I recently came out to my father. I told him I was transgendered. He took it better than I had hoped, asking for clarification on points he didn’t understand, reassuring himself that I’d thought it over long enough and was aware of the potential ramifications and giving his heartfelt fatherly advise on various masculine issues.

This isn’t really directly related to Serve!, but it’s kinda connected to the issues we’re tackling in Don’t Just Sit There, so I thought I’d share it.

So far, I’m out to my sister, my mom, her girlfriend, and now my dad. The strongest point of resistance has been from my mom’s girlfriend, a hardcore feminist who seems to consider Female-to-Male transpeople to be blood traitors. My mother, possibly influenced by her girlfriend, has expressed the opinion that I’m too immature to make such a decision, an improvement on her initial reaction, which was to tell me flat out that I couldn’t possibly be transgendered. It’s interesting that my uneducated, blue-collar, straight father should be more open to trans-identity than my university educated, white-collar lesbian mother.

“You know,” he said to me, “The church used to castrate young choir boys so that their voices wouldn’t change. The church cut their penises off so they could sing high. Now, if they can do that, I don’t see how any of them could have a problem with a woman wanting to cut her breasts off.”

At another point, he stated frankly, “I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that. You’re not the first, of course. Not by a long shot.” Then he told me a story about an FtM American civil war hero.

I guess this is an uplifting story. I was certainly uplifted. It felt like a huge weight off my shoulders. I likely won’t see any of my parents again until I have a deep voice and a beard. Weird thought. I wonder what my mother will tell people. I’m not sure if she’s ashamed of me or not, but she has been doing her best to ignore the whole issue. I wonder what she’ll do when she can’t ignore it any longer. Time will tell.

I think I may have cured my social anxiety. If I can tell my father that his little girl is going to be a boy, I reckon I can do just about anything.

Peace,
Tyson