Sooners than Later’s Part 5

*Before…

I’m actually doing something that my mother had done and likely her mother had done or dad’s mother had done but I’m doing it too. And I know it’s weird to even think that it’s such a like good thing because of the whole girls in the kitchen thing and all of that and I actually believe in being feminist and that those old stereotypes suck.

But they don’t so much right at this moment to me.

It’s because ten years ago if I was born the way I should have been I’d be very likely in Mom’s dress and shoes and being a pain while I was trying to be like her and help her.

It’s this odd moment of actual connection between me and my mother as her daughter and I’m kind of relishing it.

*And Now…

Supper went along rather nicely actually with the nice exceptions of me blushing every time that Millie compliments me or that Marcus does or dad does and it’s honestly like my brain is still in old me mode, fake me mode and I’m still getting caught up when I’m complimented or properly gendered.

Then it’s time to clean up and making coffee and tea and taking out the dessert and dad actually does this old trick of having BBQ wood chips that he puts on the grill while we’re doing that and it helps replace the cooked fish smells with the scent of hickory and apple wood smoke and it helps keep the bugs in the yard at bay.

It sounds typically girlie in like this bad way but I’ve never been a fan of bugs and here in the Midwest we have more than our fair share of them especially when you get certain times of year when there’s like different bugs that seem to invade like with the crops.

I’ve never really seen aphids but Corn beetles and Asian lady bugs and Weevils just freak me out.

And we had ants one year too and they got into everything including my bed and well spiders…I like Spiderman and Spider Gwen but otherwise nope…nope, nope, nope they’re in the same place as clowns.

As dessert comes out and so does the coffee and the cards we start to talk with Quinn asking. “Momma you said that trans folk weren’t a surprise to you so you know some?”

Millie is pouring tea and she nods. “I ran with a pretty good crowd of folks when I went to school at Brown. There were lots of feminists and equal rights things still going on and right there with us were some pretty great trans women that turned out to very nice people and friends too.”

I’m biting on questions and she looks at me. “Deidre don’t chew on your lipstick dear.”

“Sorry it’s just sort of like breathtaking and nervy.”

“How so dear?”

“I don’t know any trans people, not around here and not really in real life. It’s been something that I’ve been living with and when you don’t see anyone else it’s hard to not thing that there’s something going wrong with you.”

“You don’t know any trans folks online?”

“Tons, actually the community I have sort of is awesome.”

Dad says/asks. “Sort of?”

“It’s online Daddy, there’s folks out there that are of all frigging kinds and some of them at first seem to be like great people and stuff but then there’s…”

“Perverts?” He asks.

“Yes but usually not in the communities that I’m in online and chasers get the boot really quick as do the Yaps.”

He looks confused. “Yaps?”

“People who join a community and all they do is post pictures about themselves and treat the group like it’s a dating site or are just plainly like trolling for compliments.”

He’s nodding as in Marcus who is frowning at his cards as we’re playing Gin-Rummy and having desert and tea and coffee. He says. “I can see where that’d be distracting when you want to talk about what you all go through.”

I nod and finish a bite of cake. “It’s kind of bad but we block those folks too it just when you run into others with like ablest issues and racist stuff and sexist stuff or like gatekeeper stuff.”

Millie looks up. “Gatekeepin?”

“Folks that thing that there’s a right way to be trans. It used to be like the terfs and the doctors that make you jump through all that time in RLT and in therapy to pronounce you what you have known all along. Now you got these truscum folks that think that you need to transition to be trans and that if you don’t have crippling gender dysphoria that will kill you that you’re not trans either.”

“But don’t you need those things?” Dad asks.

I look at him and he’s looking at me and I take a sip of tea.

Kinda hope it’s true tea enough to let me speak all the stuff that’s in my head.

“Doctored gatekeeping comes with whatever ideology that doctor or therapist has and some of them believe in absolute trash about us trans people like the whole autogynophellia bullpoop. Others treat us like their own test subjects for papers and others don’t believe in transition at all and are given our cases and it’s very much a matter of a lot of us jumping through hoops and even whims of these folks to get our scripts and our carry letters for like I said things that we already know.”

He looks at me. “So what’s the best solution for that/”

“A trans therapist or a doctor honestly, other than that there are online lists for safe doctors that aren’t hugely problematic.”

He nods and drinks some coffee and lays down a set of four tens and Quinn marks down his points. “So truscum are what then?”

“Truscum are like people that thing that there’s a set bar to be trans, that you have to be in transition to be treated seriously or that you have to have gender dysphoria so bad that you can’t function. It’s really a horrible thing that excludes all of the trans folks that lived without or are living without any hope of ever transitioning and are still carrying on.”

He’s frowning. “That’s like people who think that other Christians aren’t Christian enough because they don’t hate other folks or discriminate against them….or sounds like it.”

Quinn nods and lays down four fives. “I think truscum was started by terfs, like almost to a one most truscum are self-proclaimed trans guys and it all just reeks of terf fakery.”

Dad raises an eyebrow. “Terf?”

Millie actually speaks up. “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, we had then back in the day too especially all through the Women’s studies programs. They’re pretty much horrible folks.”

I nod. “You want to know about Terf’s dad look up stuff about any trans celeb or Leelah or like any pro trans headline online and read the comments. Actually you can even just google it now there’s even a website, several websites that explain it all and some that are just like outright horrible too.”

He sips his coffee and plays his cards some more. “I know, I looked a lot of this stuff up Dee when you came out and I was spending all of that time in the office. You end up following link after link from social justice sites and blogs to fiction and creative things like stories and art and even poetry and then you hit the skeevy side of things and then the just outright hateful stuff too and it doesn’t take long to see there’s a lot of horrible people saying horrible things about my child.”

I’m like… (Sniffle.) “Daddy…”

He leans over the table and he kisses my cheek which makes me blush. “I’m still working on it; I’ll still be working on it for a long time most likely Dee. And I’m calling you Dee because I’ve tried Deidre a few times and it’s still somehow too easy to go to your other name and misgender you. Dee is just easier okay?”

(Sniffle.) “Dee’s okay, I like it just fine Daddy.”

He’s smiling a little. It’s not a full on dad smile but he’s sort of getting somewhere that he likes in his headspace now.

He looks at me. “We meet this head on Dee, there’s going to be some angry people about this but I think we need to do this head on with things and let people know and let them deal with it and get used to it or not and we figure out where we go from there.”

I swallow a hard gulp of tea.

“Okay, I’m tired daddy, I’m tired of waiting and hiding and just feeling wrong all of the time while I just literally keep getting worse and worse as I can’t escape this whole damned puberty thing.”

“One thing at a time kiddo, and you’re a big girl sure and you’re different sure but I’ve seen a lot more manly women than you right now and you’re just getting started on your journey and things. Now I’m going to assume that in coming out that you have a whole mental list of things that you had dreamed up of what you need to do to transition?”

I nod and stare at him as he holds my eyes with his.

“Dee this is your life, and it’s something that I still barely know. If you have ideas, if you have doctors that you want to see things that you have planned to do to transition tell me…I’m your father. It’s your transition it’s your fight not mine but I’m still going to have your back….I’m not going to gatekeep you.”