Empowerment and Self-Preservation
“We are concerned that you are learning empowerment without self-preservation.” — from We Were Witches, by Ariel Gore
I was waiting for my 20-week ultrasound when my phone rang.
It was my storage facility. They told me that they were planning to demolish the part of the building that currently had my storage unit, and wanted to know when I could come in, as soon as possible, to move my stuff to a different unit.
“Will there be anyone to help me?” I asked.
No, the woman said.
“Well, I don’t know what we’re going to do then, because I am pregnant and I literally can’t move any of these boxes. Either you need to find someone to help me or I’ll need to see if I can find someone.”
The woman became extremely apologetic then. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry! Let me see if we can find someone to help you. I’ll call you back.” “Thanks so much,” I said.
It was only after I hung up the phone that I realized that I’d put myself in a position where I’d be showing up to a storage facility, alone, and needing to explain—possibly defend—that I am a pregnant transgender man.
“We are concerned that you are learning empowerment without self-preservation.”
The phrase floats through my head. In Ariel Gore’s novel, We Were Witches, the protagonist, a teen mom also named Ariel, follows a strange singing woman to a concrete wall on which this message is spray-painted. As Ariel regards the message, the singing woman transforms into a fish and slips away down a storm drain.
“We are concerned that you are learning empowerment without self-preservation.”
I take a deep breath and think about it.
I think I am entitled to the same help that the storage facility would offer any other pregnant person.
I also think it was maybe not in my best interest to create a situation where they were expecting to help a pregnant woman, and I show up, a pregnant man.
I am angry and sad that I have to think about this at all.
I am still in the waiting room and I decide to think about it more after my ultrasound.
I look around the clinic at all the pregnant women and the non-pregnant men who are here as their partners. The people at the front desk had been nice to me. I had managed to fill in all my paperwork, although I didn’t circle anything for “Sex” because these days, whatever I circle, someone tells me I’m wrong.
I am legally male. All of my documents say I am male. My insurance company doesn’t think I can be both male and pregnant, and they initially reject my claims for prenatal care every single time. I was told there is no fix for this other than to change the sex listed with my insurer, but this pulls from my legal sex on file with the Social Security Administration, which I updated through a straightforward administrative process many years ago, as many trans people do in order to move more safely through the world.
I don’t feel uncomfortable sitting here in this waiting room. I assume that the other patients here think that I am someone’s male partner, which is fine with me.
My midwife had called ahead to make sure the practice understood that I was coming and would treat me well, an essential way of supporting trans patients that many providers don’t consider. (A fertility practice I went to years ago, one that had received some training on trans issues, simply managed to make me uncomfortable by asking me my pronoun far more often than was necessary, then referred me out for diagnostic testing to a provider who was quite clearly not comfortable seeing a transgender person.)
When they bring me for the ultrasound, the techs are also very nice. They dim the lights as though they’re about to play a movie.
I’m not prepared to see my baby’s skeleton. His skull. The tiny chambers of his beating heart.
It’s strange the way insides and outsides blur on ultrasound. We see the baby’s face, then press harder and it’s his skull.
My body grew someone else’s bones.
I’m still taking it in when the storage unit texts that someone can assist me on Monday.
Is this empowerment without self-preservation?
Would it be better to get some friends to help me move the stuff?
Is it a bad idea to go to the unit alone on Monday?
I resent that I even have to think about this, just like I resent that I need to call my insurer every single time I need any prenatal care covered. “Well, it appears that you are listed as male,” say a procession of faceless people at various call centers, as though my baby is undeserving of medical care simply because I updated my sex years ago in order to try to keep myself safe.
My gender is not a mistake.
Like many trans people working in healthcare over the past decade or so, I’ve spent a lot of unpaid time and energy trying to teach cis people how to treat us respectfully. I was much more active with this ten years ago. The workshops often used to be called “Trans 101.” I wonder about that now, the casual academic reference, as though a college-level class were needed to be able to treat our community with basic respect.
There was usually a terminology sheet, and some sort of diagram. The nature of the diagram evolved over the years. During the time I did a lot of these trainings, the “genderbread person” was in favor.
We talked about trans identity as someone whose “gender identity doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth.” Sometimes to talk about this, we first had to define “gender identity” then “sex assigned at birth.” The only words we never bothered to define were those words in the middle, linking the two: “doesn’t match.”
In fact, it has taken me until now to get curious about these two words. Doesn’t match.
I paused to look up the definition of matching: “A person or thing in some respect equal to another.” I wonder about the implication. Is it better to match?
Is the implication that being trans is similar to having mismatched socks—one’s life either an embarrassing mistake or something of a statement piece?
In many ways, I fear that this is the case—that the overwhelming narrative of transness as a body that “doesn’t match” has led to this view of trans identities.
Either trans identity is seen as somewhat pitiable, constantly relying on cisgender people to bestow our chosen names and pronouns upon us, or we are inconveniencing folks by our garish insistence on not matching. Sometimes, perhaps, both.
How has it impacted me to think for so long and to teach over and over that I am someone whose body “doesn’t match” my sense of myself? I wouldn’t say this is even accurate for me personally—I identify as a trans man and I have a trans man’s body.
I wonder, _can we reframe this? _Can we speak of a cisgender person as someone whose life does not include a moment of self-definition as a trans person? Whose life does not match a trans experience?
I can retell my stories to myself as much as I want— and in fact, to do so feels like the most vital seed of my well-being and self-preservation—but I know that this alone does not get my prenatal care covered. It does not guarantee my safety at my storage unit.
“I’m just trying to get the same care for my baby that anyone else would need,” I recently said to a call center representative, near tears because I was afraid that some important lab work had gone unprocessed due to my legal sex.
She was sympathetic. “You’re doing a good job,” she said, which I was surprised to find that I really needed to hear in that moment. But she also told me the company would still be initially denying all of my claims for as long as I was listed as male. It was simply their practice to do so.
Yet it is retelling my own stories that kept me alive, that allowed me to transition, that allowed me to grow into an adult with enough confidence to joyfully take on the project of growing another human being.
So I chose empowerment and self-preservation at the storage unit. I chose truth and self-protective strategy.
My mother offered to meet me there so that I wouldn’t be alone. I decided to be upfront with the storage unit in advance. When the person from the storage unit texted to confirm that I was coming, I confirmed, then wrote:
My mom is coming with me. I think she wants to make sure I don’t lift anything. It is her first grandbaby. Also fyi I sort of don’t look like a lot of pregnant people because I am trans, but a baby bump is a baby bump. Ok see you soon.
A highly strategic communication disguised as an offhanded text.
Normalizing—a mother, a first grandbaby, “a baby bump is a baby bump.” Wrapping my pregnant trans body into a broader cultural narrative of grandchildren and baby bumps and protective mothers. Hoping this rhetorical wrapper would be enough to make me intelligible, to keep me safe.
She texted back:
No worries at all, mom is more than welcome to join us with your move. We are not here to judge. See you soon.
I dressed carefully for the storage unit, suddenly worried I didn’t look pregnant enough to make all this fuss. Still always managing appearances, always worried it wouldn’t be enough.
The person at the storage unit, Jovanna, was kind. She welcomed me and whisked me up to my unit before my mother arrived, and waited with me while the workers moved my things.
We made small talk about normal topics, which in that moment was a surprise and a blessing. The kindness of her questions about my job, my neighborhood, not my pregnant trans body. I relaxed.
The storage unit move was over before I knew it, and with it came the alternating currents of relief at how easy it was and resentment at how much mental energy and anxiety had gone into what should have been a minor errand.
But those receded into a deeper confidence. I’m doing it. I’m making this work.
My body is growing my baby’s bones.