Pictured above: The essay's author, Jen Mecum.

Sweat drips into my eyes, blurring my vision. I try to nonchalantly wipe it away while choking down another dry heave disguised as a cough. My full weight hangs off the subway pole as I keep eye contact with my wife, Lauren, who is effortlessly maintaining the upright posture of a nondescript straphanger—like everyone else on this train.

“I’m fine, it’s not too much farther,” I manage to get out before she asks anything. Her face tells me she doesn’t believe me. Finally, I give in, letting her know with another dry heave and a small nod that yes, she is permitted to ask a stranger to give up his seat for me on the subway.

Lauren leans down, barely getting out the beginnings of “I’m sorry, but my wife is pre—” while gesturing to me before the blond man takes one look and springs up from his seat. I note his reaction, figuring I must look pretty bad. I slide-slump onto the seat and feel instant relief. I put my head between my knees because it helps the dizziness and the bile subside—but also because I feel like a failure.

I am a butch lesbian and I am five-months pregnant. These two facets of my identity collide on a daily basis, but I find the clash most prevalent when I board the subway. My BMI is “normal” and I am white and overeducated and masculine-presenting; according to my internal social calculator, this means that I am not entitled to a seat—even when I'm pregnant, feeling sick, and on my way to an ultrasound appointment with my wife. I think I like to tell myself I’m doing something noble, somehow giving back on the tiniest of scales, but the more I’ve thought about it, my reasons become less altruistic and more about an interpretation of masculinity I don’t remember consciously adopting.

I became butch by degrees, but the compass was always pointing that way. Unfortunately, when I was trying to fully commit to my queer identity, the choices seemed so black and white, even a short 15 years ago. I knew I wasn’t “girly” in the traditional sense, so that must mean I was butch. Additionally, I knew I was attracted to femmes, so the best way to signal that was to present as the polar opposite.

This thinking is myopic at best and damaging at worst because it is exactly as limiting as binary notions of heterosexuality. Now, I am staring down the barrel of parenthood and finding myself incredibly irked by the rigidity of the pink and blue paradigm thrust upon new additions to society, wondering why I’ve ascribed a similar dichotomy to masculinity and feminity in my queer life.

As much as I’ve railed against my conservative upbringing in upstate New York, the idea of what it means to be masculine, which I learned during those formative years, pervades my identity, manifesting in my daily commute as a rejection of what I determine to be “feminine.” Traditionally, the man gives the woman the seat; then the man stands in front of the woman protectively. He is strong, he can stand; she is feminine, the “weaker sex"—she needs to sit and be protected.

This is a version of a lesson I learned as a child, walking down the street with my father. He would insist that I stroll closest to the buildings while he braved the traffic-side of the sidewalk. I was less than 6 years old when he explained that the man was meant to protect the woman from the hazards of automobiles—the dangers and the dirt. It was for my own good, you see.

Decades later, I’ve rejected nearly everything feminine as some sort of marker of my old self, an identity that was forced upon me. As I have continued to evolve, I found that my itch to biologically carry my own kid was stronger than baby-butch me could have guessed. I ruminated on this a lot, especially vis-à-vis my feelings about butchness and masculinity, but ultimately decided that this was something I wanted to do, frankly, because not everyone can.

As it turns out, the choice to become pregnant, coupled with my masculine presentation, has netted me some very confused responses to my pregnancy announcement. I hadn’t realized how successful my masculine presentation had become until a few family members asked me point blank why my “young wife, with the hips for it” was not carrying the baby instead of me.

Jen (R) with her wife, Lauren (L).

If equating femininity with weakness is correct, how do I square the many other facets of traditional femininity with that idea? Is being emotionally intelligent weak? Is cooking to feed your family weak? Is creating an entire human with your own body weak? And if Lauren is more feminine than I am, does that mean that she is weak? The math just isn’t adding up, the two-dimensionality I’ve ascribed to masculinity is wholly ill-fitting; it doesn’t allow for the multitudes all individuals contain.

I now realize I’ve moved through my queer life in the first iteration of my butch identity for a rather long time. I thought I had plateaued in my self, finding a soft resting spot that finally felt really good. Just when I thought I had a moment to take a breath, I find that I have a lot of work to do to confront my own bias within my identity in order to move forward into my next life chapter: parenthood.

Parenthood is not about self-definition, there is always someone else to think about. I now must do the work of deciding what I want to teach my child about masculinity, feminity, and everything in between. Namely, that being yourself, being in touch with who you are and what you need, is never a weakness but always a strength.

The other day, on the subway, I knew I needed to sit down. I am pregnant and was feeling sick. If I had seen another pregnant woman in such a state, I would not hesitate to give up my seat. It's time for me to understand that it's not a mark against my butchness to ask for what I need, not a sign of weakness to accept care, and that femininity is a strength. I hope I can impart that to my child.

Later that day, after the ultrasound, I grabbed an iced coffee. The barista greeted me heartily. “How can I help you, sir?”

I suppose this pregnancy isn’t erasing me, after all.