How to NOT get invited to your stepdaughter’s wedding
I only met my wife’s stepfather once, and once was enough. It was at my sister-in-law’s college graduation. My wife and I had been dating for several months at this point, and I was early in my transition. She had already met my parents because they lived in the area, but her parents were visiting for the graduation, and I was meeting them for the first time.
The introduction went something like this (keep in mind he’s had two openly trans kids for years, and I look like a woman with short hair to him):
Future Mother-in-law (who I had met the day before): This is Link, Link with a k, not a c (she had asked me earlier)
Stepfather-in-law: Oh yeah? Let’s see some ID.
Again, I was going by a masculine name, and dressed in men’s clothes. I looked obviously trans; I wasn’t even on hormones yet. My ID, as any idiot could intuit, had my deadname on it at that point, and I definitely wasn’t going to show it to him.
It was a microaggression. You could say, “Oh it was just a joke.” But this is how he always is: rude, insensitive, transphobic. It was just impressive that he managed to convey that within a single line of dialogue. I couldn’t have written an asshole stepdad any better if I tried.