𝐒𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐥𝐲, 𝐰𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲 || 𝐌𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐎’𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐚 𝐱 𝐅𝐞𝐦!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫
part one: Do you want a baby? || part two || part three: Dharma
𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲- what was supposed to be just a general diagnosis turns into a pregnancy reveal + how your water broke in the middle of an actual date with Miguel. 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬_ pregnancy, child birth, grumpy!soft!Miguel x sunshine!reader, sex allusions, implied short reader, implied age gap (legal) NO PROOFREAD :). 𝐀/𝐍_ recommended songs; so it goes and lover again (calling all the reputation & lover stans like me!!!)
♪ ♫ my miguel playlist. ✰ index (masterlist/ other works there)
______________
It would never stop being weird.
Looking at Miguel O’Hara with a tiny female spider by his side, her arm wrapped around his giant forearm, resulting in a confusing image.
Yet, the image continued as Gwen, Miles, Hobie, and Pavitr looked at you and your husband passing through the cafeteria and going to his office.
“How long have they been married?” Miles asked. Pavitr counted with his fingers.
“I think they’re about to turn two years,” he replied. Hobie smirked, looking at his friend.
“The wedding was sick… Remember?” Gwen and Miles looked at each other confused.
“What happened at the wedding?” The blonde girl asked.
Out of nowhere, Peter B. Parker appeared with a tray of food and Mayday on top of his head.
“Hey, kids. What are you talking about?”
“Miguel and y/n’s wedding,” Miles answers.
Peter lets out a little sigh like he is bringing back a happy memory. Pavitr also made the same gesture.
“It was a wonderful night…” Mayday went straight to Hobie’s arms, and the man was funnily tickling her. So Peter took advantage of that and got his phone out.
“I have pictures!” Gwen and Miles let out a NO WAY, LET ME SEE in unison.
“Alright, alright. Here’s the ceremony…” The phone displayed a picture of what seemed like a church. You had an elegant and vintage dress, Miguel was wearing a tuxedo, and the place was full of candles and sparkles that made the picture look so perfect that it was concerning.
“Miguel looks…” Gwen started.
“Happy?” Hobie asks for her. Everyone nods.
“Oh, show her the party, man,” Hobie suggested with a big grin. Making Miles and Gwen even more confused.
Some pics showed your friends, Jess and Margo, as your bridesmaids. Lego Spider-Man was one of Miguel’s best men; the cake had six layers.
It was a big celebration. With many spider people around, part of your family, and what seemed like a summer afterparty.
Gwen giggled at the variety of pictures; you and Miguel cutting the cake, the waltz… until the pictures turned a little… intense.
“Damn…” Miles let out. Hobie started laughing, looking at the pictures, and Pavitr was getting blushed.
From alcohol shots, a mess in the pool, and you and Miguel doing the infamous wedding garter removal.
“OKAY!… this is not for kids,” Peter yelled, snatching the phone from the pair of teenagers.
“How did that happen?” the girl asked. Neither she nor Miles could believe they would live to see Miguel, you, and other serious spider people doing things like that.
“Alcohol. Boss was drunk as hell….” Hobie said, evidently mocking the leader of the Spider Society.
“It was after the family left, only… close friends. I must admit it’s the coolest wedding I’ve ever been invited to,” Peter accepted. Pavitr nodded.
“Yes, it was at the same level as an Indian wedding,” that was a lot to say.
Soon, Lyla appeared and gave a disapproving look to the whole table.
“Why are you here doing nothing? Jess assigned new missions and- AWW, Is that a picture from Miguel and y/n’s wedding?” The AI appeared beside Peter, looking at his phone.
“Yes. Was a good party, remember?” Lyla nodded at Hobie.
“Until they left for their honeymoon. And I had to do all the job myself for….like a month.”
“You sound like you suffered…” Gwen said.
“I did”
“You’re an AI, Lyla. You can’t feel anything….” Everyone laughed.
“Insensible kids. Now go meet Jess for the mission’s debriefing unless you want Miguel's lecture on your lives.”
With that, everyone left to their respective rooms to hear the debriefings.
…
“Well, that was fun,” Miles commented. Enjoying a giant cheese empanada from the cafeteria. Gwen nodded, and Hobie shrugged, following them.
“Time to go home. I’m tired…” Everyone started to say their goodbyes. Hobie was gone, and then Margo appeared, running towards them.
“Hey! What’s up, Margo?” Jealousy immediately invaded Gwen, and she soon went to appear beside Miles. Nothing personal, but the feeling had been evolving. She liked Margo but didn’t like how she and Miles interacted.
“Haven’t you heard?… y/n is injured” The pair looked between them worriedly.
“Is she okay?”
“I don’t know. I was about to go and see her. Jess said it was delicate.”
Everyone started pacing towards the clinic.
It was as big as the whole HQ; bright, clean, and futuristic.
Many spiders were there, injured people, waiting for surgery, medicines, etc.
However, their way was towards one of the private rooms.
There, you were lying in a bed in the center.
Beside you, Miguel holding your hand.
In a hologram form, Jess and Lyla were looking too.
“What are you doing here?” Miguel asked, intimidating Gwen, Margo, and Miles with his massive height.
“We heard y/n was injured…” Margo dared to respond.
You smiled. You really loved them, so you giggled.
“This isn’t over…” Miguel spoke once again, pointing at you. Oh, Miguel and his so-ever-grumpy attitude.
But you knew there was a lot to talk about back home. A lot…
“Are you okay?”
“Are you gonna be able to go back to work tomorrow?” Miles and Gwen bombard you with lots of questions. Margo was always more considerate, so she stood quiet.
And Miguel was rolling his eyes and looking beyond annoyed, cringed by his younger employees’ questions.
“No, stop saturating her with stupid questions. She’s pregnant, kids….” Miguel said, maintaining his stoic posture.
Jess let out a little laugh, noticing that Margo was the only one to react at the moment.
Her mouth opened to form a big o of shock.
“Do you have anything broken?” The blonde girl in turquoise Converse asked.
“Just my ankle, a sprain in my inner tight… oh, and I have a baby,” you comment softly, rubbing your stomach with a smile.
The teenagers keep making comments Margo is already paralyzed. You laugh again, covering your lips. Then turn to look at Miguel, who’s rolling his eyes again.
“YOU WHAT?…” their eyes are going to pop out.
“You’re pregnant?” Gwen asks.
“That’s why I just said…” Miguel adds with frustration. Then proceeding to whisper something in Spanish.
“I’m very happy for you two, congratulations” Margo is always polite and sweet. You accept her hug, and the other two teens are all over you. Showering you with ideas for baby names, a baby shower hosted by Peter, and making the kid’s first birthday party in the HQ.
“We have to tell this to the others!”
“No. We don’t want to. “
But Miles and Gwen are already out, both still in shock, ignoring Miguel and his desire to keep your status private.
You don’t mind, actually. Everyone would know in a couple of months. But Miguel… what can you say? He’s your husband.
And he kept pinching the bridge of his nose, proving how annoyed he was.
“Paciencia, paciencia…” he keeps murmuring. Margo giggles before turning to leave.
“I’ll try to stop them,” she offers.
“Thanks, Margo,” your husband thanks her with a brief glance.
“Someone has to stop those kids and their unlimited energy” Jess comments, making you laugh.
Soon, it’s just you and your husband.
“Now what?” You ask, rubbing your eyes.
Miguel leans to brush some strays of hair behind your ear, giving you a warm look.
“Now I’m taking you home…”
He thinks you look sweet with the hospital gown, perfect hair, and no makeup.
And although he’s scared as hell of you being already so far in the pregnancy, he dreams of the day you are in the same position. With a baby in your arms…
…
“Your wife is almost six months pregnant…” Spider-doctor had said.
“Sorry… I’M WHAT?”
Miguel stood there frozen, holding your hand. You were also in shock.
His world sure stopped for some seconds. All the months trying, wondering why you couldn’t get pregnant, it was because you were already growing a baby.
“But-… I don’t have any symptoms. I don’t even have a belly,” you blurt. "Human bodies work out differently. For spiders, it can work beyond differently” Miguel, and you turn to look at each other.
His face came to hide in your shoulder almost immediately. Whispering ‘thank you’ multiple times, kissing your hair, working in private, so Doctor Spider-man couldn’t see.
Almost six months of going to missions like nothing, having sex like always (every day, at least four rounds). Damn… Miguel had to be more careful.
“I’ll come again to get you a scan and everything. I’m going to leave to get your blood test results.” With that, Doctor Spider-man leaves.
Now, you are sitting in your bed. Remembering the moment you found out the news. Looking at the candles that illuminated your desk across your bookshelves.
In a moment, Miguel entered with a little tray.
“I got your favorite chicken wrap, tea, and cookies…” Now you know you’re pregnant and suddenly want to cry about everything. He was so sweet. His reaction to the pregnancy was calm, and he promised to look forward instead of his past. And now he appeared at your door with some of your favorite snacks and looked beautiful; yes, you’re crying.
“Oh no. Don’t cry, hermosa,” he soothes you. Your little whimpers made him realize he had to be careful with his words. Then the thought of you being unconsciously reckless, putting yourself in danger, edging Miguel towards another breakdown…
“It’s just that… I’m- we’re halfway through this, and I can’t believe everything I did. I could have….”
“No. It was almost impossible to know you were pregnant, love. You would’ve not put yourself in danger at the slight chance….”
“Now what? I don’t want to put the baby at risk, but I can’t stay doing nothing for the rest of the pregnancy. I’m a spider-woman….”
“I know what you’re thinking” Miguel was being so patient. He was listening to you and never letting your hand go.
“Since we started trying… I’ve psyched myself that it could be dangerous. But it’s not gonna be the same. I’m not gonna lose any of you two. Because I know this is correct” Of course, he was afraid, but he committed to letting go of his past and focusing on this present with you. So he would not try to control it and you.
“You’re my lovely wife. I know you, and you’re a strong and perfect woman who will take care of our baby when I can’t be around….” you are shocked. You have to squeeze his hand to confirm you're not dreaming.
He sounds so peaceful, wearing white socks with a hoodie and pants. And he looks that perfect? You had to be dreaming.
“You are taking some weeks to recover from the ankle, the sprain, and one more check to see the baby. Then, low-impact missions, and in the last month, I have you in my office. What do you think?” you nod, smiling. Pushing yourself to sit and hug him and feel his big hands moving across your back.
“Thank you. We love you so much, Miguel…”
We. Oh, he would cry too.
“I love you two so much too. Completely… my whole world…”
“Yeah. No wonder why your plan sounds like you want to have me by your side for the next four months 24/7,” he smiles.
“Maybe that’s the idea…I want my little family with me all the time” You let yourself fall into the pillows again.
You lift your shirt and start poking your flat stomach. Miguel looks at you with curiosity.
“I can’t believe it’s almost six months old, we have a healthy baby, and I don’t have a bump.”
“Well, you look gorgeous as usual. Maybe there’s even a glow on you that I overlooked before”
“It’s my hair, right?”
“Could be…” both of you giggle.
But finally, there’s a time for a kiss. And it feels like bliss like his lips were everything to soothe the confusing thoughts, to feel happy and blessed for the child growing inside you.
His hands sneak through your exposed skin to gently stroke your stomach, hoping to connect with the baby.
He’s going to treasure this new opportunity. He had taken it the first time by marrying you, protecting you but never trying to control you. So he would follow the same recipe for this pregnancy.
From the love you two shared, passion always bloomed.
You felt amazing, so nothing would stop you from having your husband that night. So you started to tangle your fingers through his hair cause it never failed to tease him.
“God… we have to stop, bonita.”
“Why?” You ask with a pout, coming to hug his neck and giving him an annoyed look.
“The baby…”
“The baby has been fine since day one. Want to remember all the things we’ve done in the last five months?” you can swear he’s about to blush. So you giggle.
“You’re gonna be the death of me…” he complains.
But soon, you see his head disappear under the hem of your skirt.
Finally, you exhale with peace and tranquility.
…
Miguel fixes your suit from behind, his own suit already activated. He can hear your heavy breathing and feels slightly guilty because now, with the baby, your breathing could get hatred.
“See? Perfect as usual, mami…” he says, holding your hips, admiring you. He loved seeing his little wife waddling around the HQ with her cute belly and adorable smile. But having her in the HQ, making a moment only for him? It was a blessing.
“We spent at least an hour here; it’s gonna look obvious, Miguel,” you say, ignoring his comments. Your red cheeks, shiny skin, and curled hair could give you away.
Stupid pregnancy hormones.
Since your belly popped out in the seventh month, it felt like a prolonged fertile week that made you feel sexy and loved by your husband. As a result, extreme rounds of sex came like nothing most days.
“Honestly… I don’t care, hermosa,” he admits smiling. You roll your eyes, pinching his hand to annoy him.
“Sometimes you’re insufferable,” he smirks.
“You love me…” he attacks back, and you can’t help but blush like a little girl.
“Yeah, sometimes it scares me how much I do love you” The moment turns soft, as usual, between you and him.
Miguel turns into a giant heart marshmallow for you. All he can think is about how happy you make him.
“Can we have a date on Friday?” You ask with a cute and shy tone.
“Sure, mami. Where do you wanna go?” That fucking nickname. He meant it sweetly and adorably because, in his head, you were already a mommy. Still, he also says it in a hot way to proudly remember you he got you pregnant.
“The library and that new bakery near home” he would never say no to having a date with you. Never.
“You got me, bonita. I’m in the mood for a thriller book and some… What do you call those little cakes?” since you started dating, Miguel would pick one of your books to read together every night. The pastries only came to the scene on the weekends, though.
“Turkish pastries? Stop, I’m getting hungry. Oh, and I don’t mind another memoir, but yeah, I’m into the thriller book too,” he smiles, offering you another sweet smile. Thinking about how much he wants Friday to come and be out with you.
“I have to assign missions with Lyla. I’ll see you in my office. Okay?”
“Okay, amor,” the characteristic pull on his rib appears; he knows he must lean down and kiss you.
It’s slow, passionate, and delightful. His lips are soft despite all the times he had bitten himself with his sharp fangs. He was always so careful to avoid hurting you. He always avoided contact, but that didn’t stop him from playing with the skin of your neck in the most intimate moments.
“We love you…”
“Me too, bonita. I love you two with my whole heart….”
…
Your stomach was painfully churning. You were hungry, and your baby was asking for something too.
Maybe a burger with my husband’s mask printed on the bun. A side of fries with sweet and sour sauce; yeah, that’ll work, you think.
So you are peacefully sitting in the cafeteria. Waiting for Miguel to come back to the HQ and spent the rest of the day with him. Your mask is resting beside your phone and your web shooters.
It was crazy how the pregnancy made you both clingier than ever. His hands never leave your body, especially your belly. You don’t want to be separated from him for long periods. And even your family noticed how close you and Miguel were.
You asked where he went during a family gathering, only to find him drinking a beer with your father. And your aunts said you two were attached to hip… to the max.
“Hey, there’s my favorite spider-mama. Don’t tell Jess!” Peter appeared on your side with his kids; Hobie, Pavitr, Gwen, Miles, and Mayday.
“Hey, guys!” Mayday immediately went after you. Playing with your belly and softly poking at the roundness of it.
“Wow, your skin looks amazing!” Gwen flatters you, which causes a big blush on your face.
“Oh, thank you. I spent some time in the sauna today…” Miguel convinced you to try the least heated sauna room, saying it was good for your aching belly. However, it turned into a wild session of sex with at least an hour of duration. But your friends wouldn’t know that.
“How are you feeling?” Peter asked.
“Fine. You say maybe two more weeks or so…” you rub your belly along Mayday. Her beanie is dirty, and you promise her to clean it up before the day is over.
“I can’t believe you guys don’t know the sex of the baby…” Pavitr commented. You giggle, shrugging.
“I want it to be special. Especially for Miguel… you know his past,” they all nodded. They could see their boss apathetic as usual, barely glancing at them, ignoring their jokes, etc. But every employee of the Spider Society knew Miguel O’Hara had only one weakness; you.
And now that you were pregnant, it was impossible to not notice how Miguel tried to remain calm and be more patient about everything.
“I’m still a little hurt that I wasn’t the first to receive the news,” Peter B. Parker admitted, watching his daughter play with you.
“You left early that day!. You didn’t even know I was injured.”
“Yeah… and I called as soon as I learned the news” You pat his shoulder.
“Oh, Peter. You know you’re one of my best friends. And you’ll be my kid’s godfather,” his eyes sparkled. Everyone laughed at the comment, but Peter was pleased about it.
“I already got something for the kid…” Hobie announced.
“Aww, Hobie!… That’s so sweet, thanks!” their fondness towards you and your baby makes you want to tear up.
“Please, don’t give the child a set of piercings or the book of historic protests like you did with Mayday,” Pavitr prays, looking at his friend. Gwen was laughing so hard that it infected everyone.
However, Hobie had a little guitar full of excellent phrases and stickers he had collected over the months.
“It’s something better,” your punk friend promised.
You really liked spending time with them. It was like a second family that you could enjoy every day.
Then the conversation was all about Pavitr's upcoming big Indian party in Mumbattan. He invited everyone, and you promised to show up with Miguel and the baby.
Then you realized something. You really craved it, being a family of three.
…
A pink box was stuffed with Turkish pastries; 4 pieces of baklava, 2 of basbousa, and a slice of baklava cheesecake.
The sweet woman placed a green ribbon on top of the box, and you squealed out of happiness cause the ribbon matched the pistachio crumbles on the pastries.
“Thank you…” Miguel thanks the woman and follows you toward the exit.
The date was amazing, as usual. Hours spent between bookshelves, stolen kisses, and spending on four books to read in the following months.
“I can’t wait to eat this at home… my mouth is watering, amor,” he chuckled, admitting that these last few weeks, you looked even cuter with your bump and emotional attitude.
“Yeah, give me the box. Or else there won't be any cake left before we arrive home” Frowning, you hand him the box. The way to the parking lot is quiet.
But there’s a pair of big smiles on both of your faces.
The whole day you’ve felt tremendous pressure on your lower belly, nothing painful, but the feeling was weird. Only two weeks left, and then…poof!!, the baby was here.
A heavy noise disconcerted you. And when you looked to your left, Miguel had bumped himself with a lamppost.
Your heavy laughs are all it can be heard isn’t the parking lot after that.
“Stop laughing. I was taking care of you, not stumbling with the bags and your belly” he heard you let out a long oww before continuing to laugh. His spider sense was worse since he learned you were pregnant, always taking care of you. His eyes never leave you, alert in case of anything.
He’s annoyed but smiles at the sight of you being so happy.
Until…he noticed something on your pants. There was a big spot; it certainly looked like…
“Bonita…I think-I think you just….” As you follow his words, you look down to see why your pants and underwear feel drenched.
And once again, you’re laughing.
“Oh my god, Miguel. I think I just…” you peed on yourself for laughing so hard. You’re embarrassed, but still, you find the humor to find it funny. Miguel gets closer and takes the bags of books and your purse from your hands, finally laughing too.
“This is what happens when you make fun of your husband…” he opens the car door for you, and you only send him a lousy look before he keeps smiling. When you accommodate on the seat, your disgusted face worries Miguel. He leans to inspect you better.
“What? What is it, mi vida?” Your discomfort grows, and your hands travel to your lower belly. Seconds later, your eyes pop open in shock.
“Oh god. I don’t think it was pee after all…” you reveal, looking at your husband. His eyes also open in shock, and he starts breathing heavily.
He starts walking in little circles between the space of your car and the neighbor from the parking lot.
All he can think about is that a little human is trying to get out of you.
His life is about to change. All he ever wanted was going to be complete. He had to be strong for you and put his trauma away, like during the pregnancy.
“Okay. Does it hurts now?” He asks, returning to kneeling and looking you in the face.
You shake your head, not even knowing how you feel.
“Not really. I just feel like there’s something stuck inside me and-“
“And?” He urges you.
“And I want to push it out…” he nods, already feeling sweat on his forehead. He leans to kiss your forehead and hold your hands.
“Activate your suit, bonita. We need to go back to the HQ…”
“WHAT? NO… Just take me to a normal hospital, Miguel,” you say, trying to calm down.
“We can’t. Doctor Spider-man has been treating you since we found out. He’ll know better….”
“But…”
“Mami, you’ll have to deliver this baby soon. The best place to do it is in the HQ. You know it, right?” Slowly, you end up nodding.
He makes you look at your watch and activate your suit.
You don’t even feel when your soaked clothes are gone and you are in the suit's skin. You just feel like some beach ball was stuck inside your mouth, but everything happening on your cervix.
Miguel also activated his suit, including his mask. You shake your head at the sight.
“Oh no, fuck no. I'm not wearing the mask…” he sighs. Miguel is doing everything to not panic and not stress you. Even when he feels surprised you are handling the dilatation very well, he knows he can’t panic you too.
“Okay, don’t wear the mask. Can you stand up?…” you do your best, but it’s impossible to stand straight anymore. You must lean a little and open your legs to soothe the intense pressure on your pelvis.
“It’s okay, mami. We’ll be home with our baby in a blink of an eye.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so, Miguel” Your sarcasm signals him to hurry, so he opens a portal and helps you enter.
…
The room's wide window is like a living landscape, with the futuristic sight of cars and bright lights from skyscrapers.
There were no curtains because no one could see what was happening inside.
You were lying on the hospital bed that night, trying to push out a baby.
“I can’t do this…” you sob. It’s not even that painful (thankfully). The discomfort of the little human sliding out of you very slowly.
“Yes, you can. You are already done, bonita.” Miguel encourages you, which makes you roll your eyes.
“No. I mean-I can do this, just not on this bed…” your husband looks confused, but you ignore him to turn to Doctor Spider-man.
“You can try on your feet,” the doctor speaks through his mask. You nod, and with Miguel’s help, you end up on the edge of the bed; instantly, you feel the pressure of your baby slightly better.
You hear the doctor’s instructions, and even Miguel is in a position to help to catch the kid. You hold onto his broad shoulders to support yourself. Then, after three more big pushes, you feel it…the baby is out.
“We got it,” Miguel hears the doctor say, and a wave of soft cries instantly starts to echo across the room.
Desperation floods Miguel, who wants to see his baby and know everything is fine.
As the doctor cuts the cord and makes Miguel help you to lay on the bed again, he can’t stop kissing your forehead.
“Thank you, y/n. Thank you so much,” you nod, feeling tears in your eyes.
“Congratulations, it’s a girl,” officially, there are tears in your husband’s eyes. Doctor Spider leaves, saying he will come back with some papers and to help you.
He thinks Gabriella must’ve been very happy to have a little sister.
“Here you go…,” and everything is a comfortable silence once the baby is in your arms.
She’s tiny, with sun-kissed skin like his father, brown matted hair, and grey eyes that will eventually turn into chocolate like his father’s.
Her eyes are slightly open, she looks like she’s yawning, and her little tongue pokes out occasionally.
“Look, Miguel…” he leans to inspect his daughter closer.
He’s in love with her, and he’s beyond in love with you. He would always thank you for giving him a second chance to be a father.
“Oh, I’m in love again. She’s perfect, amor,” you sob, kissing the baby’s tiny head.
“I can’t believe this… I had nothing. Then I found you. And now…suddenly, we have a baby,” he confessed, caressing her rosy cheek.
“How do we name her?” He asks again.
“I want something related to her father’s name…”
“Are you sure, bonita?” You nod. After all, Miguel deserved it, and you wanted to do it for him.
“Yeah. Magalí, Marina, and Magdalena have been in my mind” his smile lights up with your last option, easily looking at her baby with that name.
“I like Magdalena…”
“Then… hello, baby Magda” you coo at your daughter, feeling her soft skin and plump cheeks.
“Your mommy and I love you so much, baby” Miguel’s hand comes to take yours, and together, you’re admiring your baby girl.
Doctor Spider enters after a knock on the door, holding a little binder.
“Okay, we’re cleaning her and healing you….” he announces. He adds that you’ll be fine in three weeks with a good recovery and that the baby was healthy. Miguel is so thankful and happy. He can barely hide his smile from his coworker.
“But before that… Lyla wants me to congratulate you two and ask if she can spread the news. Everyone is asking for this little family,” you smile. Spider plushie and Lego Spider-Man must be very worried and spider cat. You want to see your friends soon.
“No. We don’t want to share-“
“Miguel.” You scold him, give him a bad look, then look down at your daughter, smiling again.
“Yes, you can tell Lyla to share the news,” the AI appears before you. Her eyes open at the sight of the new addition of the HQ.
“Oh-great. And- OH MY GOD, SHE’S SO CUTE” Miguel instantly rolls his eyes, looking at Lyla moving in front of her tiny daughter and simulating touching her. There’s a little pink headband with a flower in Magdalena’s little head, which doubles how cute she looks.
“Thanks, Lyla…”
“Peter and Pavitr are on their way already. Probably the others will be joining us later” You nod once again. Feeling so welcomed and accepting that Miguel was right.
It was the best idea to give birth to your daughter in the HQ.
“Great. More visits!…” Miguel complains with a big load of sarcasm.
“Sorry…see ya later. ” with that, Lyla disappears.
“Ay, mami. You don’t know what you’ve done” Miguel can hear everyone talking about him and you and the baby. Having all his annoying coworkers asking questions and grabbing his daughter. However, he knows that will make you happy.
“Miguel, don’t be like that. This day is special… but we have our whole lives to have a family moment… just the three of us” he knows you’re right. So he sighs, letting a smile appear on your face.
“Right, yeah. You’re right…”
“I know. Now give me a kiss…” as his lips collide with yours, he takes baby Magda from your arms. She’s light as a feather, beautiful, and Miguel can’t think about ever putting her down in your arms again.
“I love you so much, hermosa. And that will never change…”
“Oh, Miguel. You and Magda are my full happiness now. I love you too.”
Miguel feels complete. He had his daughter in his arms; you on his lips.
And he hoped to treasure that feeling… forever.
______________________________________
Can we think about how baby Mayday and baby Magda are going to be BESTIES now?!?! *sobs*
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Theories of the holy shit what did I just see back there on the street?
Because transmisogyny makes them so impossible to ignore, for at least the last 70 years transfeminized people have served as key material of Anglo-American gender/queer/trans theories, as laundered through anthropology, sexology, and uncited personal witnessing. The anaemic denial of this fact through snappy and surface-level distinctions between ‘queer’ and ‘trans’ and between different transfeminized groups has made it functionally impossible for these theories to seriously account for transf* life, and this failure is highly productive, because it allows for the continued use of both ‘premodern’ ‘third gender’ and ‘postmodern’ transgenderism as lobotomized material for the theories of other people. The last century of gender theoretic development has revolved around slowly refining methods of extracting transfeminized peoples’ insight, forgetting and re-introducing them to their field over and over again to frame them as perpetual novelties, leading to a pernicious form of feminist amnesia that repeats over and over again.
1 . MARGARET MEAD (1949)
The work begins with Margaret Mead, the ‘most famous anthropologist of our century’ (Behar and Gordon 1996), who made her career studying indigenous groups in Samoa and New Guinea, then joined the larger anthropological effort to inform the US Government’s genocidal re-education campaigns against Indigenous American tribes. She later enjoyed a prodigious career as a public intellectual and shifted to more explicitly feminist writing which extensively influenced the movements of the 60s and 70s. Mead argued that essentially all sex-gender roles were culturally determined, and used the specter of the transfeminized homosexual-transvestite both to make that argument and to advocate for gender abolition.
This can be seen most clearly in Mead’s 1949 book Male and Female: a Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. Mead chronologically traces individual gender development through an ethnographic-sexological narrative, beginning with ‘first learnings’ that a child receives primarily through observation. Then the family comes in, and the transvestite comes with it, existing as the primary motive (alongside Freudian sexual attachment) which motivates gendered socialization:
Too great softness, too great passivity, in the male and he will not become a man. The American Plains Indians, valuing courage in battle above all other qualities, watched their little boys with desperate intensity, and drove a fair number of them to give up the struggle and assume women’s dress. (Mead 1949)
Mead argues that “fear that boys will be feminine in behavior may drive many boys into taking refuge in explicit femininity,” but makes a distinction between this identification and what she calls ‘full transvestitism,’ the culturally-specific recognition of that status. This differential leads her to conclude that the physical traits seen as markers of ‘gender inversion’ are culturally specific, and that what is understood as physical sex (then existing on a ‘spectrum’ model) is therefore partially socially determined.
For Mead, gender must be abolished precisely because of the fact that she could even make this argument. As she says,
Only a denial of life itself makes it possible to deny the interdependence of the sexes. Once that interdependence is recognized and traced in minute detail to the infant’s first experience of the contrast between the extra roughness of a shaven cheek and a deeper voice and his mother’s softer skin and higher voice, any programme which claims that the wholeness of one sex can be advanced without considering the other is automatically disallowed.
The desperate need to reproduce these distinctions, to make sex clear and visible and obvious, leads Mead to ultimately argue for a gender abolition that rests on complementary sex-roles. The main benefit of this approach for Mead is the complete eradication of sex-gender ‘confusion’ and its incarnation in transfeminized people, so associated precisely because of their intense usefulness as a tool for undermining sex-gender distinctions. So Mead sees the construction of physical and social gender by using transfeminized people as a lens, but because of her own disgust she can only fix gender by unseeing it again, by displacing gender to ‘real’ physical sex and protecting herself by breaking the tool. This, unsurprisingly, leaves her exactly where she started.
2. BETTY FRIEDAN (1963)
The feminist theorists that came after Mead directly confronted this reversion to ‘complementary sex’ logics, most notably in Betty Friedan’s foundational work The Feminine Mystique. Friedan discusses the ‘paradox’ of Mead’s influence, the strange combination of her exposure of ‘the infinite variety of sexual patterns and the enormous plasticity of human nature’ and her ‘glorification of women in the female role – as defined by their sexual biological function.’ In the middle, Friedan cites a page-long quote describing a point of ambivalent warning in Mead’s writing:
The difference between the two sexes is one of the important conditions upon which we have built the many varieties of human culture that give human beings dignity and stature… Sometimes one quality has been assigned to one sex, sometimes to the other. Now it is boys who are thought of as infinitely vulnerable and in need of special cherishing care, now it is girls… Some people think of women as too weak to work out of doors, others regard women as the appropriate bearers of heavy burdens “because their heads are stronger than men’s” … Some religions, including our European traditional religions, have assigned women an inferior role in the religious hierarchy, others have built their whole symbolic relationship with the supernatural world upon male imitations of the biological functions of women. (emph added by me)
...Are we dealing with a must that we dare not flout because it is rooted so deep in our biological mammalian nature that to flout it means individual and social disease? Or with a must that, although not so deeply rooted, still is so very socially convenient and so well tried that it would be uneconomical to flout it…
...We must also ask: What are the potentialities of sex differences? … If little boys have to meet and assimilate the early shock of knowing that they can never create a baby with the sureness and incontrovertibility that is a woman’s birthright, how does this make them more creatively ambitious, as well as more dependent upon achievement?
Friedan attributes this ultimate focus on sexual difference to Mead’s Freudianism: she argues that Mead’s need to approach culture and personality through sexual difference, combined with her anthropological understanding that ‘there are no true-for-every-culture sexual differences except those involved in the act of procreation’ (Friedan and Quindlen 1963), combines to cause her to inflate the cultural importance of the reproductive role of women. Friedan intensely rebukes this reification of reproduction as another component of the ‘feminine mystique’ (very close to the modern ‘divine feminine’), advocating for programs which enable women to reject the mystique and housewife status and to seek education and employment, to combat the problem ‘which had no name’ but takes shape through spikes in female ‘sex-hunger’ and ‘overt manifestations’ of passive male homosexuality, both understood as ‘children acting out the sexual phantasies of their housewife-mothers.’ In a paradoxical return to Freudianism, Friedan characterizes husbands unwilling to let their wives work as being seduced ‘by the infantile phantasy of having an ever-present mother’ (the Freudian homosexuality-signifier), associating antifeminism with passive homosexuality with femininity which the aspiring feminist has escaped, learning to compete “not as a woman, but as a human being.”
3. THE MULTIPLICATION OF TRANSFEMINIZED SUBJECTS
As we can see, transfeminized subjects are frequently used as signs of system collapse, hypervisible enough to be easy examples and potent enough to rhetorically corrode existing sex-gender systems in preparation for the author’s own vision. Once a piece is published, these examples are usually then forgotten, assumed as scaffolding for the real theory; but the rhetorical strawmen of these transfeminized subjects still remain, trapped implicitly in the text, and they bleed into one another with every new addition to the corpus, every call to action invoking a new transfeminized archetype.
So far we have seen Mead’s anthropological-orientalist framing of ‘transvestitism’ among the anthropological Other and Friedan’s psychological framing of ‘passive homosexuality’ in the United States. The increasing visibility of adult ‘transsexuality,’ somewhat disjoint from the developmental sexology Gill-Peterson (2017) discusses because of its visibility in high-profile cases like Christine Jorgensen, was likewise framed for theory. Harold Garfinkel’s (1967) book Studies in Ethnomethodology, which described methods for observing ‘the objective reality of social facts as an ongoing accomplishment,’ used an intersex woman named Agnes as an avenue to expose how everyday social facts are constructed. Agnes was an ideal exemplar because her insistence on getting HRT and being seen as a woman was considered psychologically normal: “Such insistence was not accompanied by clinically interesting ego defects. These persons contrast in many interesting ways with transvestites, trans-sexualists, and homosexuals.” Of course, Garfinkel was later notified that Agnes did not have an intersex condition, and he then noted that ‘this news turned the article into a feature of the same circumstances it reported, i.e. into a situated report.’
Anyways, now it’s time for yet another transfeminized subject: the ‘transsexually constructed lesbian feminist.’
4. JANICE RAYMOND (1979)
As with her predecessors, Raymond sees analytical power in her particular transfeminized group, arguing that “transsexualism goes to the question of what gender is, how to challenge it, and what reinforces gender stereotypes in a role-defined society.” But she also has some concerns for ‘transsexual women,’ initially assumed heterosexual, none of which are particularly novel or interesting. Now that she’s writing in an environment dominated by Friedan’s mandate towards shedding femininity, feminist amnesia makes it novel to regurgitate Margaret Mead’s responses: that “male transsexualism may well be a graphic expression of the destruction that sex-role molding has wrought on men,” and that “men recognize the power that women have by virtue of female biology and the fact that this power, symbolized in giving birth, is not only procreative but multidimensionally creative” (Raymond 1979).
Her analysis of (new archetype) ‘transsexually-constructed lesbian feminism’ is much more interesting. While Raymond can understand heterosexual transsexual women as ‘reinforcing gender stereotyping’ by pulling primarily from medical archives already hegemonized by gatekeeping and passing requirements, the transsexual women in the lesbian-feminist movement achieved a certain degree of personal contact and visibility that undermined ‘hegemonizing’ logics. So Raymond uses three main arguments: an essentialist appeal to fundamental ‘maleness,’ a red-scare-esque appeal to transsexual lesbian feminists as ‘court eunuchs’ bent on monitoring and controlling feminist spaces, and finally, an argument that transsexual lesbian feminists are fundamentally epistemically corrosive to lesbian feminist spaces:
Whereas the lesbian-feminist crosses the boundary of her patriarchally imposed sex role, the transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist is a boundary violator. This violation is also profoundly mythic, for as Norman O. Brown writes of Dionysus, he as the ‘‘mad god who breaks down boundaries.’’
Contrary to contemporary transmisogynistic discourse which frames trans lesbians as personal threats to women in lesbian-feminist spaces, this violation takes its form not in any particular act but in the act of passing, the deconstructive question this existence seemingly automatically places on lesbian-feminist spaces:
One of the most constraining questions that transsexuals, and, in particular, transsexually constructed lesbian-feminists, pose is the question of self-definition—who is a woman, who is a lesbian-feminist? But, of course, they pose the question on their terms, and we are faced with answering it.
Raymond notes with some frustration that this transsexual question has been discussed ‘out of proportion to their actual numbers,’ using up valuable feminist energy, and frames this as a symptom and crime of transsexual lesbianism itself. The trans question is transsexual women; like the theorists before her, she sees transfeminized people as a gaping hole in the gendered world, but now they’re inside her house, feeding “off woman’s true energy source, i.e., her woman-identified self,” and inherently stand to break “the boundaries of what constitutes femaleness,” to dissolve lesbian-feminism itself.
I want to stress two main points in all of this. First, Raymond understands studying transsexualism as a crucial tool for answering ‘the question of what gender is’ and ‘how to challenge it.’ Second, Raymond’s anxiety about transsexual lesbian-feminists moves away from specific actions and towards the ‘penetration’ inherent in their existence in these spaces at all, the understanding that transsexual women are inherently corrosive to lesbian-feminist movements. These two points are clearly linked. Raymond understands transsexuality as a form of epistemic gender acid, something that can be useful at arm’s length but is deadly up close. Of course, the transfeminized people she discusses were not necessarily invested in asking the Trans Question themselves; trans women attended lesbian-feminist events like Michfest before and after their trans exclusion policies, and regardless of ‘passing’ many people enjoyed a form of don’t ask don’t tell (Tagonist 1997). But within these spaces, the Trans* Question long predated the actual existence of transfeminized people – so once they arrived, the Question and person were fundamentally linked. Trans theorists have negotiated this association extensively, but that’s not the topic of this essay, so I’ll leave you with some sources (Stryker 1994; Stone 1992) and move to Butler.
5. JUDITH BUTLER (1990)
This work has been done already by Vivian Namaste (2020), who argues that “contemporary discussions of Anglo-American feminist theory, exemplified in Butler’s work, begin with the Transgender Question as a way to narrow our focus to the constitution, reproduction, and resignification of gender.” This singular focus on the ‘Transgender Question’ has made it functionally impossible for Anglo-American feminist theory to consider the outsized role of work, particularly sex work, in motivating the discrimination and violence against transfeminized people of color: “framing violence against transsexual prostitutes as ‘gender violence’ is a radical recuperation of these events and their causal nature-a violence at the level of epistemology itself.”
Namaste attributes this focus on featureless ‘gender violence’ to a crippling lack of empiricism, a lack of researcher-subject equity, and an exclusion of subject knowledges. She provides an effective power-based solution to this epistemic violence – that feminist theorists should talk with the subjects of their theory and give them some measure of power in the transaction – a sort of endpoint analysis which means she doesn’t need to consider too much of the internals of the system she’s challenging. That’s a good idea for her work, but with the benefit of history we can move differently. The next section synthesizes Butler, Friedan, Mead, and Raymond together to provide a functionalist analysis of the feminist theoretic use of transfeminized people. What are the benefits of using transfeminized people as an epistemic tool in feminist theory? What are the dangers of using this epistemic tool, and how does feminist theory manage those dangers?
6. PATTERNS OF EXTRACTION AND DEFENSE
Looking past Butler and further into the past reveals that transfeminized people have been crucial not just to the feminist theory of the past 20 years, but have served as exemplars as far back as the 1940s. The ‘Trans* Question,’ which frames transfeminized people as the most visible signifier and most horrifying symptom of social gender, has been cyclically used in a form of feminist cultural amnesia:
A transfeminized group serves as a hypervisible example to 'deconstruct' social gender
Transfeminized deconstruction bloats beyond itself, undermining 'sex traits' or 'femaleness' or some other foundational category of feminist analysis.
Reconstruction of gender as 'biological sex,' alliance between feminist theorists and men of all stripes by arguing that post-gender eradication of transfeminized people will (a) allow men to be feminine without becoming women or (b) destroy femininity entirely.
New-generation feminist theorists realize their predecessors have reinvented social gender. Return to (1).
As Margaret Mead’s work shows, the use of transfeminized groups to deconstruct both physical and social gender has been observed regardless of transmedicalization. This helical pattern has a few general properties:
Each cycle introduces a distinct transfeminized group, positioning it against prior groups as uniquely suitable for analysis, but simultaneously blurs the new group into the existing melange.
This "Trans* Queston" is almost entirely devoid of group-specific context and rooted in transmisogyny, which positions them as horrifying and visible symptoms of social gender.
Each "Trans* Question" initially exposes social gender, but constantly threatens to dissolve other categories or even the theorist's own writing as socially constructed, against the theorist's will.
Each new cycle demonstrates near-complete historical amnesia as to the relevance of transfeminized people in the prior theoretical move.
So the “Trans* Question” allows for the basic feminist move, asserting that gender is socially constructed, but if improperly controlled it stands to dissolve virtually any definition feminist theorists try to build. To be clear, I do not believe in the total deconstruction of categories – you need definitions, even ones you acknowledge as imprecise, to say anything at all. But transfeminized people probably have pretty solid ideas about gender, having to, you know, live with it. The alienated ‘Trans Question*’ has none of this insight, appearing instead as a gaping epistemic hole in the world, and so feminist theorists are forced to come up with complicated quarantining measures to keep the Question from spilling over.
What jeopardizes feminist theory’s use of the Question? One answer (among many) comes by looking at Mead, who concluded that physical characteristics seen as ‘sex traits’ were socially constructed by looking at the culture-specific construction of what she called ‘full transvestitism.’ In this case, the Question undermined sex when the social position of transfeminized subjects were seen as simultaneously normative and anti-normative, existing in some normative ‘social’ role while being understood as distinct from non-transfeminized subjects via another ‘natural’ axis. The fact that these splits were made differently across different transfeminized groups undermined the distinction between social and ‘natural/biological’ aspects of gender, and because the alienated Question provides no means of making anything solid out of any of this, Mead retreated to the womb.
So understanding that the Question allows for the deconstruction of gender, and that it overgrows when multiple (studied as) semi-normative transfeminized groups are cross-compared with one another, we can consider aspects of contemporary feministqueertrans theory that enforce the epistemic isolation and normativization/antinormativization of transfeminized groups. The knots this ties in feminist theories seem relevant both to the ‘why does trans theory exist’ question posed by Chu & Drager (2019) and to the challenges and limitations of applying queer/trans theory to groups outside the anglosphere (Chiang 2021, Savci 2021). I’ll discuss that more in another essay.
SOURCES
Behar, Ruth, and Deborah A. Gordon. 1996. Women Writing Culture. First Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chiang, Howard. 2021. Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific. Columbia University Press.
Chu, Andrea Long, and Emmett Harsin Drager. 2019. “After Trans Studies.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 6 (1): 103–16. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-7253524.
Friedan, Betty, and Anna Quindlen. 1963. The Feminine Mystique. Reprint edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. 1st edition. Cambridge Oxford Malden,MA: Polity.
Gill-Peterson, Jules. 2017. “Implanting Plasticity into Sex and Trans/Gender.” Angelaki 22 (2): 47–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2017.1322818.
Mead, Margaret. 1949. Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. First Edition. William Morrow.
Namaste, Viviane. 2020. “Undoing Theory: The ‘Transgender Question’ and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory.” In Feminist Theory Reader, edited by Carole McCann, Seung-kyung Kim, and Emek Ergun, 5th edition. New York, NY London: Routledge.
Raymond, Janice G. 1979. The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. New York: Teachers College Press.
Savci, Evren. 2021. Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics Under Neoliberal Islam. Durham (N.C.): Duke University Press Books.
Stone, Sandy. 1992. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 10 (2 (29)): 150–76. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-10-2_29-150.
Stryker, Susan. 1994. “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (3): 237–54. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-1-3-237.
Tagonist, Anne. 1997. “Sister Subverter Diary August ’97.” Unapologetic: The Journal of Irresponsible Gender.
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