David Minerva Clover

I don’t get out much — and it’s not because I don’t have a sense of adventure or don’t care about learning about the larger world: It’s because I’m broke.

The reality is the shift is happening slowly; for queer kids, and kids of queer parents, it might be too slow. Representation for LGBTQ families matters!

We compare birth stories like war stories. Twelve hours of labor, 32 hours of labor, three hours of pushing, we fall into the trap of trying to one-up each other. So yes, I can see why, to a parent-to-be who is enthusiastically anticipating pain relief, the refusal of an epidural might seem like a bit of a hero complex. And maybe for some people it is! But it’s none of your goddamn business.

Here’s the thing though, hating romantic comedies, and avoiding them when I could, didn’t stop me from absorbing their all consuming messages about love, sex, and romance.

When I finally realized I was trans, it was after almost a year and a half of therapy, a lot of trauma, and after becoming a parent.

Although the hunt for the perfect outfit at the thrift store was a thrill when I was thin, as a fat person, the hunt was just downright depressing.

In today’s world, children may be a financial liability, but that shouldn’t make them a luxury item.

Faced by the extreme pressure to conform to impossible beauty ideals, I followed my instincts (and my budding feminism) and rejected them wholesale. I wasn’t going to play like that; I wasn’t going to let my gender require that I wear makeup or perform a certain way.

[W]hen tickets went on sale for a DIY punk music festival that my wife had attended several times before we were married, and she lamented that there was “just no way” that she’d be able to go, a light bulb went off in my head. “What if we just all went together?” I said.

After the solstice, the light very slowly begins to return, and every day is a little longer. Yule is a promise: winter sucks, but spring will come again.