I'm always surprised when it happens. Friends, family members, people who I think of as liberal, friendly, and relatively queer savvy ask questions like, "Well, what color is her dad's hair?"
Now, certainly I get these questions from strangers, and that, while sometimes exhausting, is a different story. But, when people who know that I conceived using sperm from a bank ask about the "dad" or the "father," it always throws me. To me it just seems so obvious- he's the donor, not the dad.
I know that people don't do it maliciously. It's simply not something that most people think about, and, outside of the circles of queer conception, I guess it's not really language that people use everyday. But to me, the notion of a dad, a father, is so far removed from a vial of frozen sperm donated by a person I'll never meet, that I can't help being startled, and yes, I admit it, slightly annoyed, every time someone uses those words.
And so every time I gently correct them, and say, "Oh, you mean the donor." Because, while I'm very grateful to that anonymous man for helping to me to make such an awesome kid, he most certainly is not the dad.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
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3 comments:
We, too, are taken aback when people (like Wifey's mother) call our donor the Dad, or Father, and HE is a good friend of ours. But he is Uncle K, not Dad. Hopefully the distinction will be more easily made by people as Mister Finn gets older and they get more used to it? We hope! Because it is annoying!
I completely agree with you. The word dad or father to me confers a relationship. My "dad" is not my genetic dad but he's "my dad" if that makes any sense. I too correct people when they use the word dad instead of donor. I think it's confusing to the kids not to correct them (even though at this age my kids are too young to really get it). Our kids don't have a dad and never will so I want to make sure people aren't referring to the donor as the dad. I think the people who refer to the donor as the dad are the people who later on are more likely to want to find the donor b/c of said perceived "dad" role that they're missing out on. We chose an anonymous donor for a reason and we are greatful to said anonymous donor but he is not my kids' dad.
I dunno, I think it's just a matter of semantic differences. To some people "dad" means "father" means "biological donor of DNA"; to some "dad" means "daddy" means "the man who reads stories to and cuddles the kid". Just because you think the latter doesn't mean the former is linguistically illegitimate, you know? It's likely they're not being dismissive, just using the terms differently.
It's like the adoption debate, where to some people "my real mum" means "my birth mum" and to others "my real mum" means "my adoptive mum". Or like when I worked at the ice cream store, and customers asked for "a normal ice cream". Did they mean a soft-serve, which ice cream stores traditionally sell; or scoop ice cream, which is older and more venerable in the greater ice-cream making history? :p
OK, it's not so much like the latter example. :p But you get my drift. I think there are good arguments either way, so I guess it just pays to be aware who you're talking to.
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