I have always hated the word daughter.
Even before i knew P was nonbinary, i called them everything else. Progeny. Child. Offspring. Human person i made in my belly. Etc.
Before they were born, my mom predicted their sex based on the 13-week ultrasound. She was *sure* she saw a penis. She told all the aunties, and so P received tons of onesies with cars and sportsball on them at the baby shower.
I was broke as shit and a single mom, so guess what? My baby (whose gender was then unknown and whose sex was irrelevant) wore ALL those clothes. When people told me how handsome my little boy was, I just smiled and said, “Thank You.”
Daughter bugs me now, especially, because the way people use it *at* me when i use my glorious kiddo's correct pronouns (he/they), or the way people with a particular sensibility seem to reach to heft the word into sentences, "How's your daughter?" When before they would've just asked, "how's P?"
Like they're trying to shame me for failing to create the perfect human example of female-ness, and then to add insult to injury, refusing to respect my very real human offspring's very valid requests to be treated as who they are vs who some utterly irrelevant societal norm says they are.
Like they are trying to force us into compliance with their values by the force of vocabulary. A valiant effort, for sure, but wrong-headed and shitty.
Watching kiddos come of age in the now time has been *such* a breath of fresh air. And by learning about their pronouns and gender expression, I have become more comfortable in my own.
I have always been a woman who, um, confuses people.
I have never felt confused about who I am, but I have always known that I don’t know how to talk or care about a lot of things our culture instructs me to care about as a person Assigned Female at Birth (AFAB). ←one of the many helpful terms I have learned from my offspring and their brethren.
Here are some examples: Vacations to Disney, makeup, punishing other women for not conforming, marriage, looking good, hygiene products (beyond the bare essentials).
I have frequently struggled to get along with other women, and almost never struggled to get along with men.
If I were coming of age in the now, I would have known I am genderqueer, even though I’m fully comfortable with feminine pronouns, AND with being a woman. I just like to do it my way, and my way tends to be fairly “masculine,” whatever that even means.
Because I also love men who wear dresses and makeup sometimes or all the time. I love men who openly weep and who talk about their feelings. I love men who get punished for the way they practice masculinity in ways analogous to how I get punished for practicing femininity.
It is a spectrum, not a binary.
I am presently blessed with a *bunch* of girlfriends who don’t want to talk about Disney vacations or other shit I don’t care about. Who are also smart and competent and scary to mediocre whyte men.
I love cars and business and doing really hard stuff. I like challenging beer and whiskey and have rarely met a mixed drink I liked except for that time I made scratch margaritas following Ina Garten’s recipe and they went down so easy I puked.
I don’t care if my house is messy, and I use one soap for all my parts, and my hair, too.
I hate expensive fussy outfits and I only wear makeup if someone dies or gets married. And sometimes after a breakup during the “feel crappy look snappy” period.
I hate being called a daughter because of the way men express that they learned to not be such massive assholes by saying things like, "I used to be against abortion until I had daughters." And, "I used to objectify women until I had daughters."
And the weird creepy ownership dads claim by leaning on the word daughter, "no daughter of mine..." and, "not with my daughter!" Like being a daughter means we get less say over who we are and how we live. No. Not like that. Just exactly that. There are even disgusting t-shirts.
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But these t-shirt donners are also telling on themselves. They are aggressively “protective” of their daughters because they know how they act or acted, they co-sign the ways our culture enables the Brock Turners and Brett Kavanaughs of the world. They know it’s scary and dangerous to have breasts. So they double down on all the toxic masculinity that makes it so, instead of just stepping like an inch back and observing that men do not *have to* act like that. Lots of them don’t. I’m blessed to know many who are feminists, and who would be totally grossed out by this t-shirt.
Men can understand consent if we teach them. Violence can be managed by teaching men about their feelings and how to process them, how to maintain friendships with peers, and how to self-regulate, so they don’t have to have an outburst every time they feel. Or by treating mental illness. The patriarchy harms us all. Even men.
The way moms lean on the word daughter to bring the girl children into the family fold by referencing mother-daughter bonding, sharing eye-rolls at socks everywhere, or dirty dishes places other than the sink or dishwasher from dads and brothers, training daughters to accept, or worse yet be manipulative or passive aggressive about, the weaponized incompetence of other people's sons instead of demanding more and better.
And moms teach daughters to act a certain way, and wear makeup. And even when mothers assert that they are fiercely supportive of their daughters, or even use the word daughter defiantly when calling out power their children could access in ways they couldn't, like, "actually, my daughter is a CEO," it has this energy of diminishment. Like, “why are we bringing my reproductive organs into this?” Being a CEO is only impressive if you have boobs? It’s impressive regardless!
Daughter is here to diminish, demean, erase, demoralize people born with vaginas who are anything other than what our culture expects from women.
I have ALWAYS hated being defined by my sex. I have always hated how, just for being bright and powerful and ambitious, i confuse people who perceive that my breasts and my daughter-ness define something about how I should move through the world.
And the value of my opinions.
And my status as a whole-ass human lady who deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.
And who KNOWS some things.
That is all.
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Tell me your story about daughter-ness. Being one, having one, rejecting the whole idea, whatever.
I think I don’t have as strong of a reaction to “daughter” as you do, but I definitely so resonate with all of the bits about not wanting my body parts to determine really anything about how I move through the world and how others move around me. I hope for a future where folks are just free to do what makes their hearts happy.
My female progeny turned out to be a pretty bad-ass ma’am, possibly with my help, possibly without it. She has surrounded herself with other bad-ass females and non-binary pals who come in all manner of packages. Her 9-week old AFAB wears my favorite onesie “Pee on the Patriarchy”. She would have put it on her AMAB if she had given birth to one😃 She bought my husband a shirt that he wears around Wilpo, to many raised eyebrows, Husband, Dad, Feminist. Said man bought she and I matching Mickey Mouse Pride shirts when he had to go to Disneyland for an offsite last fall. She’s raising her dad and brother right!