Pregnant Butch
Reviewed by Andrew Moreton 12-Feb-15
‘Sex is what’s between your legs, gender’s what’s between your ears’ – and maybe what’s gestating in your belly too.
Pregnant Butch, A.K. Summers’ very enjoyable memoir of becoming a pregnant masculine dyke, presents itself as a historical document from a time when being a butch and femme couple was a specific cultural and sexual identity.
This gave me pause for thought, because I’ve long believed that those who rattle on about the ultimate femininity of a pregnant women – her ‘fulfilment’, her ‘radiance’, her ‘completeness’ – well, I though that deep in that dark stupid mind of theirs what they’re were really thinking was ‘barefoot’, ‘kitchen’ and ‘surrendered’.
Words like ‘femininity’ seemed to have been so thoroughly colonised by patriarchal arseholes, so discredited, that I’d forgotten there were spheres of queer subculture whose existence depends on ideas of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’.
‘Femininity’ is of course a style that can be taken up by men, women and others, rather than an inevitable product of being a female, and like all fashions will eventually fade away, as distant and as strange as the ruffle, the crinoline, burning witches and believing in transubstantiation.
But, when you’ve bet the farm (or your sexual and cultural identity), on being a butch lesbian who has relationships with femmes, then getting pregnant is not a very ‘masculine’ thing to do – how do you vive la difference, project and define the masculinity that you’ve used to define you, and presumably so attracted your femme partners, when you’re six months up the duff and no-one’s “mistaking [you] for a fat guy anymore”.
These and many other questions are raised and, sometimes answered, as Summers guides us through the emotional and social minefield of becoming a Pregnant Butch. It’s an engrossing, varied read, as we follow her alter ego Teek from realising she wants to have a baby, through finding a sperm donor, insemination and a kind of ‘coming out’ as she announces to her landlord, family and fellow dykes that she’s soon to be a mother. There are mediations and digressions on contemporary gender theory, a truly disturbing birthing guide from the 60’s (‘Spritual Midwifery’ – check it out), notes on masculine maternity clothing and a birthing councillor whose true calling is performance art and clowning.
The comic was initially serialised online, and is very slightly marred by the episodic nature of its origins but Summers’ intellectual rigour and unquestionable emotional honesty, coupled with her playful Jamie Hernandez-via-Herge line work are compelling enough to keep the narrative on track. The later stages of the pregnancy, and especially the birth are extremely powerful – tearjerking in my case. Pregnant Butch is a comic that deserves to be widely read and enjoyed and isthought provoking and profound. Thanks Teek!