“I was setting out to investigate someone I scarcely knew. ”

June 20, 2016 5:12 AM

Getting to Know My Father, the Woman by Susan Faludi [The Guardian] After decades of estrangement from her ultra-competitive father, an email arrived: she was a woman. Could they rebuild their relationship?

One afternoon, working at home in Portland, Oregon, I took a break to check my email and found a new message:

To: Susan C Faludi
Date: 7/7/2004
Subject: Changes.

It was from my father. “Dear Susan,” it began, “I’ve got some interesting news for you. I have decided that I have had enough of impersonating a macho aggressive man that I have never been inside.” Attached was a series of snapshots. In the first, my 76-year-old father is standing in a hospital lobby in a sheer, sleeveless chemise and red skirt. The caption read: “I look tired after the surgery.” In another, taken before “the surgery”, my father is perched amid a copse of trees, modelling a henna wig with bangs and a pale ruffled blouse. The caption read, “Stefánie in Vienna garden.” The email was signed, “Love from your parent, Stefánie.”

[This is an edited extract from In The Darkroom, by Susan Faludi]

posted by Fizz (3 comments total)

Jesus fuck, Guardian, this is a pile of steaming horseshit, presentation wise. Misgendering throughout (and in the title here, to boot!) in both pronouns and the constant use if 'father' (when Stefanie Faludi herself uses "parent")... Disgusted that this was ever published in this form.
posted by Dysk at 5:21 AM on June 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Most of the content is just barely-disguised transphobia as well, with bullshit like "the dissonance between make pattern baldness and high heels" presented with the veneer of plausible deniability of "the people around me thought" or "I thought at the time".
posted by Dysk at 5:25 AM on June 20, 2016

If cis people could treat us as actual people and not as salacious stories that in the end, are all about cis people and their redemption, that'd be lovely. If trans people's requests to be recognised as their chosen gender weren't presented as an outlandishimposition and unreasonable, that'd be a good start.

This fails on both fronts.
posted by Dysk at 5:35 AM on June 20, 2016 [3 favorites]