A Coming Out Story: Parenting as Genderqueer Person

Grappling with Gender Over Time

Starting at age 10, I struggled with my gender and sexuality to some degree or another. Knowing I felt one way about things, but trying really hard to act and feel a different way was all I knew for so long. 

I have always struggled with being coercively assigned “girl” at birth, but between leaning into the “tomboy” label (also assigned to me by others) and silently embracing my (then) lesbian self, I muddled my way through into my late teens. Years later and proudly out of all of the closets I knew I had, I did not anticipate another pregnancy, nor it becoming the catalyst for me coming out of one more closet. This pregnancy also occurred after almost 12 years of infertility.

I think it was sometime late 2012 when a discussion with a close friend helped me realize that I am genderqueer. I was not and had never been the girl I was coercively told I was from birth. I had known this fact deep in my bones for much longer, but didn’t find a good way to articulate that knowledge until later. For some time, I was still okay being socialised as a woman, referred to as a woman and  mum and was comfortable with she/her pronouns. I never made any kind of announcement or “came out” officially, but I did express my genderqueerdom with other queers and would occasionally tell strangers that my pronouns were they/them. 

My Genderqueer Pregnancy

When I found out I was pregnant with Hazelwood, I had been involved in birthwork and midwifery for over 17 years. I had known and had the pleasure of assisting many gestating and birthing people of all genders, and I had myself been pregnant several times and given birth some 12 years prior. I considered myself well acquainted with how society and providers typically treat a person with a (visibly) gestating body, but even so, I was not prepared for enduring this treatment myself this time around. 

Thankfully, I had the privilege of ordering my own lab work, checking in with my (also pregnant) associate midwife sporadically, and was able to skip and avoid being a fat, queer, and gender questioning pregnant person in the healthcare system. 

Still, everything was gendered. Everything was “earthy” and “goddess” and “femme” overload. Media was frenzied with transantagonistic midwives and other healthcare workers denying the existence of pregnant people who are not women. There were many expectations put on me, for being a pregnant person, a disabled and fat pregnant person, a pregnant midwife, and assumedly a pregnant woman. People treated me differently because of my large body and the space I took up, and they assumed I was a woman.  Despite the gender feels and moderate depression, I had an uneventful and healthy pregnancy that ended with a quick, intense, and fairly uneventful waterbirth at home.

Gender Feels and Parenting

Hazelwood and I had some significant problems with our nursing relationship and it became 

painfully obvious that bodyfeeding was not going to be possible.Thus, I spent most of the next year pumping milk from my body every two to four hours around the clock. This coupled with general newborn parenting isolation left me with a lot of time to think about life, my future, my feels, and especially the newer and stronger gender feels I was having. It was recognising the gender dysphoria that exclusively pumping was causing me when I also realised much of my depression during my pregnancy with Hazelwood was related to  body and gender dysphoria that I felt due to how people were treating me and relating to me, my body, and an assumed gender falsehood.

Since Hazelwood was not assigned a gender at birth, and we have been using third person singular pronouns as a gender neutral placeholder until if/when they tell us to do differently, I was spending a lot of time thinking more about gender and the gender binary. I was realising that I was growing ever more uncomfortable with being assumed to be a woman, referred to as a woman, and I began physically cringing when people would use she/her pronouns for me. 

I am not sure exactly what it was that changed things and solidified it for me, but all I know is that after giving birth to Hazel, I was different and finally felt like I understood myself. After spending a week at an unschooling conference where both Hazel and myself wore name tags that included our they/them pronouns and most everyone used them, I felt the most like my true self and more comfortable in my body.  People using they/them pronouns was affirming for me. I knew that I needed to “come out” as genderqueer, as transgender.

Coming Out Personally and Professionally

I did what so many folks do these days, I came out over Facebook. I crafted a post to tell everyone that I was most definitely not a woman and that my pronouns are now they/them, which I had already silently changed to they/them on Facebook even before giving birth to Hazel. 

I came out by reassuring, by educating, and by being as open as I could. I painstakingly altered my online presence, updating pronouns here, bios there, and opting for gender neutral titles or no titles wherever possible. I came out publicly and professionally at once, and I have no regrets. However, I will say that  it was very interesting and telling how many local birthworkers reacted in ignorant and bigoted ways when I came out as transgender.

As a birthworker I have always focused my energies on marginalised people.Since my last pregnancy experience, I have narrowed my focus on inclusivity education and perinatal care for queer and transgender people, especially queer and transgender people of colour. I am continuously saddened and outraged by  how many queer and transgender people are treated by their providers when gestating (or existing). That rage helped push me back into college after two decades to become a full spectrum family practice physician. With this training, I will continue to provide my queerdo community with more continuity of care that is not just queer and transgender friendly, but care that is queer and transgender affirming, competent, and experience-informed.

Michele James-Parham (they/them), of Amethyst Community Health, is a traditional community midwife, herbalist, secular chaplain, sex and sexuality education teacher, and med-student providing full spectrum care to primarily LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and financially-deprived people in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They are a queer, transgender nonbinary, disabled, autistic, Romani, and Mizrahi person striving to create change and equity within their local reproductive health community and beyond. Michele is the Queer and Transgender Reproductive Justice Director of Pittsburgh Birth Project and sits on the board of directors for Rise to Reclaim Preparatory Academy. They love tea, olives, visible mending, geometry, old books, merfolk, baneful plants, and being a synesthete.