Interrogating Pregnancy Loss: Feminst Writings on Abortion, Miscarriage and Stillbirth by Lind R.M.;

Author:Lind, R.M.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Demeter Press
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

8.

failing

j wallace skelton

As a trans person, I am used to my body failing me.

As a trans person, I am used to my body failing me.

As a trans person, I am used to my body failing me.

As a trans person, I am used to my body failing me.

As a trans person, I am used to my body failing me.

As a trans person, I am used to my body failing me.

As a trans person, I am used to my body failing me.

As a trans person, I am used to my body failing me.

As a trans person, I am used to my body failing me.

AS A TRANS PERSON, I AM USED TO MY BODY FAILING ME

THIS IS THE expected narrative. This ushers in a story of puberty in the wrong direction, of breasts where the previously flat chest was preferred, of bleeding. Puberty sucked in those ways, but it also made me fuzzy, and the chest hair and facial hair was/is delightful. My body is like me, able to excel in some areas, and shite in others.

“As a trans person, I am use to my body failing me” is a softer version of the official trans narrative: “I was trapped in the wrong body.” That is not my narrative. Frankly, there are a great many people who learned to say this because it is what gender clinics and people reading trans autobiographies expect to hear. Some people feel that, but many of us do not imagine our bodies as cages. I am not trapped in my body. This is my body, and I live here, and in living here, I need to make this body a place I can thrive. I’ve learned to value strength, power in my limbs. I’ve learned to love my stamina, I’ve learned to come home to my imperfect flesh. In seeking to be pregnant, I felt like I needed to feel at home in my body before I could invite someone else to live in it with me. I clean the house before company comes over too, I want my home to be better for other people than it is for me alone. I wanted that in my body, too.

It’s not lost on me that those uncomfortable pubertal changes, the breasts, the bleeding, are the same ones that allow me to be pregnant and grow someone new. My body’s failures are productive or, at least, potentially productive. What if we can only achieve through failure? What if we need to be broken to create? In allowing myself to want, to imagine, to think about pregnancy, I also find a gentleness with my body, an acceptance of the soft parts I found hard. Failure is an ugly word for anomaly.

My mother wants to know if I miscarried because of the testosterone. It’s possible other people want to ask too, but they don’t. The question slams through my chest demanding to know if my body failed at pregnancy because I am trans. My mother doesn’t know my medical history, doesn’t

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