of a father who started wearing skirts because his son wanted to:
He’s simply smiling, when other boys ( and it’s nearly always boys) want to make fun of him and says: “You only don’t dare to wear skirts and dresses because your dads don’t dare to either.” That’s how broad his own shoulders have become by now. And all thanks to daddy in a skirt.
Thanks, S!
Wow, this is great!
What a lovely picture of them.
I think that this is a wonderful story. I have, however, a quibble or two. First, the boy likes to wear skirts (and paint his nails). He needs a role model. Assuming there is a mother, why can she not be his role model; perhaps he would identify more with his mother. Also, I worry whether–though it doesn’t seem so–the point for the father is to show his son that he can still be ‘manly’ and wear a skirt.
I think the father was trying to say that he couldn’t ask his son to be brave enough to wear a skirt if the dad wasn’t brave enough to be different too. It seems more like when a mother shaves her head so that her daughter won’t be so shy about losing her hair to cancer.
eSEB: the father recognized that the child needs a male role model, one who wears dresses and engages in feminine gender expressions. It’s no help to have only his mother, likely a cisgender women, as a role model, because she can have a feminine gender expression and no one will look twice. The boy gets taunted, so he needs to see that someone else can put up with that. Those are (partly) the father’s reasons.
Now, people should know that it’s too early to say whether the child is trans*, or just in a feminine phase (young boys often go through this; at least two of my friends have young boys who are in such a phase: they don’t yet know if it’s a ‘phase’ or a stable reflection of the child’s identity or expression).
[...] blogger over at Tumblr‘s Mea Culpa reposted and another blogger translated and I got the link here on the Feminist Philosophers blog. It reminds me of a wonderful blog called Raising My Rainbow. [...]
@Rachel #4:
I don’t think we should assume anything about the mother’s gender identity or presentation. What we do know is that the father thought his son needed some ‘back-up’ in the face of all too probable ridicule by other boys his age. I think that is quite good enough.