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| Book cover for "Queer Conception" by Kristin L. Kali. |
I recently read the book "Queer Conception", by Kristin L. Kali (they/them). I liked this book because it was very practical and it was about how conception *actually* works. To have a pregnancy, you need a sperm and and egg and a person with a uterus to carry the pregnancy. Other concerns, like what gender everyone identifies as, and which people will take on the responsibility of being the child's parents, and how you feel about having sex... these things could be different for every situation.
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Queer people need a different approach than cis heterosexual people
The systems in place to help people with assisted reproduction, like IVF, IUI, test strips for ovulation, etc, are designed for hetero couples struggling with infertility. The research and the guidelines given by doctors are all based on hetero couples struggling with infertility.
Obviously for queer people, the situation is totally different. Kali is a midwife who specifically works with queer families, and wrote this book to address queer people's needs. (And also single people who want to have a baby without a partner.)
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This book is extremely practical
This book is literally a guide for how to actually do all these things. It's so incredibly practical. Here are a few areas it discussed:
Legal issues: If the child is not biologically related to the parent(s), this brings in legal issues where at some point, the legal system might decide that the biological parent has rights related to being the parent. You really need to think about all these things before you start the process.
I had wondered if perhaps, when a lesbian couple wants to have a child, maybe one of them can go have sex with a man 1 time and get a baby that way- no, don't do this, because then in legal terms, the random man is the child's father and has rights associated with that. Now, the lesbian couple could ask a friend to give them a sperm sample, and do the insemination themselves or with a doctor, without the sperm donor present (the book walks through a lot of details about how to do this)- from a legal perspective, getting pregnant in this way is a different thing than getting pregnant from intercourse. This is still risky from a legal perspective though, and many fertility clinics aren't willing to work with you if you have a known sperm donor.
Clear communication: If you decide to ask someone you know (like a friend or family member) to be a sperm donor, egg donor, or surrogate, you have to be really clear about what you are asking, and make sure you are not pressuring them. The book has very thorough advice on this. Send them a message saying "We want to have a baby, so we will need a sperm donor, you are one of the people we are considering asking, if you are interested in hearing more information about this, please let me know before the end of the month- if we don't hear from you, no worries, we won't ask you about it again." [This is my paraphrase- there is an example in the book which is longer than this.] Let them respond or not respond- don't put them in a position where they aren't really comfortable with it but they can't think of a way to say no so they feel like they have to go along with it.
And then, when discussing with the friend about potentially being a donor, you have to tell them, "You will not be the child's parent. You will not have a say in where the child lives, the child's education, etc." (If you want a donor who does have a say in how the child is raised, then actually you are looking for a co-parent, not a donor. Which is fine; that's also a valid family structure if that's what you want. But you need to make that clear from the beginning.) This sounds kinda harsh, but you don't want to get into ugly fights later because your donor believes they are the child's parent. If the potential donor is not okay with the arrangement, they should say no and not be a donor. (I mean, *I* would not be okay with it, so I am not willing to be a donor. Which is fine.)
So many concrete details about the biological aspects: If you have ovaries but are taking testosterone, how long will you need to stop taking testosterone so you can ovulate? If you are inseminating with a fresh sperm sample, how much time do you have to do it before the sperm die? (And what if it's a frozen sperm sample, how much time in this case?) If you are not the birthing parent but you want to breastfeed the baby, how do you induce lactation? (This is really cool- trans women can breastfeed if they follow this process.) And so on and so on.
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Default roles vs choices
Because this book is so incredibly practical, it made me wonder, why am I reading this? I'm straight and cis and I'm married to a man, and I have 2 kids via getting pregnant the "normal" way (if you could say it's "normal" for an asexual to have PIV sex...). None of the advice in this book is for me.
But it made me think about how so much of my own path to having kids just kind of happened the "default" way, without anybody really perceiving much of it as a choice- whereas, most queer people who want to have kids have a whole lot of choices they have to make about how to go about it.
Let me make a bulleted list to show you what I mean.
So, as a cis person in a hetero marriage, when we decide "we want to have a baby now", we go forward with the assumption that these are our roles:
Mom:
- is the child's biological parent
- has PIV [penis-in-vagina] sex
- gets pregnant
- goes to all the prenatal doctor's appointments
- makes a birth plan (this includes a bunch of decisions about whether to have an epidural, etc), packs up the hospital bag
- gives birth
- decides whether to breastfeed the baby or use formula
- has maternity leave
- is the child's biological parent
- has PIV sex
- if he's a really stellar partner, he should come to the prenatal doctor's appointments, but ya know maybe he doesn't have time, that's understandable
- ideally he should be present at the birth
- has paternity leave, maybe, but it's shorter than the mom's maternity leave
But it's really beneficial to listen to queer people, because we learn that it doesn't have to be these exact roles. For queer families who don't have the "default" combination of egg/sperm/uterus, they have to make a bunch of decisions about all the little parts of these roles. Who will do what? Those are all decisions, not something they can just fall into automatically.
The interesting thing is... I guess I *did* make choices... like... when I decided to marry my husband, I wasn't thinking about "his genetics are good for making babies", but implicitly I was deciding that, right? The sections in this book about requirements for choosing a sperm donor or an egg donor made me uncomfortable because it feels unethical to judge some people's genetics as "better" than other people's... but in a way it's good that queer people have these options- really more options and choices than straight cis people who are just going along with the "normal" way to have babies. I chose my husband to be my husband and my kids' biological father, because that's normal- why would it be "unethical" to chose someone to be your partner, and then when you and your partner don't have the right combination to make a baby, you make a careful, intentional choice about getting someone else to be your sperm or egg donor? In both cases it's a choice, right? I think this is a valuable thing for straight people to think about.
(Like, I don't mean that a straight couple where both partners are fertile should literally go find someone else to be their sperm or egg donor. I mean, just being aware of all the *implicit* "default" choices that you make, as a cis straight person, when you chose to marry someone and have kids with them.)
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What to tell the kid
The book discusses the question of how to tell the kid that their parent(s) aren't their biological parent(s). Basically, in heteronormative world, it's a big huge deal if the kid and parent aren't biologically related. It's like, a bad thing or a secret or a scandal, and people want to hide it from the kid, and worry about how the kid will feel... In the queer community, the situation is completely different. For queer families, it's totally normal that a kid is not biologically related to their parent(s), and it's not an issue at all.
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About donors and surrogates
This is something I'm really curious about. Why would someone choose to be an egg donor, sperm donor, or surrogate? The book talks about donors giving a "gift" to another family- framing it as a really noble, loving thing to do, an act done by someone aware of the weighty realities of families who need help to conceive, and who wants to help in a significant, meaningful way.
I've never thought of it like that. Typically, I've seen the concept of egg donors or sperm donors in subplots on sitcoms... The characters need money, so they look into the process of donating eggs or sperm, and they're uncomfortable with the idea of having unknown biological children somewhere out there, but they want to just do it for the money and not think about that... and then in the end they decide not to do it, which is a relief to everyone.
I always thought of it like... you do it for the money, and hope nobody actually uses your eggs or sperm to make an actual child, because it's just too weird to have your biological child somewhere out there in the world.
But the way "Queer Conception" talks about it... it's a serious thing, not a joke on a sitcom, obviously, and I'm really curious to find out more. This is the kind of thing people do because they want to... it's not about just getting the money and then trying not to think about it ever again.
The book talked about how to evaluate donor profiles from an egg bank or sperm bank to choose the donor you want. To me this was a bit weird, because... shouldn't we treat everyone equally, and just let some random process decide for us? (Please note that I literally moved to China because I thought ideally people should be "objective" rather than biased toward living in a place that's familiar to them. I have since realized that actually my own cultural background does matter, and we shouldn't have a goal of being "objective" on a global scale.) But no, the book did not even entertain the question "is it ethical to judge people's genetics and choose one?" The book was all about how to choose, not if you should choose. Maybe I'm the only one with the weird idea that this might be ethically problematic? I mean... I agree that it *should* be a choice, but it took me a while to get to that conclusion, whereas maybe everybody else thinks that's obvious?
In particular, the book said white people probably shouldn't use a donor who is a person of color. Donors of color are underrepresented in sperm banks, so if you use their sample, you're taking away an opportunity for another family. (This was another example of how the book talked about sperm and egg donation like it actually matters, rather than just being a silly thing that sitcom characters do for money.) And if your whole family is white, you likely won't be able to meet the child's need to connect with their own race. (Kali says there may be a few exceptions to this advice- like if you already have a child of color, and so you want a sibling who is the same race.)
And I'm so curious about why someone would choose to be a surrogate. I totally hated being pregnant, but it was all worth it because now I have 2 amazing kids. But if I wasn't gonna get a kid out of it, no way in hell would I want to do that.
(I have heard of some women who like being pregnant. I guess they weren't throwing up every day like me.)
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Looking at your own cervix
The book contains very detailed, practical instructions on how to pinpoint when exactly you ovulate. Apparently, if you look at the cervix, you will actually see that it looks different at different points in the cycle, and this is one of the most important indicators for figuring out when you ovulate.
The book describes, in extremely concrete, practical detail, how to use a mirror to look at your own cervix.
I feel like, wow. This is really useful information! Maybe some people would like to do this, to learn more about their own body, and some people might not be interested, but wow everyone who has a cervix should have access to this information!
I kind of had a reaction like it was weird, like only people who are really kinky or sexually adventurous would look at their own cervix. Like if you look at your own cervix, and people find out, they'll think you're a pervert who shouldn't be around children, or something. But, why? Why is it "normal" to let your (male) partner put his penis in there, but "weird" to look in there yourself to see what it looks like? Why do we have this idea, as a society, that someone else should have access to your body in a way that you yourself don't?
Anyway, if you have a cervix, and you're interested in looking at it, you totally can.
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Everything is gender neutral
I was really impressed by the way this book was written in a completely gender-neutral way. It always talks about "the sperm donor", "the partner who is carrying the pregnancy", "the non-gestational parent", etc- it doesn't say "man", "woman", "mom", "dad", etc. Sometimes I had to take a minute to picture an example of what it was talking about (for example, if it talks about a situation where "you can carry a pregnancy conceived with your partner's egg", I might take a second to imagine what kind of configuration of genders that would be- like, that could be a lesbian couple. It could be other configurations too.)
The only part of the book I remember using words like "woman" was in the part that talked about how trans women do have the ability to breastfeed.
On my blog I don't write in this kind of gender-neutral way. My thinking is, I will use words like "women" and "moms" because I am talking about things that affect cis women rather than cis men, and I think it's important to make that obvious- but also use terms like "women and/or people who can get pregnant" because this doesn't *just* affect cis women.
But this book is explicitly for a queer audience, the kind of people who have to go to the ob-gyn office and all the walls are pink and it's just overwhelming how feminine everything is- it makes sense that this book is written completely gender-neutral.
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Conclusion
I wanted to read this book because most pregnancy resources are overwhelmingly heteronormative and cisnormative. I feel it's really helpful to get a different perspective on how conception works. (The other pregnancy books I've read don't talk about conception much at all- it's assumed that that's the easy part and you don't need instructions on it. Actually, I was kind of asexually happy about how "Queer Conception" doesn't talk about getting pregnant via sex.) Also this makes me curious to learn more about sperm/egg donation and surrogacy, so maybe I'll read books about that too.
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Related:
Being Asexual in Pregnancy World
"Expecting Better": Asking the Right Questions About Pregnancy
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