Becoming Trans-Parent: Poems

Hey all! A local mom, Annette Langlois Grunseth, whose daughter is trans, has written a book of poetry called Becoming Trans-Parent: One Family’s Gender Transition about the experience and she’s hoping to sell a bunch more in pre-sales as that will determine interest and the size of the printing.

If you can, please go buy one. 

Here is one of those poems:

Key Change

Live as if you were living already for the second time 

 Viktor Frankl

She sings her own song
a contemporary score
composed in new ways
perhaps dissonant to some
but not to those who really listen.
It’s still beautiful music.
Well-measured
it comes from the same place
but arranged in a new tune.
The melody exudes happiness
the harmony is real.
You can’t fault the composer for that.
Remember Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring
shook people up in their time.
Listen as she brings you into the light
with her song, a symphony even.

Men Are Valuable Even When They Aren’t Dads

There are times, as a woman, that if you actually manage to recognize your own humanity, instead of your use as a breeder*/parent, you still have to face the fact that people write articles like this explaining that you are not an asshole.

It’s astonishing.

Just try to imagine the same article with the word men in place of women: “Childless men have been able to accumulate education and resources they otherwise wouldn’t have had if they’d had children. This time and income could then be put back into other people’s families “to pay for lifesaving operations, or to rescue the family farm, or to take in a child whose mother had fallen gravely ill.”

I mean, really?!

And while this particular article is pro child-free women (albeit condescending), it amazes me that any argument has to be made that women are of value even when they aren’t parents, that many women choose to be childfree (for whatever reason) and/or that even women who wanted kids and didn’t have any (for whatever reason) can live satisfying lives.

Can we get back to ZPG ideas? Is it possible, even, for people to consider all this talk about being green when it comes to children? There are too many of us on this planet & we’re destroying it as a result, and we don’t have a goddamn chance if the value of women who don’t have children has to be explained.

What bullshit.

* to clarify, since someone objected to my use of the term breeder: i used the term breeder to point out that this is the way our culture thinks of women if articles like this have to be written. i don’t use the term otherwise, but i do think it’s highly problematic that someone might object to the term but not the attitude/culture that treats them that way. that is, the only evidence that the culture doesn’t consider women breeders, and breeders only, is if there is inherent value in a woman’s life when she isn’t a parent.