my momâs trans allyship is on another level
she once called my friendâs deadname âthat stupid thing his mom calls himâ
I was once talking to my 75 year old Chinese dad in passing about a trans friend of mine not getting along with her family and he asked why and I said err, because she's trans, dad.
He asked: "Oh, was she the only son or something before *waves hand*?" and I was like, warily, no she has two brothers. And he responded with a great deal of confusion: "Then what's their problem?!?!"
Later on: "Anyway, even if she WAS the only son, that's not her problem, that's THEIR problem. They should have had more sons if they were going to be bothered about it."
Knowing what I know about chinese culture thereâs something so beautifully simple about his logic of âno son to carry on family name/look after them in old age/all the other stuff? Skill issue! Shouldâve had more sons! Shouldâve kept the family unit strong yourself! Blaming your daughter for your own failure of family planning is W E A K!â and then he learns there are more sons and it completely breaks his train of logic because if yes to more sons then why issue?? You have two others and youâre mad you donât have three?? Whack. Greedy.
I can already envision him as an ancient lord of a powerful house looking down his nose at the latest messenger bringing gossip from the house of his offspringâs friend and going ânow they have a daughter to marry into another family for powerful alliances and two sons to take over her former duties and somehow theyâre still complaining about their good fortune? They shall not survive the winter.â and then sipping his tea with all the grim satisfaction of someone about to watch an unnecessary soap opera of drama unfold from a safe distance or something
That's a funny image for sure, though I think if there's a typology of Chinese philosophical mentality, there would likely be a spectrum from "Confucian patriarchal lord" to "Buddhist monk / Taoist hermit" and my dad renounced at 18, was a monk for a time, before coming back to work for his family since they were poor đ€· it was what 3 years after we gained independence from the British so the economy was probs a mess.
When he found and married my mom, he was nearly 45 and they had so much trouble conceiving that he went to a Guanyin temple supposedly "magical" for praying for children. When I was born (not a son, also an only child until now), my mom said, "when you prayed at the temple did you ask for a son?" He said, "Aiya, everyone is asking for sons, so I said any gender is okay. If I asked for a son, maybe we wouldn't have gotten a child because Guanyin's son quota is already used up. Do you want that to happen?" My mom laughed for days about "son quota" and continues to tell people about it today, but her honest answer was: "Any child is okay."
Jokes on them. They didn't specify a gender, so Guanyin Ma gave them a non-binary child!
More seriously: my dad doesn't care about sons. When I told my parents that I wouldn't marry or have children, I thought he might be disappointed, but he wasn't. Then again, maybe I should have expected that, given he tried to become a monk at 18 đ€Ș I think he said the thing about sons to poke fun at people who care too much about sons because he frankly thinks it's all a bit ridiculous. In his eyes, a child is a child, so what's the point in caring about gender? If the child "changes" gender, does it make a difference?
When I first spoke to my mom about trans issues, still closeted at the time, she said, "I don't understand why they feel the way they do, but they aren't hurting anyone so don't bother them. They are normal people just minding their own business." I said, "I agree, but on the topic of not understanding: Mom, do you think that when we reincarnate, we are always born into a body of the same gender?" In Buddhist stories, there was a lifetime in which Guanyin was reincarnated as a cow or ox, and in repayment for my birth, my dad does not eat beef till this day. Gender or species isn't constant in the cycle of rebirth. My mom said, "No, you're right. Whatever thing that carries on has no gender. I was probably male, human or animal, in one of my past lives." And she has supported trans rights even more ever since.
