I’m A Transgender Woman, But Still Her Father
Eighteen months ago my ex-wife stopped allowing me to see our young daughter. Not because I had harmed her, violated any agreements or broken the law, but because I had recently completed my transition from male to female. I am transgender.
Since I began my transition 5 years ago, my entire family has shunned me. I’ve been dis-invited to Christmas, birthday celebrations and all family activities because I am transgender. Members of my family have verbally abused me, calling me grotesque, sick, deranged and psychotic. They have told me I should move away and hide so nobody would find out I’m transgender, and have said, “If you were a real man you would have just killed yourself, nobody should have to live with this, not mom, dad or your kids.”
My ex, too, found my decision to live my life as a woman profoundly disturbing. “Our daughter has only one mother, and that’s me,” she said in telling me why I can’t see her anymore. “And after what you’ve done, you’re no longer her father.”
I have a difficult time trying to understand how a once loving family can turn on a dime with hatred and fear simply because I am transgender. Yet that’s exactly what happened to me when I transitioned in my fifties and decided to stop living a lie.
Although I’ve attempted time and again to explain the necessary changes I made, nobody in my family has cared to try to understand. For my entire lifetime I have done everything in my power to fight the feelings telling me I am transgender, and to change that fact. I played sports my whole life: little league baseball, high school soccer and hockey. I raced NCAA on my college alpine ski team, rode a motorcycle and owned a nightclub. But nothing took my transgender feelings away.
I was married, twice. I was trying to be somebody I’m not: a man.
I know it’s painful for any wife or ex-wife to acknowledge this. But to declare that our daughter has only one mother — and that I’m no longer her father — reflects a number of misconceptions that need to be cleared up.
Above all, no matter what else has transpired, no matter what my hormonal landscape is and whether my name is Edward, as it was before my transition, or Christine, as it is now; no matter whether I wear neckties or skirts, I am still and always will be my daughter’s father.
Yes, I have changed my body. This decision came only after many years of deep deliberation, many years of suffering from chronic depression that no measure of medication or self-medication was able to relieve. To achieve congruence among my mind, my emotions and my sense of self I ultimately chose to transition. Now I no longer suffer from depression, I no longer need medication or self-medication and I accept myself.
Today, I suffer instead from our society’s pervasive ignorance about what it means to be transgender and the ineffectiveness of courts to enforce a divorce agreement that grants me the right for child visitation. For the past 18 months, the courts have refused to enforce this right.
But certain things will never change.
First, biologically I am my daughter’s father. Even if I might have preferred to be her mother, fate made that decision and it cannot be reversed.
Second, the notion of ‘transgender’ alone has as many permutations as there are individuals who identify themselves by it. Many people mistakenly think it refers plain and simple to individuals who have crossed over from one gender to the next or would like to — therefore my wife’s assumption that in living my life as a woman I’d aspire to become my daughter’s mother.
In fact, transgender describes people whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender. So yes, I can be both a woman and a father, and I am.
More importantly however, if my ex were to allow me to see my daughter today, the relationship I’d have with her would be the one that was already in place: the one established before I transitioned. Emotionally I have always played a father’s role, which has gone much farther and deeper than providing food, clothing and the roof over her head. For years my daughter and I enjoyed spending time together and sharing our passions. We cooked together, had many great, memorable meals, rode go-karts and went to the beach together near our home in New England. She loved football and baseball and we played it often. Heck, she was a better hitter than I was at 9 years old.
I’m glad to have done all those stereotypical “boy” things with her. We had fun, we lived and we laughed. I only wish I could have done so from a place of peace and not from a place of constantly struggling with my gender identity.
I’ve also taught my daughter values, and this is something that both parents can and should do, regardless of gender. Isn’t teaching a child how to interact with society, how to be a good citizen and a strong, vigorous self-thinker with a loving heart one of the most crucial roles any parent can play?
If I could be with her again, I would continue doing the very things I did before, but then so much more. I am her father, I am her parent, and I am transgender. Like every transgender person — every person, in fact — I am defined first and foremost, by what’s in my heart. When it comes to my daughter, that is pure love.
This piece originally appeared on The Good Men Project. Follow them on Facebook for more.
Christine Connelly is a certified public accountant and the owner of Connelly CPA, Inc. She’s a member of the board of directors of BAGLY, our nation’s oldest and largest youth-led, LGBT organization, and the author of the children’s book My First Red Sox Game, inspired by her daughter.
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