Coming out to my Father while Contemplating Masculinity
Photo: courtesy of the author
This article was originally published in Turkish by Bianet
I don’t suppose I know anyone who hasn’t been wounded by masculinity one way or another. Some are shut out by it, some are crammed inside it; some fear it, and some, in trying to resemble it, drift away from themselves.
As a trans man trying to claim my own masculinity, I think what I've struggled with most is guilt. The contradiction of feeling that I belong to it, in a world that has been harmed by masculinity. That's why I didn't just have to discover my masculinity; I had to rethink it, rebuild it, redefine it for myself. More than identifying with it, I had to reckon with it.
For a long time in that process, I tried to make myself smaller. To take up less space. To ask for less. To be less visible.
And yet, looking back now, I see that a healthy masculinity isn't built on annihilating yourself. Nor on giving yourself up in order to serve others. It's built on being able to make room for others while also making room for yourself.
Maybe that's why, whenever I think about masculinity, my mind keeps circling back to my father. In a world that builds manhood out of domination, hardness, and fear, I learned masculinity in my father's tenderness.
I saw in him a serenity, a willingness to listen, a way of showing love without turning it into a way of asserting dominance. From him I learned that strength sometimes lies not in raising your voice, but in being able to truly hear another person.
That's why coming out to my father as a trans man was always a huge deal for me.
The strange part is that, even though I'd spent years insisting other masculinities are possible, the moment I faced the idea of coming out to him, the fears that rose up in me were still feeding off that same old story of manhood. I was afraid of being misunderstood.I was afraid of being diminished. I was afraid of losing love.
After coming out to him these past few weeks, I realized that throughout the whole process I wasn’t concerned about my father. I was concerned about the masculinity the world had described to me. I wasn't listening to who he is, but the fears I'd been taught about what to expect from men.
But the truth was much simpler. Standing in front of me was a person who had shown me love my entire life.
And sometimes you only feel the weight of a burden you've carried for years once you finally set it down.
What I felt after that conversation wasn't just happiness. It was a lightness. The loosening of a tension I'd carried in my body for a long time. The lightness of being able to exist without shrinking myself, without hiding, without the fear of losing love.
Maybe that's why, this year, Pride is, for me, less about visibility than about this sense of ease.
About being able to come a little closer to myself.
And about being able to believe again that other masculinities are possible.
Thank you for giving me this ease dad. I love you so much.
