Pregnancy - The Gift My Transness Didn't Know It Needed

I am a pregnant person. I have the required sex organs to carry and grow my baby. It does not make me a woman. I am still transmasc. Maybe I'm even a bit more trans than I was before... By which I mean, that this experience is making me fall in love with my transness in an unexpected way. Through forcing me to confront and let go of my deepest conditioning around gender.

Learning to embrace a body shape that I've been thoroughly trained to think of as 'woman' is a journey. Not being 'trans enough' when it comes to other people's perceptions of me has been a consistent gremlin on my shoulder. I'm completely aware of the privilege of this position. There are far more perilous issues many of my siblings have to traverse. Nonetheless, it has been part of my path. I am grateful that I have been able to access the support and resources that I needed to unlearn my colonial conditioning around gender to a deep enough level to experience this pregnancy with love for my body.

When I look down, I don’t see a woman’s body. When I see my growing bump in the mirror, I don’t see a woman’s body. When I see my chest becoming fuller, I don’t see a woman’s body. And these moments that happen several times a day, are beautiful glimmers reminding me that I am freeing myself of the pain, the limitations, the prison that is the colonial construct of gender.

This took and takes, a hell of a lot of work. I have experienced so much gender dysphoria. I have hated my chest. I have hated my curves. I have wanted to pretend I don’t like pink. I have tried to dress ‘like a transmasc person is supposed to dress’. I have tried to be androgynous. I thought I had to give things up to prove that I am not a woman. And after all this exhausting trying, you know what I’ve learned? How I am perceived, particularly how I am perceived through a western, colonial lens, doesn’t matter at all. What matters, is whether I feel like I can show up as me, aligned and alive in my true gender. And after years of work… I can. I really, really can.

I don’t like pink. I LOVE pink. I love having painted nails. I enjoy showing off shaved legs in cute shorts in the summer. I love my hair short and I also love it long - it is deliciously dark and heralds my Indianness, so whatever length it is - it’s absolutely beautiful. I enjoy make up. I love a bodycon dress that hugs in all the right places. I love wearing a saree. I love bold, colourful (and comfortable!) heels (thank you, Kat Maconie). I used to bind my chest and try to hide it, but it’s far too big for that to work. I could never achieve the flat chested look that I’ve been sold as the pinnacle of transmasc hotness and style - a look that favours thin, white, androgynous transmascs and nonbinary folks and was never meant for me. When I stopped trying to make my body fit an aesthetic that I didn’t even know if I wanted, I found a freedom. My breasts (I’m no longer afraid of this word, my breasts are transmasc, just like me!) are big and gorgeous and they look hot as hell in tight clothes and low cuts. Since I started letting go of how I thought I was supposed to be showing up as trans, I have unleashed a trans confidence, a trans fabulousness, a trans-cendence, that my colonially conditioned mind couldn’t have imagined.

It isn’t that pregnancy helped me overcome my gender conditioning, but rather that it has tested it. It has shone a light on how much work I’ve done, and how little I now care for how others perceive me. I am no longer trying to be accepted and acceptable as trans, and I have found a profound love for my gender and for myself that I have always needed. I am trans enough. And just as gender has precisely zero to do with a love for fuchsia and a red lip, it also has precisely zero to do with whether one grows a human in their uterus, or not. One of the things that prevents us from truly dismantling colonial constructs around gender is that we still, trans people included, assign aspects of the way we exist to specific genders. We expect, if not demand, that a trans person alter their body, style and life choices to fit our perception of their true gender (including looking androgynous if nonbinary). By doing so, we are reinforcing the very gender norms that we claim to be resisting.

I love watching the confusion manifest across someone’s face as they try to reconcile my transmasc-ness with my pregnant belly. I love telling people my pronouns are they/he while wearing a low cut top and full make up. I love being fiercely, proudly, unashamedly me, in my trans, Indian, mixed heritage, AuDHD, decolonial glory when people have absolutely no idea how to receive that. And I also love the feeling of being seen, embraced, loved and cherished by those who are ready to receive me in my fullest, truest form.

Trans people, like all people, should have complete bodily autonomy to do whatever we want with our own. And that needs to include rejecting colonial, normative ideas around gender expression and the gendering of body parts and functions.

Our freedom lies in our ability to imagine beyond colonised gender ideals.

My transness is a gift I share with ancestors of blood, of mind, of place and of spirit.

It supports me to keep fighting to reclaim a beautiful world.

And I can't wait to meet this cool little person and tell them all about it.

Thank you so much for being here! My newsletter has been completely free to access since its inception two years ago, and this model is no longer sustainable for me. I am moving to a tiered model, where paid subscribers will retain access to all content, including one article every two weeks and access to the back catalogue. Free subscribers will have full access to every 4th post, the rest will be paywalled, as will past articles. Thank you for supporting my need to navigate capitalism while doing my best to dismantle it.

—AJ

Today’s Neuro-Embodiment Prompts:

Suggestions and questions to help you engage with mindbody decolonisation:

• Do you consider body parts to be gendered? What about bodily functions? How do these beliefs serve you? How can you challenge them? What might you discover on the other side of these beliefs?

• How can you fall in love with your gender more? What can you do, wear, say, create, let go of, that will make you feel affirmed and alive in your true gender?

• What gives you gender euphoria? How can you bring more moments of gender euphoria into your life?

• How are you helping the children in your life to challenge colonial constructs around gender?