Can I still be my children’s father now that I am a trans woman?

My nephew asked me the other day, “what should I call you now, my Aunt or my Uncle?”

“That’s a good question,” I puzzled, “can I get back to you on that?”

It was very sweet of him to ask.  I genuinely didn’t know how to answer him.  Why is such a simple question so hard to answer?  No wonder the reactionary right finds trans people such a nuisance.  Figuring out this problem, this linguistic and conceptual challenge is so hard and so painful that they might as well erase our existence.

My children call me their father.  To my face they call me “Trans Daddy” or “Papa”.  I am their father.  I will never not be their father.  What I have between my legs has nothing to do with that.  I know others might—pity they can’t confine themselves to their own families.

I know that many trans women [I know this less about trans men, but I assume that the parallel exists] don’t share my view.  Many seek to find a new hybrid name like ‘Mapa’ or ‘Pama’ to reflect their new out status or to even be a second ‘mother’.  That’s fine by me.  I wonder what might be wrong with families figuring this out on their own?

I get it, the terms ‘father’ and ‘mother’ are inextricably gendered.  So why don’t I care to change my reference point?  Why don’t I even dwell on it?  And how dare I not be in a box so that society can neatly classify things! I mean, after all, if I present female, then surely I am their mother too?  It doesn’t work that way for me.

I am not their mother.  I never will be.  They have a mother.  And as a gender and class warrior, I am all-too-aware of how unwelcome gender is in this discussion.  Sexism is so deeply embedded in social norms related to gender roles in parenting that the level of toxicity is hard core.

My kids know me as their father.  They always have.  While I might rebel against the idea that being a ‘father’ fulfils a role, at least one that can be defined, to them, I have.  The way I have been a father is how they regard fathers.  I am their prime reference point.  Today, as I teeter on the edge of my future neo-vagina, is this any less true?  After all, I did say to my wife, ‘it’s still me’ in a vain attempt to get her to not be so hateful.  It didn’t work by the way.  

And my children didn’t have a choice in the matter: when they were born I was already their father.  But I was just as trans then as I am now.  Trans Daddy was just stealth Trans Daddy.  So what if I didn’t express it?

And what I can see is that they respect me more as a Trans Daddy, maybe because their friends are so complimentary, maybe because they see that it takes courage (the words of others, not mine).

I ‘joke’ that I am more a man now than I ever was as a physical man.  There is a lot of truth in that.  Each day I forget more and more what it was like to be a man, to feel a man, to even know what it means…but I have greater certainty in the solidity and moral values that define manhood for me.  And in this sense, and in a lesbian coupling, I will remain the man, I will remain the father, I will be Daddy.  Not out of some kink or some form of inertia.  No.  Because being a rock is the essence of me.

It also makes me cry to think of myself that way.  But I know that the people I love the most, the ones I want to be around, and to fill my life with are women.  I don’t say that women are not rocks.  On the contrary.  Women are stronger than men in every way that I have encountered.  More complex, more nuanced, more mysterious.  I see this far more clearly now that I have a brain that works in the same way.  And whether it is because my cells were formed at a time where testosterone ruled my body, and therefore wired me a certain way, or what I think is more likely, the essence of my ‘I am’ is this trait.  Reliability.  I will be there.  I do what I say.  I am truthful and open.  I try to be as visible and present as I possibly can in a predictable way to those I care for.  And caring for someone is the highest expression of self.

Being my children’s father, being a father, has been one of the most fulfilling and important aspects of my life.  It would seem to take away from that experience to walk from that role even in just a titular sense, but more importantly, it wouldn’t even occur to me.  And the role I play and played is not the role that the mother plays.

My wife has sought to replace me with her brother as a male role model.  This has resulted in some awkward moments for my children.  Mainly it was pathetic.  My kids could see through it and they complained to me about it.  Neither she nor her brother are particularly clever, and so my kids see through it, and don’t like it.  The idea behind it is kind of outdated anyway.  The role model of a parent, of parents, that my children want, is the way we were during most of their years growing up.

In my case that is a crazy sense of the possible, a keep on trying, optimistic, slightly mad approach to life.  Go for it!  And then being there to catch them when they fall.  My wife’s idea that some gruff machismo is what makes a man a man doesn’t ring true.

‘Aunt’ or ‘uncle’, ‘brother’ or ‘sister’, are not nearly so charged.  One of my siblings has started calling me ‘sister’.  Another asked me, and my response was, “I am still your brother.”  But now two others, women, have started referring to me as a sister, and my youngest sibling has said she has always wanted an older sister, and has started doing the same.  It feels right.

And along with the legal change of my birth sex, I feel good about it.  I also feel good about insisting on my pronouns.  I didn’t before.  This is a process, a transition.  I am legally female now, and that does change things for me.  My body is still sending out mixed signals.  But that will change with time.  My trans cousin, who looked very trans 25 years ago when she transitioned, looks completely female now.  That’s what 25 years of hormones will do.  And surgery.

I guess, what I am saying is that if a sibling wants to call me a sister, then I am happy.  But if another sibling is attached to me as a brother, and it matters to them, then I am also happy.  What, anyway, is supposed to be different between a brother and a sister, an aunt or an uncle, than what’s between the legs.  Why do we even have separate words?  Is it really needed.

The case with mother and father, and therefore in legacy, as in with grandmother and grandfather, is more complicated.  There is no doubt for the physical nurturing that a woman provides, the mother provides, from the moment of conception, and throughout life.  My bond to my children is not that, no matter how I might wish it.  When one speaks of a blood bond, that is my definition of the strongest such blood bond in existence.  

And I think of how strong it is.  I think of how devastating criticism from my mother was compared to criticism from my father, which was far more fierce, but meant so much less.  I think that despite inappropriate sexual behaviour by my mother towards me, what should be classed as abuse, as well as physical and verbal abuse, somehow I still managed to forgive and to be with.  Both my ‘bestie’ and my sisters expressed shock that I have pictures of my deceased mother up in the house.  “Given what she did to you, it seems so surprising,” was the polite version of what they variously said to me.  But she’s still ‘mama’.  

Do you think I don’t seek that title or some bastard version thereof because of this troubled past?  Perhaps. But my father was certainly no role model.  I can only say that he was better than his father, and thankfully, I have managed to be better so far than mine.  Never mind that the bar was low.

All of these observations are for those who are alive.  But how I am and how I feel is changing, and what of the unborn?  What of my future grandchildren?  Will I be their grandfather or their grandmother?  I guess by then I will know what feels right, but I think I have the answer.  Grandmother.  I would rather be the kind of person that my own grandmothers were, rather than the cold and aloof people that their husbands were, or worse, the dick-revealing grandfather that my father’s father was.

The first step is that this new generation has children.  Soon enough.  In the meantime maybe society will have come up with an elegant solution, though I think not.  We have to figure it out for ourselves.  In the meantime, please remember to smile at your trans brothers and sisters.