What's Wrong With A Trans Woman Being A Stay At Home Mom?

Stevie Wonder and Karyn White sang decades apart about superwomen from their masculine and feminine perspectives.   While we have some amazing girls like us representing our community, one of the insults we trans women get hurled at us from the TERFs who hate us is that we trans women are 'reinforcing gender stereotypes'.

But one of the beautiful things about femininity and especially the trans version of it is that there is no specific way of being a trans woman. 

It is as multidimensional as the women we are, just like it is for our cis counterparts.   For every time Laverne Cox rocks a red carpet, Geena Rocero travels the globe advancing our human rights, Arianna Lint appears on Spanish language television to talk about trans human rights issues from a Latina perspective, or yours truly bouncing from one convention to the next around the country, there are some of our trans sisters whose biggest transition dream was not only morphing their bodies to match the persons they always knew they were, but also seeing themselves with a husband, 2.5 kids and a house with a white picket fence.

I ain't mad at my sisters who chose that path, and neither should you be.   I also know some trans women who are working moms with kids.  One I know was named 'Working Mother of the Year' in 2014.

I had a conversation recently with a trans woman who is one of those trans moms raising kids.  Her face lit up when she talked about how this was her dream when she transitioned in her teens, and the reality of living her dream and having a husband, kids and family has made her exceedingly happy. 

Heard the same sentiments from even those trans women I know who are working mothers, and truth be told, sometimes I'm a little envious of them.

Being an either stay at home or working mom while trans is just as much a revolutionary act as me and everyone else bouncing up to the state capitol or Washington DC to fight for our human rights.  The more that society sees trans people doing mundane, everyday things that are beautifully human, the better.

So what's wrong with a trans woman being a stay at home mom?   Absolutely nothing.

Happy Mother's Day 2014

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms, grandmoms, great-grandmoms and mother figures who read TransGriot

Hope you are being spoiled rotten and are having a wonderful day.

As Robin Bonner pointed out in one of the Facebook groups I'm on, a mother is more than a vagina and eggs. A real mom is a teacher, an advisor, a confidant, mentor, a listener and a doer, she is the person your children want to emulate. She is a woman of character, grace and love.

Yes she is, and then some.

If you are fortunate enough to have your mother around, give her a call and wish her a Happy Mother's Day!   If because of your trans status you don't or yours has rejected you, then call the person who acts as a mother figure in your life and give that person some love on this day. 

Happy Mother's Day people!

Mr T: Treat Your Mother Right Video

Well, since it's Mother's Day and I'm going to be spending it with my mother and grandmother, definitely thought this is the day this video needed to be posted.

It's Mr. T doing his 'Treat Your Mother Right' video from the 80's.  (God I miss that decade and the 70's).

 

NBJC-A Celebration Of Motherhood

TransGriot Note: From The National Black Justice Coalition

A true celebration of motherhood encompasses mothers from all walks of life. As we celebrate Mother's Day, we must remember the many mothers in the Black lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, because motherhood transcends categories such as sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity.

The history of motherhood in the Black LGBT community is replete with many women mothering against the odds. Disparities that mothers often face like equal pay for equal work, providing safe environments for themselves and their children, and finding good schools for their children are all exacerbated by issues like homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.

"When I had my first son, I kept hearing that I was going to fail my son due to my sexual orientation," says NBJC Leadership Advisory Council Member Kamora Herrington. "I'm currently raising my second son, a 15-month old, and I can now say with confidence that Black lesbian moms raise amazing sons."

We salute our lesbian, bisexual and trans mothers. Women like Alice Walker, June Jordan, and Miss Major are all mothers who dared to raise their children in spite of the oppression they encountered. These women challenged stereotypical notions of what it means to be a provider and expanded the narrative around motherhood. In our community, motherhood is not just having children, but it is also a matter of providing a space for our youth to find safety, support and love.

"The Mother in the House Ball culture plays an integral part in the lives of LGBT people who often times have been disinherited from their biological families based solely on their gender identity or sexual orientation," says Icon Mother Ayana Christian of Royal House of Christian.  "I have had the privilege and honor of nurturing the spirit and souls of so many adolescents and young adults over the last 14 years. The most amazing thing about it for me is knowing that, despite the fact that I have not birthed them from my own womb, their lives have my distinct imprint of motherhood."

  

The National Black Justice Coalition believes that the celebration of motherhood should be more than a symbolic gesture. That is why we are committed to supporting legislation that strengthens Black families. We are proud to support the Every Child Deserves a Family Act (ECDF), a bill that would empower Black LGBT parents to provide homes to the nation's hundreds of thousands of kids in our foster care and adoption system by denying federal funds to states that discriminate against adoptive and foster parents on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. However, even amidst these challenges, resilient Black LGBT people have continued to raise families and give love.

Mother's Day is not only a celebration, but a reminder of the hard work that our lesbian, bisexual and trans mothers undertake daily.

We salute all those who mother to make this world a better place for our community.

Happy Mother's Day

Pregnant Turkish Woman With Uterine Transplant Draws Interest In Trans Community

Jazz in a recent interview expressed the hope and desire to become a mother.   If medical events in Turkey continue to be positive, she and other girls like us might get the chance to have her own child with a transplanted womb.

Back in August 2011 doctors successfully transplanted a donor uterus from a deceased woman into now 22 year old Derya Cert, a Turkish woman born without one but who had functioning ovaries.   Being born without a uterus affects one in every 5000 women and until this procedure came along meant that the woman in question would be childless. 

A uterus transplant has been attempted once before by a medical team in Saudi Arabia back in 2000.  The womb came from a live donor but failed after 99 days due to heavy blood clotting and was removed from the patient receiving it.    Medical centers in Sweden and the United States are also working on perfecting uterine transplant medical technology and the medical procedures and drugs necessary to prevent the body from rejecting the transplanted organ.

Cert became the first woman in the world to have a successful transplant from a deceased woman, which raises the hopes of women that are in a similar situation to hers that they could one day undergo the procedure once the techniques are refined and give birth to their own biological children.

On April 1 Cert had an embryo implanted into her developed from one of her own eggs.  It has been confirmed that she is now pregnant    The embryo should it countinue to develop will be delevered by Ceasarean section.

Where the interest comes from in the trans feminine community is on multiple levels.  We know that Lili Elbe's death was caused by a uterine transplant done on her back in 1931 because she wanted to be able to have children. 

There are trans teens like Jazz who would love to someday become mothers, and if this technology is perfected by the time they reach adulthood, we'd have one of those situations we brainstormed about and we saw once upon a time as an impossible dream now becoming a possibility due to modern microsurgical techniques. 

We've long wistfully expressed the sentiment in transworld if only trans men and trans women could swap body parts.  It's becoming increasingly possible that a trans man when having the hysterectomy could designate it be donated to a trans woman for implantation.

But if they did so, this is a situation in which cis privilege would aggressively assert itself.  If that trans man donated their uterus, it would probably get prioritized toward being given to a cis woman without one.   Trans women would be extremely far down the transplant list despite the desires of some of us to be fruitful an multiply.    

That research is also geared at this time toward helping infertile couples, not giving trans women the ability to give birth to biological children of their own

But that shouldn't stop us from doing hard solid thinking about reproductive rights issues, procreation and the potentially game altering way that uterine transplant medical technology that hones its procedures and becomes as common as heart and other organ transplants could one day be applied to trans women. .

The trans community definitely needs to be having these conversations about where we fit in this equation and think about what happens if they perfect uterine transplants.  Could testicular ones be on the horizon next? 

In the interim, cis and trans world will definitely be watching developments in Turkey as Derya Cert's historic pregnancy comes to a hopefully successful conclusion.

Diamond Stylz-Surrogacy

As I've pointed out in a few posts I do have trans women friends who are mothers raising children.  Some are their own biological ones they had before transition, while others are in marriages or relationships raising their spouse's or significant other's kids as their own. 

Been a while since I posted one of Diamond's video blogs, and this one deserves a little signal boosting because it talks about her desire to be a mother and raise kids.

And no sis.  I still haven't forgotten I owe you an interview. 

Happy Mother's Day To Trans Moms

I do know of and I'm aware of the existence of trans women who are doing the tough job of raising kids.

I'm also aware of the fact we have transwomen who are serving in the role of a mother figure for trans youth either by being a house mother or just lending a sympathetic and non judgmental ear when one of our younglings needs to chat and get some things off their chests.  

Thank you for stepping out there and being you.   Thank you for standing and delivering for our youth and you get my utmost love and respect for doing so. 

So yes, Happy Mother's Day to you as well.

Renee Discusses Motherhood And Feminism

Happy Mother's Day TransGriot readers!  Since it's your day, what better way for me to spend it than listening to one of my favorite mommy bloggers who is all that and four bags of ketchup flavor chips?

Renee of Womanist Musings spent a few moments on Friday as a guest on the CBC Radio show The Current discussing the topic of motherhood and feminism.




And as you those of you who read her blog know about her, she's going to tell it like it T-I-S when it comes to motherhood and the different ways she intersects with the topic.  

The Current is hosted by Erica Johnson, and here's my Timmy's IceCapp drinking homegirl for your  TransGriot listening pleasure.