Someone left a response to a response I left on this post by Nicole. The original post was not about terminology at all, but terminology has a tendency to raise its head when I have the audacity to call myself a birth parent.
The response was:
I take it from your post that you are likely male, and thus would be an ejaculation father, as men can’t give birth and even the people who coined and promote the term “birthmother” admit that the term “birth father” is a gestational impossibility (which is why they favour “begettor” or “male genetic ancestor” for the male half of conception).
New one on me there. Ejaculation father. I think I like it. That way, I can run away after the deed and not need to appear at the birth to claim my coveted title.
But I digress. Because this is not actually about me. Because what this person has done, by turning my title into a physical act, is turn mothers of loss into incubators.
There are three reasons I call myself a birth father.
- I was commenting on Nicole’s blog, and she does not like it when I refer to myself as a sperm donor. (Yes, I am being flippant here).
- It is the most widely understood and accepted term in the world at large. Natural father and biological father do not necessarily imply relinquishment, and I personally dislike the first father term because to me it devalues the father Sprog now has.
- At the time of Sprog’s birth, I was his father. I did not sign those rights away after ejaculation. I signed them away after his birth. I am therefore his birth father, not his ejaculation father.
When you devalue my role by referring to me as a father by bodily function, you do the same to his mother. Instead of her role being an ongoing one in our son’s life, you have turned it into a physical process with a beginning and an end. You have turned her into nothing but a vessel to hold someone else’s child.
Furthermore, you imply that my relationship with his mother was nothing more than passing ships in the night. That his existence was the result of a sordid drunken romp in a back alley, and not the expression of love between two people with an ongoing commitment to each other. Sure, for some people it does happen that way, and there is nothing wrong with that. But to stereotype birth parents in this way is to reduce their power and silence their voices.
