure yourself out. I think my son never worried about what other people thought. I think in the end that will be a good thing.
You sound like you’ve found someone, and yourself, and if I’m right, then congratulations. You win. That’s as good as it gets.
love,
BH
Dear Accepting Dad,
Congratulations on a fantastic and open attitude, this will make your kid and your lives much richer and closer!
As a gay adult man who was lucky enough to have extremely supportive parents, family and friends I did never experience the pain of rejection or being made fun of, but I did observe it in many a classmate in my youth. You have brought to mind a wonderful 1997 French film called “Ma Vie En Rose” (My Rose-colored Life), if you haven’t seen it do try and again congratulations and cheers!
I linked here through an article in the NYTimes. this is great. this is one of the great things about the web. it’s so much easier to find or create your community.
I’m still not sure why I have so much interest in gender variance. I like that this resource is available.
Freedom of gender expression and sexual preference is the great civil rights struggle of our generation; the gender queer / transgendered are following in the footsteps of the gays and lesbians, but they are three steps behind in terms of acceptance by the broader culture.
The world that can accept these kids, these people, is a better world; it’s a world where people mind their own goddamn business; when someone isn’t hurting someone, you respect them as they respect you.
I’m twenty years old and GV. (I identify as androgynous, though I lean hard toward “guy.”) My mother is someone who will never understand and can only make me miserable. She used to force me to wear dresses even though I hated them. She screamed at me when I finally got up the nerve to cut my hair supershort. And when I started crying and told her I feel like she doesn’t like me very much, she said of course she loves me, she just doesn’t always like the choices I make.
Like I chose to be born with a female body. Like I chose to feel better about EVERYTHING when I dress like a guy. I don’t want to lose my mother because of this, but it hurts so much to be around her that I’m already trying to figure out how to extract her from my life. I can’t be the daughter she wanted, and I wish every single day that I had a mother I could trust to love me no matter what.
So I wanted to tell you, after reading a lot of your posts–from the bottom of my heart, thank you for loving and accepting your child. And thank you for writing about it, because it makes me feel a little more hopeful about the world I live in. Sir, you’re wonderful. I wish you were my dad. I’m going to keep reading.
I’m so sorry. I hate to say you should give her time. Maybe to stay sane you have to give yourself time away from her. I know it can take time to change, though. Take time to understand.
I know you aren’t choosing something, I know you are what you are, we all are. I watched my boy turn into a girl and now i’m watching him turn into something else, maybe. And I think we are all of us turning into something else all the time.
I hope love wins. Time will show your mom that this isn’t a whim, I hope.
You’re only twenty; life is long and full of many things. Families are always a struggle. Mine included. But I have to think that the love is in her for you, even if she doesn’t get it, and maybe you have to get away, but you can know that there is real love there.
My mom and my grandmother used to fight a lot. My mother was with her when she died, saying, “always loved you. Always.” My grandmother didn’t show it well. Or at all, maybe. But it was in there. Maybe that didn’t do my mom all that much good. But it is something to think about.
Take care of yourself.
Thank you for writing this column.My soon-to-be 13 year-old son would be happy I’ve found you as well. When he was 4 or 5, we knew he’d not have the same gender boundaries as what most people in the Bible Belt would consider “normal” (including his fundamentalist Christian mother, unfortunately). I think it’s important – for the safety of our precious children – to reduce ignorance in the hearts and minds of adults who may not be as accepting as you and I. Thank you again for what you do. I truly appreciate it.
thank you
thank you
for your deepest sincerity in loving your child
i live in the community of people who struggle with their parents
acceptance
my second son also exhibits of gender non-comformity
i love him
without judgement
too many friends have lost their families
thank you
i am sharing this blog with many parents i know
Thank you so much for sharing.
If all parents were as ready to be accepting and understanding, we could all be less worried about the future of our youth.
I am happy to have found your blog! Have struggled with this issue for years, first with my second child and oldest boy, who is now a happy, grounded theatre student at NYU and now with my fifth and youngest child (10) who identifies himself as a boy who like girl stuff. And he has been well aware of the fact that he better keep that pretty secret if he doesn’t want to be teased, bullied, shunned, taunted-which has created an extraordinary and debilitating amount of anxiety in his short life. I salute you for being an accepting dad!
I love seeing how individuals take it upon themselves to make the world better for others. Thank you!
I am a 24-year-old lesbian in, perhaps, the safest, most accepting community in the world. But I am also an educator, and not every community is prepared for surprises in their own home or classroom; children have a way of introducing what we least expect. I am adding your site to my ever-growing list of resources for a rainy day or sudden drama-storm, and I am thrilled that, among all the educator’s work on gender-subjects, I can include some things for parents, too.
Thank you for sharing and for taking initiative!
The culture is moving quickly. Unfortunately, the manual used by professionals to talk about gender identity (DSM) in kids is being re-written in part by an advocate for childhood reparative therapy, so we are going to have a long road ahead of us before the insights and knowledge embodied by supportive therapists spread industry wide. Parents need to be very very careful when seeking help for their children not to use therapists who will worsen their child’s condition. The ignorance out there is still phenomenal.