Are Childless Women Condemned to be ‘Less Than Real Women’?

Pronatalism, Womanhood and Transphobia

Trigger Warning for Sexism, Transphobia, Childlessness, Bullying, Harassment, etc.

So, I learned about something new recently that has made my little brain-cogs twist and turn. It’s something that I was aware of, and I am sure will come as no surprise to many people. But I did not realise actually had a name. Furthermore, once I learned about it, a little bell started to ring in regards to transgender issues, transphobia and bio-essentialism. The more I thought, the more I realised the intersecting strands and the more I realised that this is something we should be discussing about more.

I am talking, of course*, about pronatalism – the active promotion, and often coercive stimulation, of increasing birth rates, family sizes and generally having children.

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Before we go any further, there is an important caveat to everything I am about to write. This is a complex and sensitive issue, and I vehemently stress that I am not an expert on pronatalism or the effect of childlessness on someone. For that I refer you to Gateway Women and also to Jody Day (who is actually the inspiration for this discussion).

Furthermore, I am well aware that within what follows is a somewhat simplified explanation of the issue as I understand it. I also discuss some of the more extreme pronatalist viewpoints. While I aim for accuracy, I do make mistakes and there is room for my misunderstanding. I will own them if I need to.

Now to the main discussion.

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As a species, we are surrounded by pronatalism almost everywhere we look. Whether it be governments incentivising childbearing and large family units, the removal of reproductive rights and access to birth-control and healthcare**, or pro-babymaking propaganda by right-wing or otherwise conservative groups and countries, it is all over the place.

On a ‘smaller’ scale, more recognisable to most of us who cannot have/do not want/missed out on/ do-not-have-for-whatever-reason children, pronatalism exists perniciously in our workplace cultures and daily interactions.

If you do not respond positively or enthusiastically to a colleague’s baby-news, you are often seen as being rude or unpleasant. A lack of interest in, or in some cases complete aversion to, babies and children is almost always seen as abnormal and can result in social exclusion. Women without children often face patronising, dismissive or outright cruel commentaries on their lives.

Pronatalism is, among many things, an enemy of feminism and a product of patriarchy. It reduces women and their worth to their reproductive capacity (or lack thereof) and props up an idea that having children is somehow the ultimate goal in life, and if you do not meet that goal then you are a failure.

Are childless women condemned to be ‘Less Than Real Women’? Unfortunately, all too often the answer to this question is yes. By not having children, you are lacking a fundamental aspect of ‘true womanhood’ and as such are invalidated as a woman. In some ways this might be at the extreme end of the spectrum and yet, it is more common that you would think.

At its core lies an adherence to a bio-essentialist view of what it means to be a woman and to be a mother. Motherhood is one of those things that is so heavily gatekept, yet at the same time constantly glorified, usually to the detriment of what actually makes up a majority of women.

I have seen countless social media posts that try to argue that you can only ‘know true motherhood [read ‘womanhood’] if you have actually carried a child in your own body’. If you haven’t then you ‘don’t know what it is like’ and are all the worse for it. If you have not been through the physical trauma that pregnancy puts on the human body and overcome the various medical and sometimes life-threatening challenges, then you cannot truly know what it is to be a woman and a mother.

But what about all of those people that cannot/do not have children for whatever reason – are they somehow not women? Is the mother of an adopted child in some kind of lower status of motherhood? Of course not, that would be ridiculous wouldn’t it? Women are women irrespective of if/how/when kids are involved, surely.

It is here that the relevance to transgender issues comes clearly into focus. One of the biggest ‘weapons’ that transphobes and gender criticals throw at transwomen is that we cannot bear children and as such can never truly call ourselves women. Our physiology dictates that we cannot meet this essential definition and thus we are, similarly, ‘less than’ those who can bear children.

 We are merely ‘pretending’, ‘appropriating’ and ‘ridiculing’. Additionally, we can never know what it means to be a woman, apparently, because we do not menstruate and cannot be pregnant and so don’t know the true suffering that is some kind of badge of ‘true’ or ‘real’ womanhood.***

For many transgender women their inability to bear children really, truly and deeply hurts, and pronatalist viewpoints rub salt into a very open wound.

Furthermore, there are those that have been ‘fathers’ pre-transition who find themselves facing discrimination and erasure when trying to re-frame their relationships, their role and identity almost always being categorised in male terms. They are not allowed to be mothers, certainly, and in some cases are not even allowed to be parents anymore.

The issue affects transgender men as well. Transmen are denied the right to be seen as fathers, pregnancy can be a hugely traumatic and dysphoric experience, and a decision not to have children at all further deepens the betrayal of the ‘sisterhood’. Once again, they are deemed as ‘less than’ because of their ability/willingness to bear children. Once again, they are side-lined and stigmatised as a direct result of harmful pronatalist ideals.****

While the surface issues (and how to combat them) might have different variations and impacts, it is clear that there is a strong link between pronatalism and transphobia. The two go hand in hand. If you are someone who thinks that being childless is somehow a failing or reflects a person’s validity as a ‘real woman’ then no matter how much you might think you are an ally of transwomen you are by default dismissing and belittling them and their experiences. Similarly, if you try to hold to a bio-essentialist view of womanhood that actively excludes transwomen then you are similarly insulting and erasing the validity of childless women.

Now, gender critical folks will argue that there is a difference. They will bring things down to the level of being born with a uterus and the ‘capacity’ to have children – irrespective of the existence of infertility, intersex people and the, albeit rare, instances where a baby is born without a uterus yet is still physiologically female in all other respects. But does this really help their argument? They are still defining a woman by reproductive capability and acting like this is the main determinant factor. When and how this happens is irrelevant. If you cannot have children then you are not truly a woman.

This thinking is abhorrent on so many levels.

As a society, as a species, we will never be able to truly break down the inequalities and divisions amongst us as long as ideas such as these remain mainstream. For the good of everyone, we need to be aware of them and challenge them. We need more people like Jody Day and the amazing people at Gateway Women. We need more people to realise the importance of intersectionality and to truly understand that no viewpoint exists in a vacuum.***** We need to be talking about these issues and how they have direct consequences on peoples’ lives and wellbeing.

But more especially:

WE NEED TO STOP DEFINING WOMANHOOD BY WHETHER OR NOT SOMEONE CAN HAVE CHILDREN!!!

*It’s in the title, you knew this was coming!

** Looking at you Supreme Court of the Unites States…

*** I feel like the issues inherent in viewing true ‘womanhood’ as being based in suffering are fairly self-evident. Less evident, perhaps is the irony in this from people who also try to celebrate pregnancy as some kind of perfect, unfailingly joyful miracle when for many it is anything but.

**** As a transgender woman, I am not really in a position to be any sort of authority on this, and I do not want to put words into the mouths of others. Nevertheless, it is essential that their experiences be acknowledged. I invite my transmasc brothers and siblings to take the baton if they feel the urge!

***** And to realise that accepting intersectionality does not mean prioritising one group over another, but rather means acknowledging and accepting the challenges of others and understanding the ways in which they overlap.