Op-ed: 'But You Can’t Really Be Her Mom'

[Shana A]

Op-ed: 'But You Can't Really Be Her Mom'
Transgender activism in the age of parenting.
BY Riki Wilchins
December 18 2012 4:23 AM ET

http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2012/12/18/you-can%E2%80%99t-really-be-her-mom

"Are you a boy or a girl?" Now that my daughter is turning 6, I'm starting to get this question regularly from her classmates. Usually they sidle up, a little self-conscious, because they've heard something—i.e. that I'm trying to pass myself off as female as her mother—and they want to check it out but also put me back in my place if it's true.

With men who taunt me like this on the street, I can respond by asking in reply, "Are you an a----- or an idiot?"

With the 6-year-old boy who is rolling his eyes right now as I try to affirm that I'm Dylan's mom, this is clearly not an appropriate response.

Nor, as I might have done in earlier years, can I threaten to picket the school—or perhaps just the first-grade class to which he belongs—to protest this blatant display of transphobia.