"We Can't Call You Daddy If You're Going to Be a Girl"
Being trans was hard. Finding a name for my children to call me was harder.
Published on January 22, 2013 by Jennifer F. Boylan in Stuck in the Middle With You
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stuck-in-the-middle-you/201301/we-cant-call-you-daddy-if-youre-going-be-girlWhatever it was I'd imagined I'd become, before I changed genders, had finally been replaced by the reality--both difficult and joyful-- of what being a woman in the culture was actually going to mean.
There was one question though, that nagged at me, however, that woke me up in the middle of the night, and which caused me to lie there in the dark, unable to conjure an answer. What about the boys, a voice asked me. What about your two sons?
Now, speaking from the vantage point of my fifties--and my sons' late teens-- I know that things worked out just fine, that having a parent who changed genders had no direct effect on their sense of "manhood." Whatever masculinity is, in their hearts and minds, it appears to be hard-wired. My sons, like any other sons, developed most of the passions that we traditionally associate with men-- an affinity for sports; a love of loud music; a passion for climbing mountains, bungee jumping, and diving in shark cages; and some virtuosity in the realms of Skyrim, Minecraft, and Zelda. And if they'd developed in some other way, that would have been fine too. Whatever they are is the result of something other than my own emergence as trans.
