Appa Gagnam Style; June 16 2019

It’s weird, being a transgender parent. What do I call myself?

It should be straightforward. I’m a man, and I’m a parent. Traditional gender roles say that makes me a father. I carried this kid around in my uterus and birthed her, getting all the heaps of hormones that come with that process, so nature dictates I’m a mother. And when it comes right down to how I feel, I’m just not comfortable being called ‘dad’.

Maternal VS paternal feelings are kind of arbitrary, in truth. There shouldn’t actually be a difference between them. Media has attached very different expectations to them in a super toxic way: If you’re maternal, you do the nurturing. If you’re paternal, you do the protecting. It’s all rooted in the enormous amount of expectation foisted on mothers and the terrible attitude that fathers aren’t the default parent.

Back in high school, I got really comfortable in the role of Mom Friend, and that never went away. I’ve spent my twenties befriending kids out of their teens and talking them through some rough life stuff. When my friends need someone to care, I Am There. I latched to the feeling of ‘mom’, being a mom, before I gave my gender identity any thought.

It created this weird dissonance. My friends, who know I’m a guy, started out by calling me a dad. That felt wrong. Total strangers misgendered me by default, and called me a mom. That felt right. So, what, did this mean I wasn’t a man anymore?

If you answered ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’, I’m going to politely tell you to sit down, shut up, and listen, because you’re flat-out wrong.

I’m just a parental person, a nurturing person. Society pushed these unhealthy views of maternal VS paternal on us, not me. I can be a ‘maternal’ dad, and I think more fathers should be. The ‘emotionally unavailable father’ trope has been played out. It can take its friend, Toxic Masculinity, and jump off the nearest cliff.

I wound up deciding on ‘appa’, regarding what my child calls me. Her sperm donor was Korean, and we want to try raising her bilingual to have that connection to Korean culture if she wants it, anyway.

Not ‘oppa’. Oppa means something different. PSY was not trying to adopt the entire Internet with a viral video.

Anyway, Happy Father’s Day, to anyone who identifies as a dad!

Story time!

The crumbling entrance to Seyhra’s altar led out into a dense forest. It was unsteady footing from the marble cavern up to the exit, and the passage narrowed as I went. It was a hidden place, a well-kept secret beyond a considerable crack up the wall of a stony hill. I had to push my pack through it before squeezing out, myself. I was in decent shape, but I still had to suck in my gut to avoid getting stuck.

“Extinguish,” I murmured into the stone behind me. The little light I’d cast to keep me from tripping over my feet snuffed itself out.