Kai Wright: (Traditional) Fathers Don't Always Know Best

Today's post is from Kai Wright, author of Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay, and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York. Wright is is a writer and editor in Brooklyn, NY, whose work explores the politics of sex, race, and health. He contributes to several publications, ranging from The Nation to ColorLines magazine. This post originally appeared on TheRoot.com, where he is senior writer.

Who's your daddy? Barack Obama, that's who. We haven't seen black family role modeling like this since the Huxtables. Actually, Cliff and Clair couldn't touch the Obamas-- they didn't have Bo. Still, the president's not content with his own nuclear family bliss. He really, really wants you to have a great dad, too.

But the problem with Obama's effort to turn Father's Day into an annual conversation about the tragedy of failed fathers is that it's rooted in one of the greatest-- and most consequential-- lies the Christian right has sold the country: That “traditional” family structures are best equipped to produce healthy kids. The notion that biological fathers are essential to childhood development wasn't true when Dan Quayle asserted it in 1992, and it won't become true no matter how eloquently Barack Obama restates it.

“The hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one that no government can fill,” Obama wrote in a beautifully crafted Parade magazine essay last week. “We can do everything possible to provide good jobs and good schools and safe streets for our kids, but it will never be enough to fully make up the difference.”

This is a terribly moving refrain that echoes through all of the president's rhetoric on fathers-- and it's entirely beside the point. Nobody sane would argue that government can give a child love. That truism, however, does not mean only a gendered dyad of parents are adequately equipped to do so.

Video: The Daddy Shift on KGO-TV San Francisco

Click here if you can't see the video: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=6879634.

Jeremy Adam Smith: Father’s Day Recommended Reading

Today's post is from Jeremy Adam Smith, senior editor of Greater Good magazine and author of The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting are Transforming the American Family. He blogs about the politics of parenting at Daddy Dialectic.

It's an empirical fact that fathers are comparatively rare in children's books — when economist David A. Anderson and psychologist Mykol Hamilton studied 200 children's books in 2005, they found that fathers appeared about half as often as mothers. Mothers were ten times more likely to be depicted taking care of babies than fathers and twice as likely to be seen nurturing older children.

No surprise there, of course. Moms are still the ones most likely to be taking care of kids. But where does that leave families who don't fit the traditional mold? And how does that help parents who want to provide caring role models to their sons?

There are books out there, few and far between, that depict dads as co-parents and primary caregivers. In an effort to find them, I consulted bookstores in San Francisco as well as my local children's librarian.

My list is not exhaustive; these are only the ones I can recommend, and there are many titles I found online that I wasn't able to read in real life. And because these kinds of books are so rare, I'm willing to bet that there are plenty out there that few people know about.

Sorry, We're Not Done Yet: It's a Little Too Soon For a Post-Feminist World

Today's post is from Susan Campbell, author of Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl. Campbell's writing has been recognized by the American Association of Sunday and Features Editors; National Women's Political Caucus; the Sunday Magazine Editors Association, and the Connecticut chapter of Society of Professional Journalists. She was also a member of the Hartford Courant's 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning team for breaking news. Campbell blogs at the Hartford Courant and at her Dating Jesus blog.

As exciting a prospect as it may be, I don't think we are quite ready for the big balloon-drop to celebrate gender equality.

For what else could we be celebrating when we hear that we're in a post-feminist era?

I hate to be the skunk at the picnic, but maybe you've heard the rumblings, too. Earlier this year, commentators called Michelle Obama a post-feminist (look, she's married and she has a job!), and no less an entity than the New York Times referred to the era in which we live as a "post-feminist" one in a promo asking that age-old and impossible-to-answer question, "What Do Women Want?"

We all know what "post" means, right? After-the-fact--as if feminism had served its purpose, and it's time to move on to a new era, a more egalitarian one. We can take all that energy that we were putting into correcting gender inequality in the boardroom, the military, and the pulpit and--I don't know--end the war or something.

Except, well, we're not done yet.

Transsexuals Are Not “Human Monsters”

Today's post is from Matt Kailey, the author of Just Add Hormones: An Insider's Guide the Transsexual Experience (Beacon Press, 2005), the editor of Focus on the Fabulous: Colorado GLBT Voices (Johnson Books, 2007), and the managing editor of Out Front Colorado, Colorado's oldest and largest GLBT publication.

The online teaser was intriguing: '"Human monsters" a reality.' Having lived through the first few years of the 21st century, I wholeheartedly agreed. But when I clicked on the link, I discovered that it led not to a story about current political figures, but to a CNN article about an '80s Olympic athlete who was unknowingly given steroids by her coaches in order to enhance her performance.

East German shot putter Heidi Krieger thought she was taking vitamins, but later discovered, as her body began to masculinize, that she was being given the anabolic steroid Oral-Turinabol, a drug that, according to the article, "changed a woman into a man." As Krieger continued on the steroids, she noted changes not only in her physical appearance, but also in her feelings.

"I felt much more attracted to women and just felt like a man. But I knew I was not (a) lesbian," Krieger told CNN.

Good thinking, because lesbians don't feel like men. But I digress.

In 1997, Krieger had a "sex-change operation" and became Andreas Krieger. Details of this particular "operation" were not made public, and I would like to know more, because I find it fascinating that there is one magical "sex-change operation" that will do the trick. But I digress. Krieger is now married and runs an army surplus store. He says he does not want to be seen as a victim, but he presents himself as quite unhappy with his situation and with the circumstances surrounding his "sex-change operation."

Stop Trying to “Fix” Trans People

Today's post is from Matt Kailey, the author of Just Add Hormones: An Insider's Guide the Transsexual Experience (Beacon Press, 2005), the editor of Focus on the Fabulous: Colorado GLBT Voices (Johnson Books, 2007), and the managing editor of Out Front Colorado, Colorado's oldest and largest GLBT publication.

Trans people aren't broken. We aren't looking to be "fixed," and we have no need of a repairman. We have spent decades trying to convince the Western world of this, and forgive us if some in our ranks were starting to feel a little optimistic about our progress – until, maybe, now.

Just when we thought that an end to the tinkering around with our brains might be in sight – at least for those who are very far sighted – along comes a repairman in the form of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a non-transman who, like so many before him, thinks he knows what's better for us than we do. Dr. Zucker thinks he can "fix" us – whether we want him to or not.

Now Dr. Zucker might be merely an annoying interruption in our otherwise peaceful day – some scam artist who knocks on our door and tells us that our roof or our driveway or our air conditioning is in disrepair and that he can fix it for cheap – and we could easily tell him that we have our own service, thank you very much, and close the door in his face. Unfortunately, in this case, there's one small catch – Dr. Kenneth Zucker has been appointed by the American Psychiatric Association to serve as the chair for the Sexual and Gender Identities Disorder task force that reviews the new version of the DSM – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual that is used by psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists to diagnose mental illness. And, in this regard, Dr. Zucker is no mere annoyance knocking on our door. He is a very dangerous man – and not just to trans people.

He’s Having a Baby

by Matt Kailey

Matt Kailey is the author of Just Add Hormones: An Insider’s Guide the Transsexual Experience (Beacon Press, 2005), the editor of Focus on the Fabulous: Colorado GLBT Voices (Johnson Books, 2007), and the managing editor of Out Front Colorado, Colorado’s oldest and largest GLBT publication.

And now for the latest transsexual travesty (there’s at least one a week nowadays, isn’t there?): a transman is pregnant. Female-to-male transsexual (born female, now male) Thomas Beatie is bearded, breastless, and with child, and although he is not the first transman to become pregnant, nor will he be the first to give birth, the situation is causing a major blip on the media’s sensationalism sonar. Beatie has been interviewed on Oprah, told his story to The Advocate, and had his picture passed around like a bottle of Boone’s Farm all over the Internet, with his pregnant abdomen prominent below his reconstructed chest. He’s been called everything from “freak” to “fabulous,” and everyone with an opinion has made it known. Forgive me if I yawn.