The erasure of a trans father

I guess passing wasn't what I expected

Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash

Early one afternoon I picked up my oldest kid from school so that we could see his pediatrician. He was panicked about getting shots. I can relate. Nobody really likes needles. But he was prepared to face his fears, and we walked bravely into the clinic together. We waited in line at the front desk. I approached and gave the admin my son’s details. We watched her type. She stared at the screen and then looked up at me.

Remember, now, that covid is ramping back up again, and most clinics like the one we were in require masks. My son and I both slipped them on, happy to comply.

The admin typed something else, and she looked at me again, an eyebrow lowered. “And… who are you?” she asked. I gave her my name. “Are you Dad?” she clarified.

“Yeah. I am.”

To you this is probably an obvious conclusion. And I’ve written here before about assuming the role of dad, father, male parent. It’s not new anymore, but it’s still an adjustment for me to hear, like a new name that hasn’t worn grooves into my brain just yet. I am used to being Poppy to my children, but being recognized as a father in public, hearing those traditional titles, is still a little foreign.

She typed something else - I caught her keystrokes over the F and the T and H keys - and I knew she was typing in “father.” She looked up and smiled underneath her own mask. “So odd, the system had you in as his mom, but I fixed it now. No clue how they made that mistake.”

The only response I could come up with was, “Thanks.”

So here we are at this divergent path, like a Robert Frost poem, where I find myself wondering if I just made a choice without fully considering all the variables involved.

1. This is a victory. This is what passing¹ feels like. Even with a literal mask on, with nothing more than my presence and my voice (which is, I admit, pretty deep), I was perceived as male with no question and no hesitation. There wasn’t even a moment where that admin looked at her screen and considered that the original entry could ever be correct. She was almost apologetic that such a typo could exist in the system.

2. This is erasure. This is why I couldn’t find any transmen in my early stages of transition. This is why I felt alone, why I still do. This is how a person can go through their day without knowing that they’ve helped a transgender person. She had no idea one was standing right in front of her.

And as I walked away with my son to face his fears, I felt the haunting sensation of my own following me. I should have said something different to her. I should have told her, “Oh yeah, well I was his mother before, but now I’m his father. Life is funny, right?”

Or am I allowed to experience this joy for what it is? Am I required to out myself when someone correctly genders me? Isn’t this what I wanted in the first place?

Oh, it is! It is exactly what I wanted, and after months of some pretty severe lows, this was a high I absolutely needed to feel. I am still soaking it in, letting it fill me up with validation and affirmation. After two years of constant work, after fighting for the medical treatment I need, after arguing with insurance to cover what they promised to cover, after facing transphobia at work, after sexual harassment, after support systems failing me… after hitting rock bottom, I find myself in this mysterious place of finally being seen as I am, as a whole person, as a real person. I joked to my wife once I was home, “Well I guess I really fooled that person.” And as soon as those words fell out of my mouth and I heard them echo back to me, I realized I was wrong. “No, wait,” I whispered, “I guess… Is this what it feels like to stop fooling everyone?”

Is this what it feels like? To finally stop, to let go of hiding and pretending and performing?

I don’t think you have to be transgender or gender-diverse or even queer to understand this feeling. It’s not unique to me or to the trans community at large. And for all of us who have been here, the relief of finding ourselves *somewhere else* for the first time in our lives is both intensely fulfilling and (oddly) destabilizing. Step after shaky step, I will navigate this new space I’m occupying with curiosity, open to new possibilities, ready to feel things that have never been mine to feel.

But I cannot leave behind the rest, the part of me that can’t afford to be hidden away after it worked so hard to free me. I do want to be seen as a man, but I also need to be seen as a transgender man, as someone who identifies as a gender we don’t have language or labels for, as someone who had to find his way into visibility. Maybe this means I will out myself regularly, openly, willingly. Maybe it means I will be cautious and reserved about my truths, because not everywhere is safe to be what I am. Maybe it means I’ll overthink and overanalyze this again and again.

Then (August 2020) to now (December 2023)

Somewhere in my path that day, every day, I know that I have walked past someone who needed to see me, who needed to know that they are not alone, that there are others out in the world who are just like them. Somewhere out there I crossed paths with someone who needs to be aware that trans people are real, that we have faces and beating hearts and lungs sharing oxygen with them. Somewhere out there I passed a kid who needs to know their dad isn’t the only trans father in the world.

Somewhere out there is you, and when I walk past you, I want you to see me exactly as I am.

Your (visibly) trans friend,

Robin

1. “Passing” is a word used in the transgender community to express the moment in which a trans person is (finally) assumed to be the gender they are presenting by the outside world. It implies that you are seen as cisgender. This is a loaded term for a lot of folks for so many reasons, the greatest of which may be that “passing” implies a preference for cis, a “normalizing” of the erasure of trans visibility and trans bodies. While the term itself expresses no emotion, many of us have complicated feelings about its usage.