Surviving pregnancy from a queer perspective

My current selection of (mostly) feminist parenting books

While we might be living in an era with an overabundance of support groups and advice sites (seemingly) of all shapes and sizes, I still found myself feeling quite lost and untethered when I got pregnant. And not because it wasn't expected. No, I have entered this new path in my life with my eyes open. However, it is still undeniable that I was far from fully prepared for what awaited me on the other side. I was not expecting the new forms of heterosexism that awaited me, or the patronising bs that I was suddenly subjected to, or the relative lack of feminist support that I faced (or at least had to find completely anew, as my previous communities just did not have the answers to my new list of questions).

Here are some of the main heterosexist challenges that I faced (and that's putting aside the everyday physical struggles of pregnancy, like nausea, lack of sleep, or heartburn!):

1. My body my choice!(?)

   I had been promoting this old but still hot feminist adage for many years, but I did not realise that I'd need to defend it on all sorts of new fronts when I first got pregnant. You might not notice it in the first trimester, as people 'only' start putting their hands on your bump (with or without asking for consent) after it starts showing! I still go into a bit of a shock response whenever that happens, even though I'm nearing the end now, because you never quite get used to the idea of strangers to start randomly touching you! Or maybe you do. Maybe pregnancy just wasn't long enough. As a younger woman, in my club-going days, I remember constantly being on high alert for unwanted bum grabbing, although it could still shock you sometimes. But here I was naively thinking that this stage of my life would be different somehow. I guess it's just the form of unwanted attention that changes, not necessarily the fact that you get it. And heterosexist patriarchy never seems to sleep - it just changes tactics when you start a new life stage!

   
   

2. Even more patronising bs.

   This is likely not new to you if you identify as or grew up a girl/woman, but there's a new level of it that awaits you if you get pregnant. The belly touches are often accompanied by unwanted and unsolicited, yet insistent, comments, advice or offers of help. Even when it comes to small things, like moving a chair on wheels, which obviously takes next to no effort - even when you're pregnant, shockingly! - people suddenly seem to assume that you cannot do anything by yourself! One student even told me that I should be off work since I'm pregnant! As if pregnancy suddenly made me incapable of doing my (teaching) job.

   
   

   There is also a world of pregnancy-related sexist comments that suddenly faced me, that I was not expecting at all. Did you know, for example, that it seems absolutely ok to most people to tell a pregnant woman that she's looking surprisingly 'big' - straight to her face! - even though it is not a comment that most would have made so ignorantly and brazenly to her at any other stage in her life. It still shocks me - people say it seemingly without any sense of being out of line or hurtful. Why would anyone think it's a good idea to say something like that? Especially considering that pregnancy is a time when many will struggle with body image as it is (see, for example, COPE research). On the bright side, it can have a quite comedic effect: like that time a colleague tried to suggest I would have a big baby based on nothing but eyeballing me - and insisted even when I tried to counter her with actual, reliable information to the contrary straight from my midwife! But most of the time these comments are simply unnecessary, can be hurtful and exacerbate anxious thoughts that many already have in pregnancy. So please stop them if you've been one of the people spouting them.

   
   

3. The pink/blue / normie gender agenda.

   One of the moments of my pregnancy that I will never forget was when a colleague at work asked me if I'm planning a 'gender reveal' party. My reaction was, I thought, very measured, considering how annoying I find the question to be more generally. I know that we can't expect everyone - especially our gender-normative colleagues - to be fully up to scratch on their gender knowledge, so I tried to very calmly explain why I thought it was not a good idea: I simply found the prospect of revealing someone's gender for them illogical (or to say bluntly, ridiculous). But the experience still made me feel slightly under the microscope. While my colleague did not argue with me (much), she did seem quite surprised and taken aback by my reaction, as if revealing someone's gender for them in a big blue/pink party (long before the person can even speak for themselves!) was totally normal and wonderful.

   
   

4. You are what you read?!

   After about 3 months of almost passively worrying about the lack of any adequate support system for this stage in my life, I finally took the initiative and joined an app for people struggling with the same or similar challenges (Peanut). One of the recommendations I got from it was to read Give Birth Like a Feminist by Milli Hill. What I did not realise when buying the book is: a) just how scary it would be to read about everything that could go wrong in what was already set to be the most challenging moment of my life!; b) that the author had certain views about womanhood and motherhood that I would most likely like to protect my little one from! On balance, and at that stage still struggling to find many alternatives in a world that seems to offer only sub-par options especially for anyone who's in any way challenging normative ways of being while pregnant, I am still glad I read it - at least it offered a feminist perspective on birth. It seems that most other pregnancy books are primarily divided between two opposing camps (neither of which speaks to me much): one espousing the 'mother goddess' rhetoric, elevating birth to something akin to a magical ritual, and another overmedicalising motherhood and birth experiences; so I decided to persevere and finish the reading anyway, keeping in mind that it would help me get ready for an experience that I realised I was ill-prepared for at that point. However, I'm soooo glad that I have eventually found resources that were both feminist and not reinforcing the gender binary in the way that Hill was (more about these in the next section)!

   
   

5. No longer fitting in (again!)

   When you're pregnant, you quickly realise that you begin to stick out, even in places that used to be your closest communities - even the ones found after decades of searching, that seemed like they were 'the ones' you were always looking for. As you start to divert your attention from matters that used to be front and centre of your life in preparation for this new life experience, people in these communities also stop paying much attention to you or treat you as the activist or academic that you used to be perceived as. You now begin to be seen or at least treated mainly as a pregnant woman - and even feel like just that in some circumstances! - rather than the whole person with thoughts and opinions of your own that you used to be (this happened to me in some of my academic communities, as well as queer and feminist ones). Others might become judgy, giving you unsolicited advice, rather than listening to you properly, for pretty much the same reasons. I treated it as a sign that it might be time to find new communities that will listen to you and understand. I continue this thread in the section below, focusing on some of the solutions I found to this new challenging time in my life.

Some antidotes that I can recommend based on my experience:

1. Soothing sounds.

   I found podcasts to be a lot better during this period, rather than most books, for all of the above reasons and more. In particular, Is It Normal? with Jessie Ware is just wonderful - inclusive and reassuring, designed to answer all sorts of common (and often awkward) questions you might have during a pregnancy, and also with a feminist perspective on birth. Similarly, I found the Pop that Mumma podcast incredibly reassuring, particularly in the last few months and getting ready for birth. I also found some books about motherhood that delighted me, like Kate Evans' hilarious Bump, but still nothing as queer as what I would have really loved to read at this stage. (Having said that, after a later visit to the local queer bookshop (The Queery), I had to update this post, as I did find some queer(er) reads that positively surprised me and that must be included here: Revolutionary Mothering and Supporting Queer Birth.)

   

   An absolute gem of a mothering book, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Frontlines, found at The Queery bookshop

2. New communities

   Some of these might even feel somewhat ill-fitting too. For example, I started looking for communities for expectant mothers. As it turned out, it was not an easy task to find feminist ones, even in a place like Brighton (shock, horror!). Most pregnancy-focused groups seem to be centred around commercial activities like yoga and Pilates, rather than politics. It was thus still refreshing to find online spaces like Peanut, where one could raise important pregnancy-related questions, find informal local groups and even friends. Compared to the bs I was getting daily from the unsolicited advice of the masses of uninformed people, this was a breath of fresh air.

3. Letting go and making space in your life for the new.

   Some old friends might even have to go, if it turns out they are now completely unable to listen to you or even become unkind, seemingly seeing you as less of a person just because you also happen to be pregnant.