00:00We often in the beginning would just answer yes to like the question are you a girl or a boy
00:05and
00:05then just leave it and then people get to sit with wait what because we wouldn't actually give an answer.
00:21Good morning Dewey. Good morning.
00:26We always wanted to have kids.
00:29Well I think it was an argument for a little while about who would carry first
00:33because we both wanted to do it but I am older and so I won.
00:41As queer people it was really difficult to get pregnant and it was like a really big struggle
00:46at every level and it wasn't something necessarily that we heard a lot of people talking about.
00:51It was so expensive and we were tapped out so
00:54the baby came right in time to be broke with us.
01:10I'm non-binary and he's trans and I think what we ultimately decided on was just we want
01:17this kid's feelings about gender to come from this person and not to come from us
01:23or from grandparents or from schools or from wherever.
01:27Can I use a fork?
01:29Ah!
01:29Yeah.
01:30Okay, hold it.
01:31I think some of the questions that come up often are like why not just raise to like the sex
01:37that
01:38matches with like their genitals or whatnot and then you know if they decide that their gender is
01:43something else go with that but I think that still sets this kid up for certain expectations that would
01:50come from outside of themselves so if I'm raising you to be a girl like you're going to feel some
01:56kind of expectation to be a girl.
02:02This person's gender or gender identity or expression has like zero to do with anybody else
02:09so we never said that you know everybody else has to adhere to our rules or lack of rules about
02:16gender
02:16we never said that you know somebody else has to change their pronouns it was just this person
02:22and really it's just listening to this person.
02:262018 was when California actually started allowing people to get X's on their driver's license
02:35as a way to identify so you can either get MF or X and so we had a conversation with
02:43our doctor
02:43and was able to get it approved to have just a blank space so nothing on this birth certificate.
02:52I don't think either has put a lot of thought into the social security number.
02:56I kind of just assumed that they would have to do something differently since we had a birth
03:00certificate for this kid with no gender assignment but that wasn't the case.
03:05I think they just like sized up our like six-month-old baby and then decided
03:12yeah then decided for us which was which was what it was but
03:20they came back and said you know your baby is a boy and handed his paperwork back and we were
03:26like
03:26wait what they gave us all of our information that we had back and then said that our um social
03:32security card would be in the mail and closed the window and that was kind of the end of that
03:36conversation um yeah there was no there was no follow-up or explanation around how they came
03:44to the conclusion that they came to we weren't able to file taxes unless this kid had a social
03:50security number and we needed the money so we had to we had to do it so we did
04:05both jay and i know that it's not fun to have documents that don't match i've gone through it with
04:12um i had my name change and i was able to get my license changed idaho residents can now go
04:21gender
04:22neutral on their driver's licenses this legislation is very clear it says you can identify yourself as
04:28a male female or with an x on a new york city birth certificate well right now in colorado you
04:34have
04:34this third option right there to put on your driver's license i definitely feel like i get the pushback
04:50of like but this kid is not you you know i understand he's not me and that it's pretty likely
04:59that they'll
05:00be cis and not queer but to deny that they could be is also kind of like denying my own
05:09existence
05:10how can i say zoo wouldn't be this if i grew up to be a certain way and it would
05:16have just been easier
05:17for me if i knew about these different identities and was able to learn about them and see where i
05:25fit
05:25into them it's definitely something that we try to i guess model in a way and so when we're out
05:34you
05:35know right now this kid is obsessed with buses if we're talking about the bus driver like we're not
05:39gonna say he or she will say that person and and it's just a way to show zoo like we
05:45don't want to
05:46assume anybody else's gender the way we wouldn't want anybody to assume yours so i think it's just
05:52those kind of small things for now until zoo has the capacity to have a bigger conversation and
06:00at that point we're hoping that these smaller things have added up enough that it'll be a little
06:06bit easier to have those conversations i do want this baby to know also that there are people in the
06:13world that don't agree with what we're doing and so you're going to encounter those people
06:16and so we practice saying things and i don't pull my punches when people come and are combative with
06:25us in the street because the baby's there i want this person to know that it's okay to stick up
06:31for
06:31yourself and it's okay to not have people step on you
06:38it's something that i think is important enough that miguel and i are willing to to fight for it for
06:44this baby and if it means we gotta take on more than makes sense then we will because it doesn't
06:51feel right to me that we would be forced into a space where we would have to do something that
06:55we
06:55don't believe in and push that on our kid um i don't do that with me and so i don't
07:00think it's
07:00appropriate to do it with the baby either it feels like the best choice because it's the best reminder
07:07for me that this is zoo's life and you know even though we were the ones that did all these
07:16things
07:16and spent all this money to bring this kid into this world this is still now zoo's life folks feel
07:23like this is very new and very different the way that we're parenting and i think i'd just like to
07:31remind folks that it's really not like we're still just overwhelmingly regular parents and we're still
07:39trying to make sure this kid stays alive and find food that they'll actually eat and our house is a
07:46mess and we've got piles of laundry and so much of this is just regular parenting and we've just added
07:54this one other thing that quite honestly doesn't come up all that often
08:01so
08:01you
