Also, this is starting to change, in much the same way as GLBQ people are coming out in high school rather than after a decade (or three) of marriage. Increasing acceptance of transpeople means that more transparents are openly fighting transphobic custody decisions. A more open clinical model means that (for example) transmen are allowed to transition and have an interest in eventually getting pregnant. Greater acceptance and knowledge of transpeople by health care providers means that transpeople are able to speak comfortably and constructively with their physicians about parenting options. Greater acceptance of LGBTQ families means that couples in which one person (or both) is trans are better served when seeking alternatives like adoption and artificial insemination.

So our fitness to parent existing children is becoming a much more pertinent question for the mainstream, as well as our right to have and parent future children.

Also check out this article about the various requirements for transpeople to be sterile before their gender can be officially recognised.

I am non-tg, and my social circle has relatively few tg of my age, all of whom seemed to test other identities until at least their 30s.

I agree that laws requiring sterility support this thesis, but what about laws requiring childlessness?

Don’t you have any gay marriages to prevent or something? Maybe some gay parents to harass?

Or maybe it’s an unwillingness to allow us to breed.

Did I just say that? I’m gonna go have some more coffee.

And can I just say, Nick–since I haven’t yet–that I really appreciate all of these posts, and the posts on your livejournal? There needs to be more discussion of transpeople as parents and biological parents. I know a lot of guys who are very interested in the idea, and who are thankfully aware of the possibility, but who have virtually nothing in the way of social or medical resources. These conversations are really useful.

Whilst it certainly shows that motherhood\femininity are linked I’m not sure that that link isn’t the much stronger example of the belief that parents should model gender roles, and as such should be the best example of each that they can manage (the anti-SSM children deserve a mother and father refrain springs to mind.) Although I’m not sure of that argument as the link between motherhood and femininity seems part of a much wider cultural system dictating acceptable female behaviour, whereas I’ve only ever seen the father\masculinity link used in the debates around SSM.

IOW, wanting a wife who’s like your mother as in willing to become your new mother?

Whoops”“I read your LJ, and I realized that I had been assuming that “transman” equaled pre/post-op, not non-op.

At any rate, I’m sorry if I offended you, and I know you’ll make a great dad.

There are all kinds of transmen, but I’m still not completely sure whether I am one. I’m not offended, but I tend to run away from gendered labels, so all I’ll cop to for the moment is “parent”.

Eventually I came to the realization that I sometimes unfairly suspect some FTMs of using surgery to gain male privilege the easy way”“because if you’re willing to live in an intensely feminized body for nine months, you must be okay with it for the rest of your life, right?

Wait”“that doesn’t follow. There’s also the possibility: “I hate my body like this, but I’m willing to endure it and worse for nine months more just to experience pregnancy””“which I can deeply sympathize with.>>

Some transmen are gender-fluid and use “transman” to include gender-fluidity, although this has nothing to do with willingness to become pregnant and bear children. I think that “transman” admits a level of complexity such that those willing (or even overjoyed) to be pregnant should be included; if you can have a uterus and still qualify, you should be allowed to use your uterus and still qualify.

Then again, many transpeople think that’s a really stupid way of looking at things.

I’m also not sure that hatred is true for most–that implies a level of personal disgust that tends to get confused with misogyny. It’s more like lack of comfort, lack of suitability. Like (and this is a crap analogy, I know) dropping out of medical school to become a painter. I don’t hate doctors, or see medicine as inherently unpleasant or without value. I’m not merely complaining about the unpleasantness of medicine as practiced in this society. It’s just…not for me.

Or maybe endurable is a wrongheaded standard. I know transguys who see living in a masculinized body as necessary, but who see pregnancy and bearing their own children as an equally vital experience. They would feel bereft if they did not have the opportunity; they may not have to struggle with feelings of gender dysphoria in the context of pregnancy.

At any rate, I’m sorry if I offended you, and I know you’ll make a great dad.