As it turned out, our child was female, which was a big relief. (She also turned out to be my biggest supporter. She told me that if I ever decided to transition that she would support my decision wholeheartedly.)
If our child was male, I am sure that having a feminine father would have some effect on his life. How much of an effect, I'll never know.
Would having a father who had feminine mannerisms cause the boy to have feminine mannerisms?
Are (my) feminine mannerisms natural or nurtured?
My father was not feminine, but he was not around much during my early years. However, my mother was very present during those years and if I was going to take after anyone, it seems that I would take after the parent who was present, not absent.
My theoretical son would have a double whammy --- both his parents were feminine, so if nurturing was the source of femininity, then my son would potentially be even more feminine than I am.
Feminine mannerisms are one thing, but what would be the effect of having a father who was feminine and who also presented as a woman at the drop of a chapeau?
Goddess only knows.
And if my son turned out to be feminine --- like father, like son --- would it be the end of the world?
You girls out there who have sons are better able to answer these questions than I. So please have at it by leaving Comments to this post.
Actor Bryan Schmiderer femulating in the 2013
stage production of Southern Baptist Sissies.
Wearing Madeleine.
It's a fair question, Stana, but I don't think there's any one answer. My father was stereotypical masculine - a roughly callused auto-mechanic, who played baseball and hockey, and who was never very expressive with his emotions. He spent more free time with us than our mother, and certainly had the greatest influence. My brother went on to follow very much in his footsteps, whereas I obviously strayed very much into femininity.
ReplyDeleteI don’t know what my gender identity/expression will mean to my son, and I worry about what traits or tendencies I might have passed on, but I know that regardless of all that, he will be loved, accepted, and supported regardless of what path he chooses. As a toddler he loves dump trucks, fire trucks, trains, and playing monsters, but he also prefers Dora to Diego, and gets excited over The Little Mermaid.
I’m very conscious of trying not to deliberately influence his choices, but I’m also not going to hide the truth about who I am. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
Hi Stana,
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, your son would have been whoever he was supposed to be; whether his father was hyper masculine or vice versa. Can we say that a boy growing up with 2 lesbian moms is less masculine since he has no "male figure" to emulate? Conversely, are daughters growing up with two gay dads less feminine? What is considered "Feminine" and "masculine" is specific to a society- what is considered feminine in Western society may not be considered feminine in others. For example, in some countries, men carrying AK-47s would line their eyes with kohl but the same men would consider preparing meals in the kitchen or doing household chores to be beneath them.
No one knows firsthand the restrictions imposed by gender binary more than a trans individual so I find it best to not judge others by the same standards :) Be whoever you are and just rejoice in it.
You posed an interesting question… An ‘only’ child, I moved a lot as my father’s job required. Back in the 50’s and 60’s he was a business executive, who worked long days, was seldom in town. and was definitely masculine, in the sense of a male businessman. He was all business, with no time for typical ‘manly recreational pursuits.’ So, you can guess who raised me…
ReplyDeleteThough I really can’t cook nowadays, I can remember helping Mom in the kitchen as a kid…and having fun doing it. I never played sports with the other kids, and hated PE class. Always the last chosen for a team. Always teased and called names. (The schools did nothing about it – you know their attitude: “boys will be boys.”) And I even had the ‘honor’ of failing PE one year…my abilities at sports were substandard. Gee, what a surprise! At least they didn’t hold me back for it!
As the wife of an executive, Mom always dressed the part – dresses and heels around the house. I hated shopping, but ended up in dress shops frequently while she shopped for clothes befitting her lot in life. As for my own 'boy' clothes – they magically appeared when I was at school, and almost always fit me. I went to dress shops, and watched as she modeled many nice dresses. But I never went shopping for boy's things.
I vaguely remember a couple of times I tried on Mom’s heels, but…very much in private. Then in the early to mid-sixties I ventured deeper into mom’s closet…maybe it was a substitute for a poor social situation? By my senior year in high school, I had made a local switch in schools, and my social/academic situation improved, so experimentation with things feminine just "went away" on its own.
Once in college, I was one of many students in a big school on the west coast, so I was too busy with academia to worry about pantyhose and such...as a commuter student I had no social life whatsoever. My first job in the early 70's provided the same backdrop. No time for social life, though things were basically good...two jobs, two new sets of experiences: meeting new people, moving ahead, then finally, dating...as a guy, and definitely not in a dress!
The urge to wear girly things stayed dormant through my early working days. I met and married my wife in the early '80's, with one boy. Life was good...though there were some hectic times, a voluntary job change and a move to New York. I became involved with contract work, and times stayed good for a while. But then, the urges returned with a vengeance about 1989-90, once job problems had appeared and I was unemployed. Traveling around during the week hunting work gave plenty of ‘opportunity’, thus Mandy was officially ‘born’. The rest is history.
There are no other known transgenders/crossdressers in my family. (Not aware of any on my wife’s side, either, though it’s not a topic of discussion…) So in my own case, I’d suspect nurture was involved...
In his earlier years, our son saw me in many nightshirts, nightgowns, and for a while wore them too. As he grew older, he saw my androgynous look develop. He’s seemingly fine with me wearing whatever I want, but it has had no effect on him…he’s definitely all-male, with few, if any, feminine characteristics…and he’s now grown and out on his own. In his case, there was no nature, and not much nurture. He’s just the “boy next door…” who’s discovered girls.
And the beat goes on...
I felt the same - I prayed for a daughter since I could "identify" with a girl better than with a boy. We have a son, and I am constantly aware of how I behave around him. His other and I both being involved in theater, he has seen me in make up - even in drag for one show. He is very interested in theater, too. Over all, I don't see that he is following in his Dad's pumps - but it is a constant concern for me.
ReplyDeleteMy father was a crossdresser, but I never knew about it until my parents were in skilled care in their late 80s, and I was well into middle age and out to them. Mom thought she'd 'broken" him of it in the 50s, but I found the suitcase he took on "business trips" in the basement when I was closing their house out for sale. He was slight of build and height, unlike me - he'd been a jockey for a time in his youth - and I found pictures that proved he'd pulled it off well. Mom knew from childhood that I was a CD, and worked in medicine, so she'd researched it further and determined that she'd handled Dad's CDing incorrectly. She caught me during college and offered me the chance to explore SRS, and I refused it. So, Dad was a CD, but I didin't know it until much later, and he didn't show any femme aspects that I ever noticed, so it couldn't have been him as an example. I think we're just made this way.
ReplyDeleteStana, I have two sons. They both adore love and respect their femulating dad, as do their wives and my granddaughter. Was it hard, of course. But honestly. Honesty is always the best policy. The grew up from children with the sense that a person is a unique individual with many gifts. They are both very much, "boys" but they live with the attitude, that sex and gender are not mutually exclusive. Needless to say I am a very proud dadymom
ReplyDelete