I studied a concept in grad school called racial stress, which is a term to describe discomfort or stress related to interactions that involve race.  It can affect anyone but is particularly detrimental for folks on the receiving end of a racist interaction. Research has shown that it can negatively affect mental and emotional health.  If you’re interested, check out this great article that was published in The Atlantic a few years ago.  This clearly isn’t a blog about race (yet!), but I find racial stress a helpful concept when considering that folks in the LGBTQ community can face a similar kind of stress due to discrimination based upon their sexual orientation or gender identity. Queer (or race or gender etc) identity discrimination is not really avoidable, but researchers have found that it can be helpful to deal with the stress of discrimination through mindful breathing, processing with folks in your community and when appropriate, with the perpetrator.  Fortunately, it is not a foregone conclusion that one who experiences stress resulting from discrimination will suffer the long-term health consequences as long as one is able to process the feelings associated with it in a healthy way.

When Mrs S and I embarked on the journey of having a baby, we encountered quite a but of subverted discrimination (aka microaggressions) along with the stress and frustration related to it.  I started this blog, in part, to process the negativity that I experienced related to having a baby as a queer family.  This is the post that I have been meaning to write since I started Queer Tribe. I am not here to seek sympathy or point fingers but to draw attention to the exclusion that I experienced.  I realize that no one is going to be perfectly inclusive and I am not expecting this.  But I do think it’s important to increase awareness of the experience of the queer minority in the context of having a baby because it affected me, and I know it affects others.

The first microaggression I remember occurred when Mrs S and I took a breastfeeding class at a U Penn hospital.  The instructor offered some useful content, but also promulgated a lot of old-school stereotypes of the male/female parenting dynamic.  For instance, she opened the class by making a list of all the things dads were worried about before having a kid… the first on the list was money, meanwhile moms worried about the health of the baby (or something like that).  The rest of the class proceeded in this manner, with exercises asking “dad” to do xyz to help “mom” do blah blah related to breastfeeding.  In short, the whole experience was alienating for Mrs S and me because (a) we were the only same sex couple in the entire class of 100 – not anyone’s fault but we didn’t really “blend in” and (b) our family structure was never a part of the conversation.

I (maybe naively) thought that having a kid with Mrs S in a liberal urban area like Philly (where we conceived The Beast) or San Francisco (where we gave birth) or Oakland (where we live now, one of the highest concentrations of lesbian couples in the whole country) would be a non-event.  Sure, queers still aren’t popular in some parts of the country but on the coasts, lesbians are boring (in a good way).  So I was taken aback by the sheer volume of microaggressions against our little queer tribe.  Between The Beast’s conception and her 1st birthday, a pattern of discrimination emerged…

While we were living in Philadelphia (a fairly liberal city) Mrs S recieved prenatal care at Pennsylvania Hospital.  I attended every appointment with her.  I would be in the examination room with Mrs S and each time the nurse would walk in she would and say “Hi” and introduce herself to Mrs S, and completely ignore me.  It was awkward and confusing.  I kept asking myself, was this because they didn’t know what to do with me, or maybe they did this to all partners, or maybe they didn’t think I was involved somehow in this process?  What about other lesbian couples in Philly (we know they exist), did they experience the same thing?

Then we signed up for a birthing class where were once again the only lesbian couple.  This didn’t feel like an issue until we received the handouts, which referred solely to “mom’s” role and and “dad’s” role in preparing for birth.

We moved back to the Bay Area two months before the beast was born and took baby care and baby CPR classes at UCSF.  On the first day of our baby care class, the instructor asked each couple to introduce themselves with their names and biggest fears about having a baby.  Yet, when then instructor came to Mrs S, she asked her to introduce herself, skipped me and moved onto the next straight couple.  It makes me upset all over again writing this!  Even in San Francisco where there are more queers than pretty much anywhere in the country, hospital staff somehow couldn’t see Mrs S and I as a family unit.

Numerous times Mrs S has heard the question, “Why did you carry the baby and not Mrs T?”  We recognize that this may be innocent curiosity, but it alludes to notions of what a mother should look like (as I, Mrs T, present more feminine than Mrs S and people are surprised by the fact that a “butchier” woman would be the one carrying the baby).  People also love to ask, “Who is the dad?” The answer… The Beast has two mommies, there is no dad.  She has a doner, but no dad.  This question is innately invalidating of our family and also screams patriarchy!

I want to hear your stories, too!