Artwork by Jordan Söderberg Mills.
Too Much/Not Enough
If you’ve been told that a large part of who you are is not acceptable it can be difficult, and terrifying, to allow this side of you to come out and take centre stage. As Jordan Söderberg Mills embarks on a surrogacy journey with his partner he writes about his complicated feelings about becoming a father when he feels more like a mother.
I write this as a man who is about to become a mother.
Growing up, I wasn’t really allowed to feel feminine. I had a supportive family but experienced endless harassment in the outside world because I didn’t fit into one side or the other of a gender dichotomy. The world, I’ve learnt, doesn’t like the interstitial—a boy behaving like a girl—and that shades of grey are too nuanced, they require too much explanation.
Even after coming out in high school, the queer community still felt like it split into extremes—it was butch or drag, with little in between so I set out to become a series of gestures and modes of speech that imparted boy—partly to pass in society, partly to avoid violence and harassment, but also to feel appealing to my peers, internalizing some of the homophobia I grew up experiencing.
MOTHER/FATHER
I thought I’d resolved these issues and the anxieties of my youth long ago. Now, as I near the age of 40, I have the freedom to be exactly who I want to be, more so than I’ve ever had. We see more and more representation in mass media. I’ve got a partner who lets me be exactly who I want to be, and a supportive extended family who are bored of talking about it. However, some of my old anxieties about masculinity and femininity are re-emerging because I’ve decided to become a parent through surrogacy.
I’m at the beginning of this journey and have felt a pressing need to explore my feelings about femininity, masculinity, motherhood and fatherhood through a queer lens—in particular, growing up as a feminine boy with a masculine mother. I’m interested in how we use language in queer parenting to help construct our creation myths, which are to be crafted and not discovered. But mostly, I’ve been trying to pin down and examine my fears about being a dad—as someone who feels more like a mom.
As my chosen family begins to grow, I’ve started thinking deeply about my own biological family. My mother built an empire in a male-dominated industry, she would terrify both my friends and bullies alike. My father cooked all the meals and would listen to me when things were tough. These are the generational models I draw upon—a mother that in many ways fulfilled the role of a father, and vice versa—not quite fitting the expectations of masculinity and femininity at the time.
Looking back, I realize that our family history was filled with blended and upended gender roles, and perhaps seeking to categorize my own family, and myself, through this dichotomy is an extension of my own internalized binaries—an intertwining of gender and identity that I spent my youth struggling against. This realization has motivated a lot of self-evaluation, but also a search for more queer stories, in order to find ways to create my own.
GENERATIONAL STORIES + THE LANGUAGE OF QUEER
Queer families are often built rather than inherited. Many of us are denied our own families, orphaned by prejudice, and seek out community, chosen family, drag houses, and the like to find our own sense of belonging.
We are also a community that is intrinsic but not hereditary—a unique cultural phenotype that springs up across ethnicities, nationalities—an emergent, decentralized patchwork of identities that define ourselves in contrast to a perceived status quo. We are bound by difference but not borders.
As such, our stories are relatively new—the generation that pioneered queer liberation as we know it was quickly devastated by the AIDS epidemic. We have few precedents of older generations of queer people, let alone queer parents. This is changing bit-by-bit, with mass media embracing gay families and their stories, but I also realize it’s our responsibility to form our own.
The social worker assigned to our surrogacy case in Canada has told me to craft an epic tale about our future children’s birth—not far off, considering what we are going through to bring them into being—through a pandemic, over vast oceans, through near-miraculous science. Their origins are never meant to be a mystery—understanding how they came to be is critical to their future mental health. No secrets, no closets, no storks or quaint metaphors. Their birth may be different from their peers, but equally valid, and certainly not a source of shame. They should be proud of the lengths we’ll go to bring them into this world. I’m to tell this story on repeat right from the beginning—that many people helped to create them—that families are built in many ways.
FEARS
This is a good plan but hasn’t assuaged all of my fears about parenthood—whether I’ll feel like enough. My friends who are new mothers assure me that the only differences between a mom and a dad are anatomical—both are capable of nurturing, protecting, and providing. I would love to have a daughter, but worry that as a gay man, my understanding of femininity is only aesthetic—especially as a male who has been pressured for decades to hide my femininity. We may share some superficial interests, but how can I prepare her for how the world treats women? How do I teach a son the same in a household full of boys? My fears are ample, but the scariest words to me, the ones I dread the most, will be, “why don’t I have a mommy?”
The social worker assures me that the children will never even ask the question if I do it right. I’m to always use the definite article when speaking about where they came from—the egg donor, the surrogate—not your surrogate. In some ways, linguistically distancing our children from the people who will help us build our family. I’m to craft the narrative of their origins carefully, being mindful of the transitions, the prepositions, and the articles—placing a veil of grammar that stonewalls their connection to the people that are important helpers, but not family.
We hoped to have open donation and surrogacy—meaning that our children can get to know these amazing women—but many prefer not to do so. This is an act of love, of charity—they help to build families but do not seek to become a part of mine. These incredible women are not the mothers of our children—they simply don’t have one. They have two dads, which is enough. Much like a single parent, adoptive moms and dads, or a blended family, it is our responsibility to make them feel loved, protected and cared for, but also visible. We need more of these stories so they can confidently talk about their two dads to their peers in class. They’ll know their story, and know that they’re different, but won’t feel an absence of love.
FOCUS
What I have learnt through this process is that the smallest words are the most important. Language is thinking, which informs broader cultural patterns. We see this with transgendered liberation and discussions about pronouns—it’s everyone’s responsibility to atone for past prejudices, be sensitive to people’s needs beyond our expectations, and be mindful of our words. Toni Morrison said that definitions belong to the definers, and not the defined, and she’s right. For queer dads, I’ve learnt, the definite article is king.
We use this redirection, this detour, to create some measure of separation and to affirm our own ties. Like a midwife or a delivery doctor, these are people critical to bringing our kids into the world, but our children are our own. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and in our case, it looks more like a small city—two dads, the donor, the surrogate, the doctors, the doula, the researchers, the scientists, the lab technicians that give us the ability to grow a family, as well as the country and the policy-makers that gave us this chance.
I still feel a gendered panic—that I’m robbing these kids of a mother—but I think my idea of parenting is changing. By reading, talking to other parents, seeking out and crafting queer stories of parenthood, I’m examining my own learnt biases, reconnecting with my more feminine side and trying not to worry whether I’m butch or femme enough. Perhaps, in all, I should think a little less about myself, focus more on my children’s individual needs, and carry on as a dad (who probably feels a bit more like a mom.)