See title. How do I even cope with never being able to get pregnant? I mourn the fact that I never even once had the opportunity to get pregnant, to feel life in me developing, and all that. Of all things, this gives me the greatest dysphoria. I want to have wider hips and larger boobs, and even though I’m 28 (so hip widening likely won’t happen… maybe surgery?) and I’m 7 months on HRT, I feel like it’s not satisfactory yet. It has made me so much happier and I feel much more liberated having HRT, but even before I knew trans was a thing, even early on, I still had the desire to eventually be able to get pregnant.
I don’t care that it’s a lot of morning sickness, feeling miserable and extremely tired, heavy, and all that - I experienced long illness before. But having someone at the end of it, feeling the baby kick… I heavily miss that I cannot experience that. I’m happy for those who can, but I wish I could, and I want to actively fight for it. Even if I die or suffer horribly, then at least I will have contributed to further understanding so that people may one time experience it.
To that child whom I will likely not have the luck of carrying – may life find you when it calls you. I love you with all my heart and I wish I were able to see you. If I ever do succeed in that, then I swear solemnly to thank the world for its bounty and gifts; and regardless I will support all who struggle through life.
I’m not a trans person, but maybe my experience will help. I thought for some years, when I was young, of having children because it was what my mother told me that gave happiness and even value to a [cis] woman. She criticized [cis] women who had no [cis] husband, who were lesbian, who were childless, etc. She even pitied them saying things like “poor Whoever, she ended up unmarried” or things like that. It was like living with a typical 19th century woman in a way.
So I internalized things, but then I started hitting adulthood and I started to question them. First the deal with heteronormativity and stuff. But then I questioned the idealization of pregnancy and motherhood. Oh, boy! It’s a deep topic when you dive into it, but some highlights.
First, feminism has a lot of resources about how pregnancy is a very complex and even risky biological process and it is very subjective (and it should be subjective) if it is enjoyable or not; that is, some might enjoy it (and that’s great news), but others might suffer or hate the whole process and that doesn’t make them mean, evil, ungrateful or whatever (it’s super valid not to enjoy it too). That made me think of it in a colder, more medical and more realistic way: it’s a thing bodies can pass, there’s no obligation, there’s no magic, there’s nothing. The aura, the mystification fell. It was a choice. Should I make it still?
Well, that’s my second highlight: the morality of creating life. After some years, I concluded I had no right to impose life unto other. It sounds dramatic, but really, why should I bring another person to this life (especially to these times, but always)? To meet some social standard?, some biological tendencies that I might adopt blindly as rules (no, thanks)?, some narcissistic dream of seeing myself replicated? Philosophical antinatalism reaffirmed my thoughts as I haven’t found convincing any “refutation” of it. And thus another myth fell: that we ought to reproduce. We don’t; it might even be morally problematic or wrong (which is my stance).
And by questioning the aura, the aesthetics and even ethics we impose on pregnancy and motherhood, by making all the issue “naked”, I noticed it was not appealing to me anymore. I’m tolerant as most vegans are tolerant of meat-consumers, like “you do you”, but really it’s kind of horrific to me sometimes as an idea. It feels like a science fiction thing. You can read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley in an antinatalist light and that’s the vibe I sometimes get from people who manically (as Viktor) rush to have “babies” for the ideas behind (the baby shower, and the little objects, and the beautiful flowy dresses, and…), only to find out, like Viktor, that creating life should be about the responsibility and the creature and not the ego, the fanciful life, etc.
So I’m childless by choice. No crave from the uterus (lol) nor other misogynistic and outdated descriptions; and no unhappiness. I do have a partner, but I know I could be happy with just friends too. I can gladly say my mom was wrong on these ones. I found being a happy woman is not about fitting into these (honestly closed) boxes.
The end. Sorry for the long comment.