Butchmom
From the first phone call, I knew I was in trouble.
“Hello…I’d like to talk with someone about artificial insemination.” I was asked the typical medical history questions and then “how do you know you’re infertile?”
“Um … I don’t. In fact, I hope I’m not.” Pause. Sensing this woman had no measurable sense of humor, I opted for the direct approach. “I’m a lesbian,” I offered, as more of a clue than a statement of fact, “I think I need something called sperm?” L-O-N-G pause.
I believe I was born to be a mom. But still, I was shocked by the challenges and changes that pregnancy presented to my identity, my self-perception and my politics.
I had been out as a lesbian for 15 years and in a 10-year relationship when I became pregnant. It had been years since anyone, well meaning or not, had asked me about a boyfriend. I had begun to pride myself on giving out a lesbian vibe strong enough to deter heterosexist assumptions. But when strangers began to inquire about some imaginary husband, I feared I had lost that hard-earned vibe. I spent much of my pregnancy wanting to wear a large “Pregnant Dyke” T-shirt.
The second challenge came to my “butch” identity. I am, by no means, a hard butch. I use butch as an adjective that describes my haircut, my clothes, etc. But near the end of my first trimester, I began feeling quite femme. (This is in no way intended to describe, or insult, anyone who identifies as femme, but to illustrate how far removed I felt from my comfortable butch persona.) I burst into tears at TV commercials, screamed at the sight of a spider and, most dreaded of all, was forced to concede to my changing body by shopping for a bra. I was unfazed by nausea, undeterred by exhaustion and unconcerned about my expanding belly. Bra shopping, however, left me feeling that becoming a mom could undermine my sense of self and where I fit into the lesbian world.
Finally, I wondered if feeling a baby moving inside me might change my staunchly pro-choice politics. Would my experience reinforce my certainty that everyone deserves a choice? Or would my experience link me to the potential for life and growth in every fetus? When I drove past a group of anti-choice protestors with my newborn in the car, I realized that every child deserves to be as loved and wanted as my daughter. Violating that, forcing a child to be born without that love, is an unconscionable sin: wrong for the mother, wrong for the child and wrong for the world.
And so it was that two new souls were born—my incredible daughter and her devoutly-lesbian, sometimes-butch, perpetually-political mommy. Δ
- J. B. McNeil