Market Failure

We got a bunch of baby clothes at X's second shower last weekend.  In fact, we've totally avoided buying clothes, since we knew people would buy them for him, and we're saving our money for things that people won't think of.  (Although now Kate's aunt and uncle are buying us a breast pump.  Who knew people were that awesome?)

There have been several failures in this process.

The first is that we've gotten a lot of clothes that scream OH HAI I'M A BOY.  Now, that we got a lot of blue is not a problem.  Frankly, we would have picked out a lot of blue clothes ourselves.  Puppies?  Totally fine.  Trucks?  Um.  OK.  He can like trucks if he wants.  Athletics?  They do realize that he's more likely to be a ballet dancer than a football player, given his family conditioning, right?  A full-scale cowboy outfit, complete with matching hat and boots?

Well, OK.  That one's a little awesome.

In any case, we got clothes that came from the boy side of the store.  Now, I object pretty much on principle to having a boy side of the store, and to the assumptions made in how clothes get assigned to that side.  But, we'll live.  

But there's another thing.

X has a onesie that says "Mommy loves me."  Actually, I think he has two.  And he's got a third that says "Favorite things: Mommy.  Hugs.  Kisses."  They are tremendously cute.  I love them.

Of course I do.  I'm Mommy.  

In most families, these outfits are countered with "My dad is my hero."  (Yes, I saw that one at Babies R Us today.  Seriously.)  "I love my daddy."  "Daddy's little man."  (I may be making that one up.)  But we don't have a Daddy. We have a Mommy and a Mama and an Uncle, and only one of us is getting served by the onesie industry here.

I almost want to write on the "Mommy loves me" onesie with a Sharpie: "Mama, on the other hand, is a little sick of me by this point."  

Uncle's vote is that we're shopping at mainstream/white stores; white people say Mommy, while black and Latino people say Mama, so if we headed out of the mainstream and into stores particularly targeting communities of color, we might be able to find Mama-themed attire.  Or, at least, Mamá.  He might be right; I'll start digging.

But, in a quest to fix things, I went on makeaonesie.com today and ordered these:

(Extra points if you get why the butterflies on the Uncle one are funny.)

I know there are much bigger lacks we'll be experiencing as queer parents.  But this is the sort of silly little area where accommodation of different family styles could be useful.  Not all mothers are Mommy.  And if someone wrote that on a fucking onesie, I'd buy it.

He can dance if he wants to.

It's official. Willa's a he.



And he likes kicking himself in the head. My mother suggested the Simpson Gene. Our donor had hair, though.

At 22 weeks, he weighed 1 pound, 2 ounces. And his legs were measuring two weeks ahead of date. Ha!

While we could keep calling him Willa, we've started calling him by his outside name, and it would be nice to be consistent. So, for Intarwebs purposes, he'll be called X.

No, we won't tell you what it stands for. But, well, you know us. Guess.

Reading the X-Files: Mulder and Scully's "Partnership" and the Question of Queer Marriage, Empedocles (8X17)

(I'm going to be doing a few of these as I'm studying the show closely for a paper I'm writing; they're close readings of intellectually compelling moments in specific episodes. For the blog, I'm going to stick to moments about pregnancy, fertility/infertility, parenting, and queer stuff. Hopefully you'll find them interesting.)

There are a million things I love about the X Files:

1. The incredible hotness of the protagonists.
2. The gonzo way nothing ever makes good sense but somehow it is always AWESOME.
3. That there are spaceships and hot girls with guns .
   
4. That the government simultaneously is evil and full of good people who want to save the world.
5. Did I mention the hotness? Oh, I did? Let me say it again. THE HOTNESS.

Tell me you don't kinda want to make out with at least one of these people.

But what I really love is the relationship between Mulder and Scully. Here we have a smokin' hot vibe between two gorgeous people who are totally devoted to each other, which is simultaenously not a standard heterosexual love story. Despite the fact that we get teased about it plenty, we don't get any mushyness until nearly the end of the serious--the first kiss comes in season 7, and it's not even unambiguous that they're involved until season 8, and then just barely. Instead, we see the World's Longest, Smartest Seduction, consisting of moments of comfort and protection as the world is ending, a never-ending procession of banter and flirtation, and a lot of time spent in hospital beds. They reverse typical gender performances: Scully is the scientist, the rationalist, the hard-edged one, while Mulder is all feelings, hunches, instinct. They are equally likely to do caring work for each other, as well; this is a relationship built on equality and cooperation, at work and (presumably) outside of it.

And it gets really interesting when they're having a kid.

The expectant parents and a large pizza.

(OK, ten-second recap: Scully's infertile due to alien abduction, Mulder stole her eggs from the humans who work with the aliens, they try to conceive via IVF and fail, she *magically* gets pregnant with a baby that may or may not be an alien hybrid implanted by the bad guys and simultaneously he gets abducted by aliens, he is returned dead and they bury him, then they dig him up and he's not dead anymore. There's no explicit proof within show canon that they've ever slept together up to the point we're talking about, but there are significant hints, and there has been no definitive statement about the parentage of the baby. Does that make sense? No? Go with it, Scully, as Mulder would say. Just remember the writers were probably high at the time.)

The episode I'm talking about here is Empedocles (TWoP recap; Episode Transcript). This is the second episode after Mulder has come back to life. In the previous episode (Three Words), he has said he feels cut off, out of place, doesn't know where he fits in, and it's clear he means with with regard to Scully and her pregnancy. There is no on-camera discussion of the paternity of the child, although a minor character later asks him about his possible involvement, which results in a Serious Mulder-Scully Mutual Look (if you've ever seen the show, you know what I mean). By my reading, they seem to be on the same page, and that page is that Mulder is most definitely 'involved.' However, his exact relationship to Scully and the baby is left purposely unclear, in part because of doubt that the baby is really human. Three Words ended with Scully driving getaway vehicle for Mulder's bust into a federal data facility: that is, everything normal except for the Scully Waistline Situation (she's at about 7 months, and looks fantastic, as Gillian Anderson always does, even in the early, puffy-hair-and-white-tights phase, and the strange, long-hair-and-sad-looks Season 9 thing).

The scenes from Empedocles that I want to analyze here are 3 and 4 in the transcript. Mulder shows up on Scully's doorstep unexpectedly. They engage in supercute banter: Rational!Scully has an attack of pregnancy brain, Mulder posits the pizza delivery boy as a possible father for the baby, there is a significant double entendre around the phrase "nice package," etc. The attitude is light, lighter than usual for them; the vibe is definitely more couple than friends, but, as with everything on this show, it's not perfectly clear.

There is this exchange:

SCULLY: I feel like I'm stuck in an episode of Mad About You.

MULDER: Well, uh, yeah, but small technicality. Mad About You was about a married couple and we just work together.

SCULLY: Yeah, well, you know what I'm talking about.

MULDER: I do, I do.

This is the show's greatest fiction: they "just work together." People, these folks are in six kinds of lurve. They've called each other best friend, soulmate, touchstone, only person I can trust, and a million other things. He was the executor of her living will as early as season 2. They tried to have a kid together, and then succeeded (I believe). When his body was discovered and then again at his funeral, she was treated as a widow. These people? Are. So. Totally. Together.

But what they are isn't named. The only word they ever use to describe who they are to each other to the outside world is 'partner.' The word was given to them by the FBI, but, of course, it has a double meaning: it's what most queer folks, and a growing contingent of radical folks in heterosexual relationships call their significant others. Mulder and Scully aren't married; in fact, it's meant to be unclear if they are even in a romantic or sexual relationship. (But they so totally are.) The name they have for it is ambiguous: they "just work together." But when Scully says, "You know what I mean," look what he says: "I do, I do." I don't think it's irrelevant that he responds to her assertion (that they've become a quipping sitcom couple, complete with bad pizza man jokes) with marriage words. In that moment, whatever the world thinks, the solidity and commitment of their relationship is established. They're partners. Just the type for whom the word means forever.

Then, crisis. Scully doubles over in pain, clutching her belly. Mulder rushes to her side, orders the pizza guy to call 911. We cut to Scully being rushed into the hospital on a guerney, Mulder holding her hand, the nurse knowing her name. (It's been a dramatic pregnancy.) Mulder corrects the nurse on the gender of Scully's OB-GYN, and we get this exchange.

ER NURSE: Who are you? The husband?

MULDER: No.

ER NURSE: Then you wait outside.

Scully is whisked away, and Mulder is left alone, looking desperate. My beloved wife, at this point in the episode, said "Come on. Everyone knows the right answer to that question is yes." And we know this, because we know if we were ever somewhere without our legal paperwork, the question would be "Are you her sister?" and the answer would be "yes," without a doubt, because there is no way we would be separated. Scully and Mulder, partners-which-means-everything, are separated here becasue they don't have the magic words. Partnership, that safe word that can mean "we just work together" or can mean "we aren't telling the government we're fucking" or "we disagree about the structural utility of the institution of marriage" or "we are too busy saving the world to pick out a china pattern" is here shown to be socially less, to be entirely insufficient at the moment of crisis. He can't do anything but stand there.

Although it isn't explicit, I want to read a critique of the dominance of 'marriage' into this moment. No one watching this show has any doubt about the fact that Mulder should have followed Scully into that ER. After all, they seem to spend all their time in ERs together. It's like date night in X-Files-land. Because this is a "personal" crisis (e.g., neither of them has been shot, abducted by aliens or serial killers, or attacked by goo), the badge-flashing routine doesn't work here, so they are forcibly separated. Because their "partnership" does not map on to our conventional notions of how relationships should be patterned, an injustice is done in that waiting room.

What is the solution here? Is it for Mulder and Scully to get married? Emphatically, no, at least in my opinion. (OK, if they show up in the movie that's coming out this summer wearing wedding rings, I'm not going to be upset. In fact, I'ma squee like the crazy mushy fangirl I am. Not that it's gonna happen.) They don't need to be married. No one needs to be married. Mulder and Scully don't need the approval of God and the District of Columbia to establish who they are to each other. All they need is a Crown Victoria, a pair of Sig Sauers, and an alien invasion to fight.

The solution I would articulate would be to allow people to determine their own words and practices. The question would be "Are you the next of kin?" The metaphysical state of marriage would be reserved for those who desired it (like myself, which I should talk about sometime). The legal state of becoming a family would be available to any arrangement of individuals who agreed to care for each other, regardless of whether their relationships were romantic, sexual, or biological. Mulder and Scully can just be Mulder and Scully (and potentially extraterrestrial fetus makes three). But in a world of compulsory heterosexuality and the sanctity of marriage, Mulder stands on the wrong side of the ER doors, waiting with the pizza men of the world for something to change.

William The Transsexual Parakeet: A Story (With An Important Payoff)

Kate and I do this thing. She makes me tell her stories for her. Not just things that happened that we both know about: she makes me tell her childhood stories, her college stories, all of them. I'm the storyteller, which is hilarious if you consider that she's the one who wants us to blog every damn thing. Wants me to blog every damn thing, more like.

But anyway, today I'm the storyteller. And this is her story, but I'm telling it for my own purposes. So make of that what you want.

Anyway, when Kate was seven or so, a shed got delivered to her house. And in that shed was a tiny little parakeet. She and her mother and her little brother (who was about four) spent a good deal of time trying to catch that parakeet. Actually, Kate's mom did most of the work, aided by the ever-well-behaved Kate, and disturbed by the less-well-behaved brother, who desperately wanted to pet the pretty birdy. But, in the end, the bird was captured and brought inside. Kate's mom refused to let the kids name the bird for about six months or so, until she had exhausted every possible avenue for finding its original home. After all hope was lost, the kids named him William.

Several years down the road, William became sick. So he was taken to the vet, for the first time ever. At the vet, it was revealed that William was, in Kate's words, Williamette: they had a lady bird on their hands. William/ette's condition did not improve substantially, and about six months later s/he Flew To The Great Shed In The Sky, so to speak.

So, it is in honor of this bird, who managed to live for a time in both genders, who appeared without warning and shocked everyone by sticking around, that we christen the Non-Hysteri-Keet.

Blogosphere, meet Willa. Willa, meet Blogosphere.

Why Willa, and not William? Well, because we've basically decided that it's too hard to play the gender-neutral pronoun game all the time, and that our personal default pronoun is female, so she should have a vaguely female name. However, we picked Willa in part because it references the chromozonal question mark: Willa might be William might be Williamette, and all is well. We'll know when we know, or we won't, and it's fine.

(Oh, and alternative sources for the name include this and this. Look, the one walked the line between genders and wrote one of my favorite novels, and the other is a mysterious production of parents who shouldn't have been able to procreate AND had magical powers as an infant. Either way, it's good.)

What, you want a real story of yesterday morning's positive? Well, maybe I'll tell you. But not today. Willa's mama is demanding dinner, and her mom has some Guy Debord to read. The world continues turning, but it's one Keet heavier round these parts.

But Who Will Teach Her Football?

Channel-surfing last night, I stumbled upon a basketball game, and settled in to watch. It was Denver vs. Dallas; at first, I paid more attention to Denver, because of my misplaced affection for Allen Iverson (why did I not know the Sixers traded him?) AND because apparently Dikembe Mutumbo plays/played for them at some point, and I have fond memories of him missing a goddamned free throw and sending that first playoff game into overtime WHEN WE COULD HAVE JUST BEAT THE GODDAMNED LAKERS IN REGULAR PLAY. TELL ME WHY AN EIGHT-FOOT TALL ATHLETE MISSES A FREE THROW? I'M FIVE-THREE AND MY FREE THROW PERCENTAGE IS BETTER THAN THAT. However, after about ten minutes, I settled my attentions on the fact that Dallas has a white boy who can play. The problem with watching basketball while trying to waste time on the internet work is that I usually watch ball on mute, so as not to have to deal with play-by-play. Really, ball games should be watched with company, so that you all have your eyes the same direction and are talking about something else. And possibly eating a cheesesteak.

But, being me, I started thinking about masculinity. I don't have any worries about not giving my child a 'male role model.' There will be a bunch of those around: Uncle, another non-bio uncle we have around, my brother, inshallah my dad for a while. However, there are whole universes of things that I simply don't have as cultural capital, because I didn't learn how to be a proper man in contemporary American culture. In fact, my child may not have access to them at all: none of the men mentioned above perform any sort of standard masculinity: gay, sensitive, artistic, mentally ill, not raised in the US, multiple of the above, etc. I don't want my kid to learn about domination and silence about emotions and agression.

But I want hir* to know what a carburator is. To be able to understand a baseball game. To have the general knowledge that is, in our culture, assigned to men. I've wanted to be butch--I've tried--but then I start knitting, or letting my hair get long which it always is and always has been, or trying on heels, or screaming about mice, or baking, and it all falls apart in a big mess of femme disaster. I can't teach my children the things proper men know, because I get a D in proper masculinity. A D+, tops, and that's just because I like sci-fi. And sports cars. Even though I can't drive.

There's another level that comes to me as I watch sports and think of my child. I don't know how to teach my kid about being a physical being. About running, jumping, climbing trees, as Eddie Izzard says. My reasons for this are not strictly about my poor marks in masculinity. I was a sickly kid. I mean, it started with the premature birth and the borderline-cerebral palsy and the year of intense occupational therapy and then the asthma and then that benign tumor that at fifteen became a cancerous one and then the three years of surgery and crutches and wheelchairs, and somewhere in all of that I skipped enough gym class to be lost at anything resembling physical activity. My surgeons said they wanted me to be able to run for the bus. I can, but three flights of stairs from subway to ground level leaves me a little breathless, and I fail at any task involving getting two parts of my body to act in contradictory fashions. I can't teach my kid to throw a ball. To run. If ze gets hir athletic skills from Kate's side of the family, ze'll be built for motion, and that is nothing I can ever give hir.

I watched the ballgame off and on, between work and non-work. I know the rules of basketball. I can watch a muted football game in a crowded bar and know when to heckle. Baseball is idiotic anyway. My child will learn how to throw a ball from someone else, will maybe learn how to kick hir way across a field like an uncle she never met, will have a running-jumping-climbing-trees childhood, will hopefully at twenty-seven be able to sit in a bar and perform enough masculinity for hir purposes. It's all I've got to give.