What does family mean to you?
"Being a queer person, ‘family’ has an expansive meaning. It could be the family you're born into, but also ‘chosen family’, a very close support network of friends when our families haven't been able to be there and show up for us."
What does having your own family mean to you?
"I am sure that I want to be a mom, although I don’t yet know how it will happen. My partner is trans, so our fertility journey will obviously be quite costly. Furthermore, not a lot of research on how hormones and testosterone affect fertility are available, or any existing longitudinal studies. It is unknown for us what a biological child would look like. I'm very open to adoption and fostering, so I definitely know I'm going to be a mom, despite not knowing how that's gonna happen exactly."
How do you feel about the uncertainty and not knowing what are the possibilities to have your own family?
"I don't feel uncertain. I think access has been categorically denied to queer families to having a path to parenthood. So I know my options. It's not daunting, it's just kind of sad, but that's the reality for a lot of queer families as they try to become parents."
What does building a family mean to you?
"I think it means being consistent. It is a continuous process in building all of your relationships, but committing to it and nurturing it is a really special part."
What comes to your mind at the beginning of your ‘fertility journey’? When did you first want to start a family and have a child?
"I feel very viscerally uncomfortable with the thought of it, because the term itself implies a very straight cis mindset."
"Yeah, it has its own connotations with couples dealing with infertility or related to difficulty in getting pregnant. It just feels so far from me, specifically because I'm not married to the idea of having my own biological child for so many reasons. I don’t know how to better phrase it, because it's so layered and in terms of heteronormativity, accessibility and classism. I don't know how fertility could become accessible for other people who can't afford it."
"I would use my partner's eggs, and be the one carrying the child. But specifically, the egg retrieval process for my partner would be traumatic and full of unknowns. We've gone to fertility doctors and enquired about the process: him to freeze his eggs and they're like, ‘you're one of the few that we've this far’. We would become a test case, because there were trans men freezing eggs, but none of them have come to use them yet."
"Obviously, it's not my eggs, so I don't have that underlying fear of medical racism, but there's just so much distrust, especially in having to be a test case, a case study. No, I don't think a straight person who comes in to talk to a fertility doctor would feel, ‘oh, I'm going to be an experiment.’
I'm going to be the person that gives answers for other people, necessarily. It's a very tumultuous relationship I have with [‘fertility journey’] because my experience will be the one that's groundbreaking, or leading to new information. At the same time, it is a great responsibility to open that door for other trans men to be able to have their own biological children."
"Yeah, I think it's way more important to my partner to have biological children because he's an only child and has lost a lot of family. I think there's an element of biology that feels important to him, through death or through transphobia, or both."
"The egg collection experience for my partner was difficult. It was an all-women's facility, all women sitting in the waiting room eyed him dismally. Other than that, cost is obviously an issue. I remember being quoted $10,000 for an introductory of ART, just for egg freezing. I'm not even sure about the handrails and all that. You just don't just have that financial means hanging around. And you need to first have a safe home and be able to afford that consistently, let alone like food bills, emergencies… Then on top of that, to think about the cost of having a child."
"When people who can have children naturally, that is such a luxury, and that's why it's very exclusionary to people of colour and to queer people because you're people who are traditionally left out of the economy."
"There's so much structural racism, homophobia and transphobia that exists that directly impacts fertility in ways that straight couples don't experience. It's demoralising to make these invisible."
Why is being a mum important to you?
"It's important for a number of reasons. There are a lot of systemically forces that keep queer, black immigrant people from creating families. On the other hand, there are a lot of beautiful things from both sides of my family that I'd like to carry on the heritage."
"My priority is creating a home and environment that is beautiful, safe, and loving with an open door. So fertility is not the central point of my parenthood or my parenthood journey. It's just a beautiful thing that can come from doing the work of making sure I'm ready emotionally, physically, spatially, spiritually, to have children, it means making sure that I've created a community of support network of chosen family that can all be there, ready and be present. So it's very intentional."
Please tell me about the moment when you first thought about parenthood in your textile art piece.
"The moment I started thinking about my family was in a friend’s house, on the sofa in the living room. That moment, sitting there with my friends, led to me conceiving these ideas, what I want my family to look like, choosing my own people and making it… a family. Making my own, making new shapes and structures, it doesn't have to be anything already prescribed."
Please tell me the three key words you have decided for ‘family building’ when creating your textile artwork.
"My three key words are 'love', 'safety' and 'support'"
In an ideal world, what would parenthood be like for you or for everyone?
"I'd hope that people would grow on themselves before deciding to have children heal their own wounds, handle their own shit and not put that on children. Children are so beautiful and precious and impressionable, and wise. If we could just respect them, care for them, make sure they feel safe, that would be the perfect world to me."
"For my personal family journey, I hope that I could have no expectations. Because I believe that it will come however it will come. I hope my partner and I can focus on ourselves, get ready to create a place that's safe enough for a family."
What was the sentence that describes your family building journey?
"I wrote 'creating a circle of support'. The family, the chosen family, cannot happens in a vacuum, you cannot do it alone. So having that circle, not only for yourself, but for your eventual child is really special and important."
"Being a queer person, ‘family’ has an expansive meaning. It could be the family you're born into, but also ‘chosen family’, a very close support network of friends when our families haven't been able to be there and show up for us."
What does having your own family mean to you?
"I am sure that I want to be a mom, although I don’t yet know how it will happen. My partner is trans, so our fertility journey will obviously be quite costly. Furthermore, not a lot of research on how hormones and testosterone affect fertility are available, or any existing longitudinal studies. It is unknown for us what a biological child would look like. I'm very open to adoption and fostering, so I definitely know I'm going to be a mom, despite not knowing how that's gonna happen exactly."
How do you feel about the uncertainty and not knowing what are the possibilities to have your own family?
"I don't feel uncertain. I think access has been categorically denied to queer families to having a path to parenthood. So I know my options. It's not daunting, it's just kind of sad, but that's the reality for a lot of queer families as they try to become parents."
What does building a family mean to you?
"I think it means being consistent. It is a continuous process in building all of your relationships, but committing to it and nurturing it is a really special part."
What comes to your mind at the beginning of your ‘fertility journey’? When did you first want to start a family and have a child?
"I feel very viscerally uncomfortable with the thought of it, because the term itself implies a very straight cis mindset."
"Yeah, it has its own connotations with couples dealing with infertility or related to difficulty in getting pregnant. It just feels so far from me, specifically because I'm not married to the idea of having my own biological child for so many reasons. I don’t know how to better phrase it, because it's so layered and in terms of heteronormativity, accessibility and classism. I don't know how fertility could become accessible for other people who can't afford it."
"I would use my partner's eggs, and be the one carrying the child. But specifically, the egg retrieval process for my partner would be traumatic and full of unknowns. We've gone to fertility doctors and enquired about the process: him to freeze his eggs and they're like, ‘you're one of the few that we've this far’. We would become a test case, because there were trans men freezing eggs, but none of them have come to use them yet."
"Obviously, it's not my eggs, so I don't have that underlying fear of medical racism, but there's just so much distrust, especially in having to be a test case, a case study. No, I don't think a straight person who comes in to talk to a fertility doctor would feel, ‘oh, I'm going to be an experiment.’
I'm going to be the person that gives answers for other people, necessarily. It's a very tumultuous relationship I have with [‘fertility journey’] because my experience will be the one that's groundbreaking, or leading to new information. At the same time, it is a great responsibility to open that door for other trans men to be able to have their own biological children."
"Yeah, I think it's way more important to my partner to have biological children because he's an only child and has lost a lot of family. I think there's an element of biology that feels important to him, through death or through transphobia, or both."
"The egg collection experience for my partner was difficult. It was an all-women's facility, all women sitting in the waiting room eyed him dismally. Other than that, cost is obviously an issue. I remember being quoted $10,000 for an introductory of ART, just for egg freezing. I'm not even sure about the handrails and all that. You just don't just have that financial means hanging around. And you need to first have a safe home and be able to afford that consistently, let alone like food bills, emergencies… Then on top of that, to think about the cost of having a child."
"When people who can have children naturally, that is such a luxury, and that's why it's very exclusionary to people of colour and to queer people because you're people who are traditionally left out of the economy."
"There's so much structural racism, homophobia and transphobia that exists that directly impacts fertility in ways that straight couples don't experience. It's demoralising to make these invisible."
Why is being a mum important to you?
"It's important for a number of reasons. There are a lot of systemically forces that keep queer, black immigrant people from creating families. On the other hand, there are a lot of beautiful things from both sides of my family that I'd like to carry on the heritage."
"My priority is creating a home and environment that is beautiful, safe, and loving with an open door. So fertility is not the central point of my parenthood or my parenthood journey. It's just a beautiful thing that can come from doing the work of making sure I'm ready emotionally, physically, spatially, spiritually, to have children, it means making sure that I've created a community of support network of chosen family that can all be there, ready and be present. So it's very intentional."
Please tell me about the moment when you first thought about parenthood in your textile art piece.
"The moment I started thinking about my family was in a friend’s house, on the sofa in the living room. That moment, sitting there with my friends, led to me conceiving these ideas, what I want my family to look like, choosing my own people and making it… a family. Making my own, making new shapes and structures, it doesn't have to be anything already prescribed."
Please tell me the three key words you have decided for ‘family building’ when creating your textile artwork.
"My three key words are 'love', 'safety' and 'support'"
In an ideal world, what would parenthood be like for you or for everyone?
"I'd hope that people would grow on themselves before deciding to have children heal their own wounds, handle their own shit and not put that on children. Children are so beautiful and precious and impressionable, and wise. If we could just respect them, care for them, make sure they feel safe, that would be the perfect world to me."
"For my personal family journey, I hope that I could have no expectations. Because I believe that it will come however it will come. I hope my partner and I can focus on ourselves, get ready to create a place that's safe enough for a family."
What was the sentence that describes your family building journey?
"I wrote 'creating a circle of support'. The family, the chosen family, cannot happens in a vacuum, you cannot do it alone. So having that circle, not only for yourself, but for your eventual child is really special and important."