David Minerva Clover

I expected it was only a matter of time until someone sent it my way. I mean... friends have even called my relationship with my wife “inspirational.” [...] [O]nce I noticed that I still hadn’t been invited, I started to notice something else: Everyone that I saw posting “love your spouse” pictures was straight....

[CN: PTSD, pregnancy, birth] Something snapped inside me and I was transported backwards in time.

It is worse to be fat shamed because thin shaming is often just fatphobia in disguise. Let me say that again for the people in the back.

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.

It was like how you might feel if you thought you were the only person who liked apples. Maybe everyone else just thought apples were for decoration, but you liked to eat them. And then one day you found someone else who also ate apples, and you got really excited about that! And then suddenly, it hit you… What if everybody secretly ate and enjoyed apples, only we were all too afraid to mention it?

I don’t want to deprive my child of these magical Halloween memories, I just also want to light candles and talk about our ancestors.

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!

Yes, we should be criticizing these straight, cisgender dads. We’ve been far too easy on them for too long. It’s straight out of the patriarchy playbook.

We’re trying to raise him with a lot of options and very few assumptions, but I won’t be mad at you if you call my kid “handsome little boy” or something. It’s fine. People have a hard time talking about babies without gendered labels. Even I have a hard time with it, and I’ve put a kind of ridiculous amount of energy into analyzing this stuff.

However, I do have one favor to ask. Please, for the love of everything that is good in this world, stop calling him “little man.”

Despite our relative insulation from homophobia, my wife and I are not unaware of the situation. There are plenty of people in this country who don’t believe that we have the right to exist, to be married, or to raise a child together.