Sons

When we were pregnant, I hoped our child would be female because I thought that since I was a very feminine male, I would be a poor role model if our child was male.

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.

Shiloh Jolie-Pitt wants to be a boy!

Did you hear the news that the 4-year-old daughter of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt wants to be a boy?

Whether you did or not, I direct you to Mary Elizabeth William’s excellent commentary on the matter that appears in today’s Salon.

a proud parent

Click on the image to enlarge it.

don’t raise your boy to be macho

In The Huffington Post, Philip Slater’s writes in his piece titled The Cowardice of Machismo, “We live in a world today… in which women are outnumbering men not only in colleges, but in all the professions, because they aren't mentally crippled by the overwhelming irrelevancy of traditional male gender training -- a training that robs those imbued with it of the mental flexibility necessary to deal with the complex world we actually inhabit. Making boys macho today is condemning them to irrelevance.”

Read the rest of the story here.