Queer conceptions: procreation beyond gender: a photographic essay

The acts of conceiving and giving birth beyond socially sanctioned binary gender roles arguably represents the ultimate challenge to heteronormative beliefs on sex and gender, propelling assumptions about essentialism, biology and gender dynamically to the fore. Taken from a larger photographic project depicting personal experiences of ‘queer’ births and parenting, this photographic essay presents Jason’s story (The Birth of LJ), in a series of photographs of a queer pregnancy and the weeks following birth. In the photographs the ostensibly conflicting signifiers of sex and gender contest widely held views on gender and biology. Through a heteronormative lens, pregnant = female = woman while moustached = male = man. Nonetheless, Jason is depicted occupying a space beyond these boundaries and moving freely between them. The social expectations of photography, which are that photography reproduces reality, underline and reinforce the dynamics of these images. With regard to mainstream beliefs on sex, gender and giving birth, in 2008 Thomas Beatie, a trans man, became pregnant and took his story to the press. The media frenzy surrounding the idea of “a pregnant man” and the public uproar that followed demonstrates the powerful threat that transgression of the ‘man impregnates and woman conceives’ equation poses to the two-sexes/two-genders system. Beatie became the recipient of hate mail and death threats and he was described as “a freak”, “a monster” and “sick” on Internet chat forums. By presenting Jason’s perspective, this photographic essay counters and refutes the media’s account of what it means to be queer and pregnant. Further, Queer Conceptions arose in response to the increasing number of people who, while self-identifying as queer, are having children, becoming parents and raising families. These photographs capture the emergence of a new generation, that by the very nature of their birth, challenge preconceptions of sex, gender and procreation. Following this, Sara Davidmann argues that procreation seen through a queer lens may represent the ultimate challenge to the binary sex and gender systems