For anyone who knows me, I am pretty difficult to offend. I am an open book, and you can ask me anything. And, I’ll take it one step further; not only can you ask me anything, but I will answer honestly, probably in much more depth than you ever expected, anticipated or even wanted. Despite this predisposition to being nearly impossible to offend, I have found myself feeling aggravated over and over again lately. All by the same ignorant question: “What do you know about the baby’s dad?”.

If you don’t know me, then likely you will also not know that my partner and I recently (as in Oct 19th, like really, really recently) had a baby. And suffice it to say, that considering my partner and I are both LESBIANS, this baby HAS NO DAD. Porter has two moms. And no dad. And that’s kind of the entire point, given she is being raised by two women. Two lesbian women. Asking about the baby’s father completely degrades our relationship, implies that we are still stuck in a society where children have to be raised by 2 parents, one of each sex, and thus insults anyone whose family doesn’t fit that bill.

I realize that people ask this out of curiosity about the donor. But sometimes language can be so offensive and the offender truly has no idea how ignorant they sound. In fact, in defense of those asking the question, I truly believe they are trying to show how hip and open-minded they are and “cool with the whole thing” just by having the chutzpah to ask in the first place. It’s one of those conversations where it’s like “Hey, I’m so cool with this, I feel comfortable talking about it…cool as a cucumber, I am”.

But see the issue is people are talking before they think. And it’s bothersome and offensive. It devalues myself, my partner, and our ability to raise a baby without a man in the picture.

So, a word to the wise: stop asking lesbian parents information about the baby’s “father”. Likely, she has no father. She does, I can almost guarantee, have a sperm donor. And depending on your relationship with my partner or myself, it may be OK to go there.

As for me? I will continue to be an open book. And if you want to know what we know about the baby’s donor, all you have to do is ask.