I don't want to be a father anymore.

True, I gave the sperm, so I will forever have fathered the children. And I love being their parent.

But I am not a father. Fathers are male. I stopped being male months ago (a lot of people would say I never really was...)

Mother/Mom are also not terms I will be able to apply to myself. The biological mother of my children would be very upset and my children (now in their late teens) will always think of her as their mother. And she is. And I am their ... what?

A lot of families have their own words. Jennifer Finney Boylan's son calls her "Maddy", for example. But this is obviously not universally understood language.

I'm searching the internet for a generally accepted term that means "the lesbian parent that is not the biological mother".

There is no such word.

Seriously?!?

How is it that in 2013, when same-sex marriage has become widespread, that there is no word for the role I play in my children's life?

You know, I had never really thought about this kind of thing.  If I were to have children with my SO and transition down the road, would I want my kids to call me daddy?  I don't know, I honestly think I wouldn't want them to.  That name would be reserved for the man that "fathered" them.  But, on the other hand, I always kind of thought of it like in Sailor Moon.  Sailor Neptune and Uranus raise Saturn when she is reverted back to a baby.  She grows up the "child" of two lesbian lovers, calling Neptune momma and Uranus papa, as Uranus dresses like a boy most of the time.  Saturn calling papa doesn't mean that Haruka (Uranus) isn't any less of a woman, but to the little girl, one parent is the mom and one is the dad.  So, when she only has two women as parents, she automatically just thinks, oh, Haruka's my papa. 

Sorry if that didn't make any sense.

In my experience, some just use different forms of mother to differentiate. Mama mommy mum mom etc.  you could ask other lesbian parents what they do. 

this is to all trans people (and cis people like me too):

you know, you can be a mother that treats her children in a fatherly way,
a father that treats his children more motherly,
or just take (like i would treat my children) the best qualities of both ways.

It's all just stereotypes, treat your children however you want to, that doesn't make you any less of a woman/man/androgyne/agender, AS LONG as you treat them well.

I want to be a father someday, i am not going to be a typical father though, that's not me. There are many fatherly things i'd do, but i also want to be someone who is there to comfort them, hug them when they need it, just give my children all my love. Your gender as a parent is not important, it's what kind of parent you are.


-

Zoot out......

Ask the kids what they would wish to call you.  It doesn't matter what others call you.  You are their parent.  Pure and simple.

There's what others would "categorize" you as, and then there's what your children call you. That's it.

I think it's been a long time since most anyone has called their parents "mother" and "father". Kids give their folks nicknames too.

Which one is it that worries you the most?

I know I would want to be called 'umi', and to hell with anyone else who would have a problem with that because they wouldn't be the ones calling me that anyway.

My children was grown adults when i went full time. They still think and call me there dad but in public they just say IZZY.
For me i will always be there father but also they respect the fact society had not a clue on being respectful.


Isabell

My wife and I have a 7 week old little angel, and we just could not decide what she would call me. My wife is mom, she earned that and I'm not stealing that title from her. I'm also not a daddy or father. Sooo we decided for her to call me Kissy since I'm always doing the kissymonster with her. I'm sure she'll change what she calls me when she's old enough, and I will always be her other mom. The important thing though, is that she's my daughter and I'm one of her two loving parents, and that won't change regardless what she calls me.

I've been wondering about that too. Calling both my ex and I "dad" would get confusing. Luckily, my son doesn't call either of us "dad" and instead calls us "truck" and "tractor." I have no idea why.

Well, you are right in that there is no universally accepted word for the "other mother" in a lesbian couple, but I have heard a lot of different things that people work out. "Other mother" is quite common. I like what the parents on The L Word did, they went by Mama B (Bette) and Mama T (Tina). Always thought that was the cutest thing ever.

This year I flat out ignored father's day. I'm a woman, I might have the penis of a male but so what. That can be changed, it isn't a permanent thing.

Medical science likely can allow a male body to carry a fetus. Would that make a cis male a mother? Why not? The male wouldn't even need to be transgender. That would make a cis male a mother.

Frankly, if you create the life, carry the life and delivery the life, you are the mother.

This year I was mum on mother's day. My wife will always be our son's mother, and let's face it, even if she became male she would still have gone the route of carrying him and delivering him. Nothing can ever make her not his mother. But if she were to transition, she'd become a male bodied person that had gone through child birth.

I am a woman that has fathered a child. I will never be a mom as a result of that action, and nothing I do will ever change that. But hey, life is full of odd changes eh. Say my wife passes away, I transition and if I were to get married again and it wouldn't need to be either to a cis male or cis female or any of the many variables, I could still be a 'mom' to an adopted child, but, I reserve the right to be a mother to a person with the gear to do it, or the medical assistance to carry out a pregnancy. If you didn't carry the child for 9 months, you are not the mother.

Mom though, doesn't need to be equal to mother. Mum doesn't either.

I go by mum, but I suspect no one is listening to me around here. I'm still getting referred to as dad as well as son. It's irksome, but, I look too male still as well. I am planning to alter that though. I plan to have a proper female hairdo, and I plan to wear woman's attire, and THEN I will have little if any patience with people STILL calling me by male manners of address.

I'm not planning to wait till I have a vagina for people to get it correct eh.

There are many terms eh, but you get to decide which one applies. 'I' consider myself a mum. I am a woman after all.
I'm a sister, an aunt, a daughter, I am a mrs, and a miss and a she a her and a woman.

I was discussing things with a friend the other day. No I am not a transsexual anything. I am not a sexual anything. You can label whomever you what whatever you want, but, my status has nothing to do with who I like to have sex with. I am also not enterly interested in being called transgender and only use the term briefly to cut down on explanation times. I'm inclined to like the approach I have seen others use. I am a woman, I am female no hyphenated anything.

I am flat out not interested in getting permission to say what I am. I am not interested in waiting for the Canadian legal code to give me an official ruling. I am not obligated to agree with pieces of identification. They can write down anything they like, I reserve the final say.

I pick my fights though. My life won't end if I am forced to pee standing next to cis males in a men's washroom. Just so long as they can deal with the fact that when I am done, if I need to stand in front of the only available sink and spend 5 minutes freshening up in front of the mirror, sorry, I won't give a damn if you have to wait to wash your damned hands eh I'd rather be in the ladies room getting in the way of other ladies waiting to fix up their makeup and not their husband hehe.

As I said, I am a mum, I celebrate my parenthood on Mother's day jointly with my wife. I am not stealing her thunder, nope, I am just not in need of waiting till June for 'my' day. May is OUR day.

My son is 19 now, and I of course don't need to fret over a range of stuff that others will still be coping with.
Some day I will with luck get to be a grandmum. There is no grandfather in my future though.

Anyone refusing to acknowledge me as 'mum' likely will be merely ignored too. I'm not required to play along eh. None of us are.

you can just be your children's parent. and then let the children decide on their own what they want to call you. what they call you should be something to reinforce your relationship, so in many ways it's more important that it feels right for them. but you shouldn't let anyone else call you something you're uncomfortable with.

my cousin's daughter and her wife decided that they'll both be mommy, with their name added. neither of them is butch enough to be a dad, so this seems fairly natural to me.

Labels are such a pain, and other people are so fixated on them.  I agree with Lesley - I'm just a woman.  On a forum like this I'm a trans-woman because it's relevant to the purpose of the forum.  I'm going to go to a church I haven't been to before this Sunday because they are having a music event.  I'll go as a woman, and then I'll sing bass.  Get over it.

Most of my family don't call me anything because they don't speak to me.  The ones who do still call me Dad because they refuse to recognise my transition.  One daughter is really supportive but she still calls me Dad in private.  She says I am her father and that will never change.  At toddler group she introduced me as "the twins' Nana" and we let people assume I was her mother.  She sent me some pretty earrings for Fathers' Day.

If I was still on speaking terms with my wife I would prefer the Mama-X and Mama-Y method.

Hi Suzi,

I was thinking of you for some reason  and the predicament. I married so I could cure myself and 'be a man' - fail. I had no functional testicle ability. My wife would have loved to have children as would I have.

My closest female friend has two children 3 and 10 months who are my angels, and I am Cindy to the 3 yr old who has a fascination about a certain sports car. She knows I'm different to other woman that she relates to however - even at that age.

Yes as like many of us I would have adored to be a Mum. I think I may have even been an average one.

You, if I may, need to look at it that way. You are your children's mother and father. You are blessed.

I have a close MtF with two daughters. They are early teens. She in MumDa to them, they thought up the word.

More than a mother and more than a father. Never one but both.

You are awesome, so try to be content with that

Cindy

Quote from: Joules on September 12, 2013, 02:43:26 PM
My brother has a daughter, in her mid-teens now, who was conceived by a clinical donation of sperm to a lesbian couple.  He loves her very much, and stays involved in her life.

The couple and my brother agreed that he could not be called "Dad", so they settled on a title borrowed from Creole (French) lingo: Parrain (pronounce as "paw ran").  I don't fully understand myself.  The meaning is somewhere between an uncle and a god parent.  Perhaps that would work for you Suzi.  A bit of maleness to it, but nothing outwardly obvious to most people.  There is also Marraine, a female version of the same concept.

What matters most is what your daughters want to call you, IMHO.

I like that idea, using words from other langauges. Perhaps you could find out what the word parent is in another language and use that. In films, when there are 2 Chinese people (a father and daughter, for instance) talking in english, the daughter might often refer to her father using another word, besides 'father'. Maybe that could work for you. I won't take all the credit for the idea, it was Joules that gave me the idea in the first place.

Chris

I'm struggling with this too, because my kids still call me 'mum' by mutual agreement but my presentation is changing rapidly. It'll probably be awkward for all concerned if they call me 'mum' in public when I look completely male.

So what to do?

I haven't come up with an answer yet, but it's something that'll take a very difficult and emotionally fraught conversation with my kids - because I believe it's important to include them in the decision. My Gender Therapist says that some of her patients' children call them 'M' or 'D' rather than the full word, which seems like a good idea. Unfortunately in my case 'M' sounds like it might be short for 'Emma' and so it still wouldn't be appropriate for me.

I used to have a nickname for my mum: I called her 'bat', which was short for 'senile old bat' (a joke between the two of us; sadly she never got to be senile or old). So I think I'm leaning towards something completely neutral along those lines.

Well this guy I know is Mr. Mom. LOL (Ms Dad?)
I know actually some people who their kids call them by their first names, this is not even an older kid. I know some nicknamed parents too (no one named "bat" though).


--Jay

In the end it is another label. Like my friend who has ended up with a dog called 'stopityounaughtyboy'

I was kinda raised by my grandmother, as my mom and dad both worked full time jobs, so she took care of me every day till I was old enough to watch myself.  I was so used to being around her that I started and still do call her mom.  Even though she is in her 80s.  My mom felt weird at first, but she doesn't mind now.  However, when I call my mother-in-law mom it makes her feel awkward, so I always refer to my inlaws by their first names.  Unless I end up talking directly to my inlaws, and then I call them mom and dad.

Thanks for all the great suggestions. There are all kinds of possibilities, but language is important.

If there is a word for something, you don't have to explain it.

"A penny saved is a penny earned."

or

"A coin in the smallest denomination that you can avoid spending is like that coin presented to you as a reward for work."

Your words lose power when you have to define them.

Imagine if Darth Vader were transgender (well, it could happen):

"LUKE. I. AM. YOUR. FATHER!"

becomes

"LUKE. I. AM. YOUR. Well not mother really, because that's Padme, but not father either because fathers are male, so I guess I'm sort of your other mother, really. Unless you really want to call me Dad. Or Parent. Or just Annie. Annie would be okay too."