Transfeminist pregnancy: reproductive speculation, genre, and desire

In the explosion of abortion bills post Dobbs, anti-abortion language identifies women according to their reproductive potential: ‘Woman' means [...] an individual with a uterus, regardless of any gender identity.’ According to this definition pregnancy or the potential for pregnancy define womanhood. Women without uteruses (cis and trans) are excluded, and trans men with uteruses are absorbed into the category of woman. This reproductive language, tethering transgender and reproductive politics, requires a reassessment of how pregnancy is theorised in feminist and transgender studies. In the following article, I argue that pregnancy is not to be defined by biological phenomena but instead as a genre of political, aesthetic, and affective experience and expectation. As a multidimensional genre of experience, rather than merely a biological datum, pregnancy can potentially establish a shared ground between trans and cis women. Pregnancy is an existential experience involving birth and becoming in a larger sense. We need a more all-encompassing notion of pregnancy, which is nourished by the capacious social world of conception and giving new life. Such a definition of pregnancy supports the goal of feminists, who resist the reduction of womanhood to reproductive function. For transgender studies, a wider understanding of pregnancy helps to build a transsexual theory of reproduction on feminist grounds.