Transmen

Black, White & All Colours In Between

by Loree Cook-Daniels

(The Gender Centre advise that this article may not be current and as such certain content, including but not limited to persons, contact details and dates may not apply. Where legal authority or medical related matters are cited, responsibility lies with the reader to obtain the most current relevant legal authority and/or medical publication.)

My son, they say, will have to choose. Black. Or white. All the papers he will face will only offer those boxes. All his friends will want to know.

To whom do you owe allegiance? Are you black or are you white? Are you with us or against us?

The answers are both. And neither. More. And less. The boxes, the questions, leave no ground for honoring the Native American great-great-great-grandmother.

They leave no space for a Jewish heritage gifted by a mother who did not also give him D.N.A. They do not admit the possibility of joining sperm from northern gene pools with an egg from bloodstreams sourced in many soils.

They do not acknowledge that we are all so much more than "race."

They do not acknowledge my son.

Choose, they all tell me.

One chorus wants him successful: hard driving, competitive achiever.

One chorus wants him sensitive: privilege-renouncing supporter of women.

One chorus wants him a warrior: fearless fighter for his people's rights.

What future, they all demand of me, will you prepare this brown-skinned man-child for? Will he be one of us, or one of the "other"?

Both, I say, and neither. I will not prepare my son for any war. Dead and wounded crowd the streets already. Someone must tart the peace.

Someone must stop teaching children the lines, pointing out who belongs on each side. Someone must start the listening, teach children to hear pain where others see anger. Someone must start showing children that every single one of us belongs.

They say I am ignorant. They cannot imagine life without enemies. They cannot imagine my son.

They will all tell my son to choose silence. Some will tell him his father could not have birthed him into the world. Some will tell him his parents turned traitor.

None of them want him saying that men don't always have penises, that little girls don't always grow up to be women. They do not want to hear that his parents refuse to stay within any of others' lines.

They will tell him he is confused.

I will point out the confusion. I will show him: some people are afraid of what they do not know.

I will tell him: some people believe different means dangerous, and become dangerous in the face of difference. I will teach him not to be what they expect, not to fear or condemn in return. I will teach him to trust his own truths. I will raise him to be all that the universe needs: teacher and student, healer and healed.

I will teach him to be who he is.

They will not know what to do with my son.

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