Mother is Mother is Mother

This is not to say that the topics we have covered in class have not been entirely intersectional or have not covered a large scope of identities of motherhood, or that I feel as if all that I have learned this semester lacks in any way, but I do think it would have been interesting to discuss the portrayals of and implications of transgender people as mothers. I understand that there is generally a cultural lack of transgender representation in media such as movies and television series, and in novels, even less, so any discussion of literary texts about not only the trans experience itself but also about trans people as mothers may not be as rounded and thorough as they will be in the near future. The identities and safety of trans folks in the U.S. today are becoming increasingly threatened—there are masses of transphobic violence, a government fighting to define their namesake out of existence, a lack of accessible resources for safe and effective transitioning, and so on—and so the need for representation is even more dire. Just as the 45th president’s bigoted and terrible comments have normalized bigoted and terrible behavior across the country, certain identities can be normalized through accurate and thorough representation (which is not to say that trans people are not normal, but rather to address the large portion of the nation which intensely thinks otherwise.) It is important that we regard trans women with children as mothers and trans men who choose to carry a child as fathers, despite the biological factors of child-bearing. There is a real and necessary disconnect between science and identity, which is a discussion relatively new to the collective cultural conscious, further reiterating why representation and analysis of motherhood in relation to trans people is crucial.

To tie this notion to a specific text we have studied, I bring up Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt as an example of a literary text which falls into the vein of portraying queer characters as mother. Any person that is not cisgender and heterosexual is seen through a lens of inability or unworthiness in terms of being a mother, and I think this is due to the obvious perpetuation of hegemonic masculinity and compulsory heterosexuality. Carol is deemed unfit due to her being in a lesbian relationship and must relinquish her role as mother as a result, and although the novel takes place in a different time period, the reality of it is still applicable to the conceptions and implications of trans mothers in today’s cultural climate.