Dad asks if he should change his tattoo to his trans daughter's new name

For trans kids, or even adults, the hardest part can be coming out to a family who might not be understanding.

Part of the worry is the fear that they'll be deadnamed – called by their birth name by a family who can't get their head around their new one.

One dad took to Reddit thread AITA to ask whether he's the a*sshole for not wanting to change his tattoo to his trans daughter's new name.

My oldest child Andy[T22] came out as trans and has decided she only goes by female pronouns now. My wife[F41] immediately supported her and made sure that I would too without any argument or else she would divorce me.

It was a huge family issue for a while but eventually, it was solved and everything has been good for the last little while. I'm slowly learning more and trying to accept my daughter and her new pronouns and her name change to Athena.

He said, adding that he didn't want to get it changed right now for cost reasons. "My wife told me she wants me to get it touched up to correct it but I explained to her tattoos don't work like that and you can't just change "Andy" to "Athena".

I told her I would most likely need laser tattoo removal surgery and then would need to pay the cost of a brand new tattoo which I can not afford either of.

People were mostly sympathetic to the issue, with some trans posters saying that his mistake was getting a name tattooed on himself at all, as they can change.

"I think therapy and a willingness to change the issues are imperative. OP could also highly benefit from input of the awesome redditors at r/asktransgender" one person said.

Another, suspecting there might be a deeper issue, said:

This is pretty rough but I'm voting YTA because this goes way deeper than the tattoo. You said your wife made sure you supported Athena without question or else she would divorce you -- this leads me to believe you were not happy that Athena was trans and that you're likely transphobic. Or were transphobic.

Some comments saw posters going on rants about "identity politics", but mostly, people were pretty balanced.The thread is now locked as it caused so much debate among redditors.

HT Someecards

More: Man asks Reddit whether it's wrong to ask his brother not to come out at his wedding