i don’t mind the word dad: but i do mind the word father
dad? father? demiboy? demigirl? queer? non-binary? what's a word anyway?
when i first came out i went around calling myself a demiboy. this word freaked so many people out of their minds that i quickly changed to queer / non-binary. i feel like queer is more encompassing: partly because i also hated being identified as straight when i’m actually bisexual. i just hated it. and so i kind of wanted a word that encapsulated everything i feel. queer has a sort of expansive versatility to it. queer to me feels like a word that embraces reality: we have been given language for gender that conforms to a boxy binary vision of an actually very wiggly and spectrumy reality. we simply do not have the words to describe who we are. we are inventing them, and so we should forgive ourselves if we find that we are confused by what word to choose.
we are choosing words from vocabulary constructed by people who deny our existence.
as a boomer woman told me several months ago, “they have a new word now! queer! what even is that! that’s not even a thing! there’s no such thing as a queer!”
lol i know right: like where have you been for the last hundred years.
someone else says, “non-binary! that’s a made up word! that’s not a thing!”
and then i say, “so is the word man,” and they simply malfunction.
but i mean, whatever, honestly: if you don’t get it, come on. the real reality is the wiggly reality!!! (thanks alan watts)
but how did i even come to choose demiboy? well first i read about this word on the internet and yes i did think it was funny.
then i met one of my best friends, a person i trust more than almost anyone in the world, and she suddenly brought up the topic of a demiboy.
we have both taught high school for a number of years and so we are both more in touch with “teen culture” than we might otherwise be. just then over drinks we were basically talking about how wonderful it is that more kids growing up these days are actually thinking critically about gender. and then she said, “yeah like now a kid will just come up to me and say ‘hey i’m a demiboy now.’”
and when i heard her say this and saw her smile i thought, “maybe i should just tell her what I’m feeling” (as i had thought with many people)
but i didn’t tell her even though i was deliberately wearing a pink beanie over my long flowing hair and even though she commented with excitement when she saw my purple phone and even though i knew she would completely accept me.
honestly she probably suspected nothing: but whether she suspected something doesn’t really matter because when she gave me the idea that she might suspect something, i became addicted to the goal of forcing people to suspect something: forcing people to see. that was a slipper slope to coming out as a - oh no, a “queer.”
anyway: another reason why i abandoned demiboy was because at some point i started wondering if maybe actually i was really a demigirl.
like i wanted to buy this sweater with these witches in the woods and over the witches the print says, “girls will be girls.” i mean look, sometimes i just like the word girl.
i’ve never been able to settle on “they” because i like the idea of being called “she” at least in certain contexts. i also don’t usually mind “he” and so pronouns are confusing. i understand people see me and even if they think i’m a social deviant they see a man simply from my beard etc. and if they default to “he” i get it as long as they aren’t actually using language in order to manipulate, control, and shame me.
but also: the more i began writing and the more i began connecting with women on this platform, and the more rejection i received from cishet men, the further i moved in my mind from demiboy. demiboy seemed like a word i had chosen to hold myself back, you know? like i chose demiboy to reassure people… i’m not a girl! don’t worry!
and yet all the time i’m thinking, ugh, how nice would it be to be a girl?
cuz that was honestly the scariest thing to people. this idea that i might be a “girl.”
no one ever said “woman” with trepidation. but “girl,” this was a scary word.
girl was the question always on the tip of the lips: “are you… a girl?”
so i’m like, no, don’t worry! i’m not a girl! i’m a demiboy!
and then all i did was freak them the fuck out even more lol
i realized something:
in some cases, such as in the case of the boomer woman who ranted about the word “queer,” i was speaking with people who take language as a solid reflection of reality rather than as something we have invented to describe a blurry and wiggly reality which we are incapable of accurately perceiving.
every solid object we lay our eyes upon is not really solid. everything is moving.
even the reality inside of us is shifting and difficult to understand.
when we think about ourselves: even then we deploy language invented by others and based on some other person’s understanding of who we are, an understanding that places us inside the artificial solidity of cultural fabrication: the function of which is control.
that’s why it is so difficult to even find ourselves: we are buried so deeply beneath these made up words which we take for reality. we are buried so deeply that we require an enormous amount of genuine introspection, human connection, and spirituality to break through the computer programming we take as the natural order.
but what about the word dad?
well, i don’t mind dad. i kind of like it: also my baby has always known me as “dad” and i think that’s great. plus: dad feels very casual and i just don’t sense the same sort of cultural connotations surrounding dad as i do around father.
which brings me to the word that leaves me feeling uneasy: father.
when my friend was reprimanding me for wearing bracelets, he didn’t remind me that i was a “dad.” he reminded me i was a “father.”
there’s a passage i always think about in war and peace when it comes to “father.” i’m too beat right now to go grab the book but basically prince andrei, an atheist, makes a sacrilegious comment about god and this woman reminds him: “you’re a father!”
“fathers,” in terms of their existence as identity drones, are thought to carry forward and enforce “good morals.” it is the responsibility of a father to ensure that his children conform to traditional expectations and beliefs.
for a father to go out dancing, or for a father to be a stripper, or for a father to put feelings and compassion before discipline and toughness is for a father to fail.
i remember learning as a kid that women are subordinate to men: the father is the head of the household, all decisions rest with him, and it is even his responsibility to ensure that his wife does not deviate from the orthodox creeds of his religion.
here “husband” and “father” seem to fuse. the bestowal of the “husband” title carries with it the implication of “father” and all the authority, moral values, and arbitrary lists of materialistic and repressive responsibilities which go along with “fatherhood.”
i think it’s the sense of being a father that led my dad to purchase the book raising a modern day knight for instructions on how to construct me into a man. fathers often believe it is their responsibility as fathers to construct their children into men.
but there actually is a word for the nightmarish fusion of husband and father when it is taken to its utmost extreme: the paterfamilias. the romans structured their whole society around the concept of the paterfamilias. under roman law, the head of the household had absolute authority over his family: he could sell his children into slavery; he could order a newborn baby to be abandoned in a field outside the city; his approval was required for the marriage of his children; he had almost complete authority to discipline his wife and total authority to discipline his children. when the emperor augustus founded the roman empire, he saw himself as the paterfamilias of the entire world: it was believed that he was the ultimate “father,” the “father” of us all, and his statue went up with children dangling from his hands.
the paterfamilias also had authority over numerous other people: clients for whom he did political or business or criminal favors and who were understood to owe him something in return, who saw him as a “father” in a way. not to mention the enslaved members of his household, whom he would ocasionally free as a demonstration of his benevolent nature.
the nightmare of the paterfamilias still exists today. the family structure was passed down in many parts of italy and spain; by virtue of the spanish conquest of south & central america, the structure also characterized colonial society in the americas. and what about the mafia? the structure of the mafia has obvious roots in rome, and the supreme authority figure in any mafia is the godfather.
the word “father” is used both to cement authority and to deploy authority.
not only to deploy authority over children, spouses, and clients, but also to deploy authority over other beings with penises who happen to have children.
these beings are called “father” and it is believed that “father” entails a whole host of things that have nothing to do with emotional connection to the being’s children.
among some conservative christians there is so much agony around this made-up word, father, that they must write entire articles analyzing whether a father staying home to care for the children is scripturally acceptable.
i once read an interview with a prominent republican politician who said that not once had he ever taken his children for a walk in the park. he explained matter-of-factly that he basically spent no time with his children because his job as a father was to provide and his wife’s job was to nurture.
some fathers complain, “my children are intimidated by me! they don’t open up to me!”
well, maybe it’s because you’re performing the role of a father and not being an authentic parent. maybe it’s because you’re annihilating your own capacity for real love all in the name of forcing yourself to be a “father.”
men fear being seen nurturing.
to nurture appears in our society as the antithesis of a man, and many men believe this too. they nurture in secret.
they have no time to nurture: they must keep their emotions buried deep inside, focus on accumulating the absolute maximum quantity of material objects, and ensure that their offspring conform with cis heteronormative cultural expectations, whether as children or as adults. the father, in his purest and most nightmarish form, has no time for the feelings of his children. his concern is how his children reflect back on him, and he sees his children as extensions of himself out in the world. the idea that his child might be different from him, or from society, haunts him so powerfully that although he does feel love for his children, he finds himself unable to show it.
sometimes i wonder if “father” is another means by which men annihilate themselves and each other in the name of being men.
because in the end my real issue with the word “father” is that “father” seems to restrict me from actually being a good parent to my son.
i know of a man who has four children and has never changed a single diaper. even during extended family functions he snaps his fingers at his wife when there’s a poopy and summons her to the task. apparently he has absolutely no shame about this behavior and no one says a word about it. why? because he is the father.
i don’t understand this attitude toward caring for your children.
i love caring for my baby so much. i have such a deep bond with him. i love to have him in my lap and read to him for 30 minutes. i love when he picks a book off the floor, looks at the cover, smiles eagerly like he can’t even believe what he’s found, and walks toward me giggling. i pick him up into my lap and he nestles into me and i read and he is so happy.
i love changing his poopy diapers and feeling the satisfaction of knowing that i made him feel more comfortable and i am keeping his butt safe from rashes.
i love to just sit with him in the rocking chair and tickle him. tickle his toes, his chest, his shoulders. he giggles and giggles and he especially thinks it’s soooo funny when i go “zzzzzzzz” and then rub my beard into his cheek. he likes this so much that when i stop, he will lung forward laughing, trying to shove his cheek into my beard. i did briefly shave my beard but i think these moments are a part of what makes me want to keep my beard.
feeding him is also fun. honestly some people make me feel bad for still bottle feeding him. but like, i just love having him in my lap while he drinks his milk. he’s so peaceful and he just looks up into my eyes. i love to just stare into his eyes and sing to him. his favorite songs are twinkle twinkle little star, old macdonald, and the itsy bitsy spider. he especially loves the itsy bitsy spider because i always squeeze him just a little after each verse and he’s always ready for it and he just thinks it’s soooooo funny he giggles so hard. he also loves twinkle twinkle little star and if you don’t sing him that song before putting him down he gets upset: he wants twinkle twinkle! he’s also just getting into blocks now and walking around picking up what seem like enormous objects, piling them up on each other, so proud of himself. i always clap and he looks at me so happily and sometimes he claps too.
he loves my bracelets and my necklaces. sometimes he points at the charm on my necklace and makes these noises where i think he’s asking, “what is that?” then one day i forgot to wear my necklace and he noticed! he put his finger in my chest hair and looked up at me with confusion. he made these noises that felt like he was asking me where my necklace was.
i think sheepies are his favorite farm animals. (i always call them sheepies).
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“father” is just a word.
i hope more parents out there can embrace the nothingness of the language which restricts them so that they can genuinely and deeply connect with their children.
the most important thing for a child is to feel loved by their parents, and emotional availability is so crucial for that. nurturing, cuddling, reading, changing poopies is so crucial for that. i hope men will stop annihilating their love in the name of being men: i believe deep down, somewhere, they are all radiant beings.
thanks to
. i spent a good hour reading her posts today and her refreshingly casual tone inspired me to let loose a bit after writing such sad and serious pieces. i feel much happier now. consider embarking on her chronicles!
Thank you for including me and I love this newsletter so much!!! Thank you for your sparkle!!!