Called into the World by All of Us: An Interview with Masculine Birth Ritual Podcast Creator and Host Grover Wehman-Brown

Birthing beyond the binary is a radical act. There are few contexts in which gender binaries remain more stubborn than in the realm of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting; if anything, the gendering of pregnancy and childbirth has escalated in the last few decades. It is a trend consonant with the intensified scrutiny of pregnancy and reproduction in general—take, for example, mythic norms of the “perfect pregnancy” that render pregnant individuals simultaneously responsible and powerless, the increasing surveillance and punishment of pregnant people by the state (in particular immigrant mothers and mothers of color), and the acute medicalization of childbirth that has exacerbated obstetric violence against Black, Latinx, and Indigenous birthers.¹ And as pregnancy and parenting are intensely policed, so too is the performativity of white cis/femme reproductivity culturally lauded across a range of settings, celebrated and even cachet when attached to whiteness, wealth, and heteronuclear family formation. Here, the articulation between gender and sex assignment persists as robust. Resolute. Intractable. Reinscribed daily.

Still, pregnancy and childbirth are not—and have not been—the exclusive purview of cisgender women. There is a necessary and lively conversation unfolding in reproductive health-care and justice settings over how gender matters in reproduction—and how we might build more inclusive and culturally competent modes of advocacy and care.² Queer, trans, and nonbinary birth workers are growing in ranks and visibility—organizing collectives, educating other birth workers, and creating gender-affirming spaces for conception, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care. Trans, queer, and nonbinary-identified parents are raising their voices as well—writing for public audiences about chest feeding, gamete banking, vexed interactions with care providers and family members, and sharing their experiences in the parenting blogosphere.³ And mainstream reproductive rights advocacy organizations are following suit—grappling with how to expand their message in the spirit of gender inclusivity—evidenced, for example, in an early 2020 NARAL Pro-Choice America campaign titled Freedom is for Every Body.

Grover Wehman-Brown is a leading voice in this vital and vibrant conversation. This interview is an excerpt of a conversation between Grover, creator and host of the ground-breaking podcast Masculine Birth Ritual, and Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz, associate professor of communication studies and gender, women’s, and sexuality studies at the University of Iowa. For over fifteen years, Natalie’s scholarly and activist work have centered on reproductive justice—the capacity to determine when, whether, and with whom one creates family, in safety and free from violence.⁴ These commitments have only deepened alongside her more recent experience as a queer femme parent of two delightful human beings.

Interview

Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz (NFO):

Grover, thank you for agreeing to this interview. I love Masculine Birth Ritual—it is a project of profound importance and I want to thank you for creating a space for conversation, resource exchange, and community building around trans and nonbinary pregnancy, birth, and parenting. It is a formidable task to condense the complexity you grapple with on the podcast into a single interview, but I am hoping you can offer some highlights grounded in your experience and expertise as a self-identified masculine-of-center radical queer writer-organizer-podcaster attending to reproductive and birth justice. Would you start by telling us a bit about yourself?

Grover Wehman-Brown (GWB):

Wow. Thank you for expressing that gratitude for the project. I am so glad it’s meeting the needs of community. I’m a white transmasculine Butch. I have two children—one I grew in my body and one my wife grew in her body. My kids call me Baba. I live in the U.S. on Ohlone territory which is now usually called the East Bay of California. I’m formerly homeless and working-class raised, recently middle class. Pronouns people should call me with are she/her or they/them.

NFO:

Why did you create this podcast?

GWB:

I created this podcast because I needed...