“Not about the name, not really,” I admitted. “I figured they could change it later if they wanted to. I have been pretty vocal about making sure I didn’t drown my kid in pink or traditionally girly stuff, though. My mom seems to be on board. I don’t trust my grandmother but I’m going to keep an eye on it.”

Morgan nodded, pointing her french fry at me. “Good call. There’s nothing wrong with pink stuff, but—” Morgan paused for a minute, thinking. “Okay, so my dad... God. You know how much I hate that downstairs room where we watch TV? With all the football stuff?”

I nodded.

Morgan rolled her eyes. “When I was little, Dad signed me up for football. I liked playing—I love sports—but it got stressful fast. There was such a focus on being little men with all the baggage that went along with our idea of ‘being little men’ that I couldn’t get into it.”

“Toxic masculinity,” Erin chimed in, and Morgan nodded.

“Yeah, that. So, you have all this toxic masculinity in football, and there I am figuring out my gender still. I didn’t belong there, you know? But I love my Dad a lot so I sucked it up for years, hating it the entire time. I felt obligated to act like all the boys and it just wasn’t me.

“It got so bad, looking at the shoulder pads started giving me panic attacks,” Morgan finished. “In ninth grade, my therapist backed me up when I told my dad I didn’t want to play football anymore. He only sort of got it, only sort of gets what me being trans means at all, but the point is a lot of stuff for kids follows that pink-and-blue thing. Your kid might like pink stuff, and that’s totally cool! But if they don’t, it needs to be real clear that’s okay, too. Kids will do a lot to make our parents happy even if it’s at our own expense.”

I understood what she was saying, but we weren’t at the point where my kid could make choices yet. It was on me, and I...kinda didn’t know what I was doing? Supposedly, that’s what the Saturday class was going to teach me, but I doubted they’d touch on gender politics and infants. If they did, super cool, but I was pretty sure they were focusing on Baby 101, like “how not to put your infant in a microwave” and “don’t drink Clorox and breastfeed.”

“My kid’ll be a loud, fleshy cabbage the first year or so. They’re not exactly going to have an opinion,” I said. “And I really don’t wanna mess her up before she can even talk.”

“Fleshy Cabbage—album or band?” Erin asked.