Second TransParent Day

As we approach the second TransParent Day (Sunday, November 7, 2010) I put down some thoughts on the celebration and the impact so far and some feedback I have received since we launched TransParent Day in 2009.


The Genesis
In the summer of 2009 my good friend Erica Fields talked to me about a concern that her daughter had about celebrating "Father's Day" in 2009, a first for Erica and her daughter.  Her daughter indicated that it just did not feel right.  She proposed that they pick another Sunday in the year to celebrate their relationship.  I would be a day for them to recognize Erica's new status as a  "Trans Parent" and Erica and the family could celebrate. They would even call it "TransParent" Day.  They picked the first Sunday in November to observe the event as that had been a day of celebration in Erica's family due to the fact the she, and and other family members, had been adopted.

When Erica relayed this story to me I told her the idea was way to good to keep to herself.  I immediately registered TransParentDay.org and the two of us formed a mission to spread the word about TransParent Day throughout the world.  Our first stop was the Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta, GA with a little more than a month away from the first TransParent Day in 2009.  

We pounced on the conference with our pink, white and blue wristbands.  And spread the word virally about TransParent Day.  People got it instantly!

Several hundred wristbands later we had achieved our goal for those days.  Get the word out enough so that somebody else knew.  Donna Rose blogged about it, Chloe Prince promoted it, Ethan St. Pierre featured an interview with me on his show on TransParent Day 2009.  We had made an impression.  

It has been a year since that time and a lot has come to pass, all good.

Transgender Mothers and Fathers

I have had a lot of questions posed over the last year with respect to TransParent Day.  Things like "Can a transwoman be a mother?" "Is a transman, who has birthed a child, a mother?" I would consider the answer to both questions is a qualified "yes." If we take the biological into the question, any human that gives live birth to another should be considered a "mother", kind of without question. But from there it gets cloudy. Adoption, marriage, divorce, surrogacy, foster parentship, and a whole host of other conditions make unusual mothering, and fathering, situations very possible, and even common. Add being trans to the question and it just adds an additional set of outcomes.

So who decides you are mom or dad or something else? My contention is "we", the transitioners, do not get to decide this. The kids do. Meaning, if they think you are mother, or father, or maddy or whatever, they get to decide if your gender has significance on a day of recognition. You do not get to pick. So if your kids think of you as mom, then you are. 'Nuff said.

What begs the question more is, if you are your children's biological father, can you also be their mother? For you I will offer the answer, I do not know. A lot of this depends on your situation, the relationship you have with your kids, and quite frankly the relationship you have with their mother, or the person they call "Mom", who was not you. To my knowledge, no transwoman has yet to give birth. The same is not true for some transmen. [Note to readers, if you are a transwoman who has given birth contact me immediately I want the rights to your story!]

For me the question is easy, I am not their mother. They have a mother, and it is not me, I did not do the nine months of heavy lifting required. My ex did. And as such, she owns Mother's Day, and should, and for me to try and horn in on it is not only rude, but disrespectful. My children have known me as Dad, and in many ways still do. And that, is ok with me.

And yet I see some biological father transwomen wanting recognition on Mother's day from their kids and others. Seriously? Talk about rewriting history. Talk about ego. I always joked when people showered compliments on the appearance of my newborn sons. I would tell them I was only present for the "initial input." At least from a biological perspective this was true. And so why would a transwoman demand equal billing with the mother of her children? And my personal take, I believe, is the real answer, because Father's day does not work for them anymore.

Some are not going to like that statement as they will claim it perpetuates the gender binary. Sorry. And although I cannot really see the perspective of transmen, who have kids, and Father's day, especially if there is another Dad in the picture I imagine that Mother's day holds similar angst.

Of course all of this pales by comparison to what your kids might actually think. Did you bother to ask them about it? I did. The reality is they, at least in my case, don't care. Yeah, that can hurt too. Mother's and Father's days are something you grow to appreciate as you get older. As you realize what your parents did, or did not, do for you. But we go through the motions with the kids too. The goal I suspect is to teach them that others make sacrifices for their benefit.  And for my money that is a good lesson for any person to learn regardless of lineage or gender.

TransParent Day

So that leaves us with this problem space. What to do? Nothing fits, or that which does seem to fit often feels awkward.

And so last year my friend Erica and I started TransParentDay and TransParentDay.org to try and fill that gap. And the reason was we wanted to do this is to create a safe place where we can forget about all of this conflicting gender and parenting stuff, if for only a day. The idea is pretty straight forward. If you are trans, in any variety, and you have kids, you can celebrate the day with your kids, without any of the traditional trappings, angst or pain.

We do not want this to detract from anybody that prefers to use Mother's or Father's day. Please, by all means, if that is what you normally do, then go right ahead, it is not a competition. Call it augmentation, or an alternative. And if you do celebrate then by all means let us know so we can share your experiences with others.

To date we have produced 3500 wristbands.  They have been distributed in places like Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Portland OR, Seattle, Harrisburg, New Haven, St. Louis, Anchorage, Winnepeg and likely many other places I do not know about.  I know our reach has become global with folks in the UK and Germany sporting wristbands.  I am always thrilled when I see somebody I have never met posting a photo online and look, there is a wristband.

On TransParent Day 2010 I know of celebrations that will be held in Alaska, Oregon, Minnesota and here in my home state of Maryland.  I know many of these will involve TransParented families.  And it does my heart good to see that almost all of these efforts are going without my, or Erica's, direct involvement, meaning this idea belongs to everybody, I am merely a messenger, as are now all of you too.

Reflections On The Year
In June 2010 we made a second splash at the Be All Conference in Chicago, this time in coordination with the conference organizers.  Every attendee got a wristband.  In September Erica, and a cast of others, were doing the work in Atlanta again.   The word is out and grows.


I now find when I travel to a "trans" event, people are sporting the wristbands, even before I get there, and even though I do not know who they are, and they do not know me.  I often will ask what is it?  Just to see how clear the message has traveled.  I am never disappointed.


Upon meeting a person who asked me for a wristband she explained that she had given hers away.  I asked to whom, she stated she was at the National Cathedral in Washington DC and had given it to the Dean of the Cathedral.  I heard from transgender ministers, who wanted to celebrate the day in their church and would I send them wristbands.


I have heard from countless support groups, physicians and therapists (who keep them in their offices), friends of friends.  Never have I seen an idea spread in a community with such ease and lack of effort.  


And mostly I hear about hope.  Hope that estranged families might be reconnected on this day.  That families with discord, are planning on putting it aside for a day to celebrate each other.  These are all good things.


TransParent Day has given me faith that the goodness in people transcends gender and stereotypes.  That folks do realize that there are many, many excellent transgender parents out there that love their children and that there are many children that hold that same love for their parents.  This is a very good thing.


Happy TransParent Day to you and your children.  May we all live in peace.


Sharon

Pain

I write this at 3:30am.  Not because I could not sleep, but because I did and my current pain management scheme has me popping a few extra strength tylenol every 4-5 hours.  And you guessed it, that was last about 5 hours ago.  But as I lie in my hotel bed ruminating I am reminded of the Barenaked Ladies song "One Week" at the moment and so a post is in order.

You see it was was one week ago this morning that I stood waiting in the darkness in front of my hotel for the cab that never showed.  This taking me to the med center for surgery.  If you need a cab in Boston, at a certain time and place, forget it.  I did, and hoofed it to the hospital in time for the event.  The cab was just meerly a precaution on my part.  The environs here could be at best described as "industrial".  And a stroll in the darkness was not my idea of how to start a week off where I would be at the mercy of others. It is kind of funny how my perspective of my personal safety has changed in the last year.  Maybe it is the diminished bravado, a realization of mortality, my new role as "potential victim", maybe it is just hormones (which I had to stop two weeks before).  Regardless of my concern I arrived bipedally in a timely manner.

I am not going to cover the surgery.  You can get those kinds of details from lots of places.  The nice part for me was this was my first interaction with a quasi government institution where from the git-go, I was me, Sharon.  It said so on my wristband, complete with an "F".  I was mildly amused at that.  And the ease with which it had appeared, and the lack of concern on anybody's part.  Prep, questions, checks, the usual litany and I was off.  And now we come to the part of the story which is identified by the title of the post.  Pain.

It should probably be pain and discomfort.  But hey, that is not as catchy now is it.  Before my surgery I had been telling folks do not worry about me.  I will be fine, after all in 2004 I had heart surgery and that by comparison this should be a "cake walk".  I told them I had a good friend, who had walked this road ahead of me, who was a former EMT, and that she would be there the day after the matter was complete for support.  That I had my contingencies in place.  All true.

And despite all my planning, and organization and rhetoric it was worse than I thought it would be.  [Whoa, Sharon, WTF, you are supposed to say it was easy, to reassure all the rest of us who want to walk the path too.]  Let me be clear.  The doctor, staff, hospital, hotel, drivers, hell everybody, have been spectacular.  Not once did something happen that was not what was explained or expected.  Everybody told the truth.  Everybody but me.

Now a week is not a lot of time on this road.  And I, by all accounts, am not a really patient sort.  So part of this angst is my own undoing.  That is to say if I was a much more happy-go-lucky sort with few concerns in my life I might have been content to lie here for a week in a codeine induced stupor.  I chose another path.  My nursemaid tolerated my resistance to taking things, and in the end she is probably wiser than me, but, as intense as she is (I am thinking a 9.5 out of 10 here) I am probably a fraction more "Type A" as she points out after watching an interchange with me and a waitress.  She is not fond of my feminine demeanor on some things (yet).

And so I did not take as many pain meds as were prescribed.  I went for the over the counter version as soon as possible.  Why you are probably asking?  Like with my heart surgery in 2004 there were a lot of things that needed doing now, as then.  I have to be back on my feet, and on my game as soon as possible.  Period.  And so let's talk about pain, and transition.

As I sat here around day 3-4 post surgery, kind of just bobbing in the chair as my friend paid her one of several daily visits. She says,  "Yeah, I know where you are at."  I looked up and managed a weak smile.  I said, "I suppose you do."  She had two surgeries to accomplish FFS.  That, is commitment.  She says "Transition is not for sissies".  A most humorous statement.  She is right.   If you are a sissy, then this is not for you.  I am not speaking in any terms of gender mind you.  I am talking about strength of character.  The ability to stand a trial of your person, physical, and mental.  Before you start, know this.  And this is me talking in the middle of the journey.  

The rest of my days are taken with getting used to the feeling of having your head swollen like a bag of jiffy pop and colored purple.  Like some horrific outcome of an old school diving helmet accident.  Getting comfortable, something I used to do easily, will now be weeks, probably months away from now.

The good news is my strategy is paying off.  I am alert.  Body functions returning to normal, if you take my meaning.  The swelling went down enough to see again (yep, add that in for a few days).  And even though I have one more day before the Frankenstein-like sutures and staples are removed I can start to see new me.  At day 6 I went to dinner, battered as I am, in a real restaurant, with real people and my good friend.  Land ho!  I am not displeased.

[Gee Sharon, this post is a downer.]  Hardly!  I live yet another day.  Each day will be better than the next.  I have to believe this, so should all of you.  The question to ask is, would you do it all again?  The answer is yes.  And probably the same way.  Ask me in six months if I feel differently.  I suspect the answer will be the same, just more so.  

The post is a caution, like those old precolumbian maps of the Atlantic Ocean which warned, beyond here lie dragons, or seamonsters.  A wary warning for my sisters traveling in my path.  Be ready, this is not easy.  Be prepared, and even when you think you are, have some in reserve, it will be needed.  And like Columbus (oddly enough the same day as my surgery 10/12) I know there is a new world to discover and relish.

As to the pain, it is going away.  A little bit more each day.  I am getting used to this feeling like I am wearing a cap and an ace bandage around my chin like some image from a Dickens novel, even though I am not.  This is the new me, time to get moving.  Pain, that is just god's way of telling you you are not dead yet.  :)