AJ

I can’t tell you how often I am asked this question by any medical professional. I mention that I’m on testosterone, have been on T for years. This script goes forward even with my endocrinologists.

DOCTOR, with a pinched look on their face: And what about your fertility? ME: What about my fertility? DOCTOR: Are you aware that testosterone can make you infertile? ME: I am, it’s one of the many benefits. I still want a hysterectomy though. DOCTOR, with an even more pinched look on their face: Have you thought about measures to preserve your fertility? ME: No, I do not want to be fertile, I do not want to ever be pregnant, and I do not want children. Next question.

The next question is inevitably another question about my fertility, about preserving it, about if I plan to adopt instead — the idea that I don’t want children at all won’t be entertained.

I’ve always hated the way that my desire to one day be pregnant and to have children is treated as an assumed fact of my being — as a child and a teenager, I was incredibly tokophobic, and had nightmares, felt very nauseous, about the matter-of-fact and blustering way that adults around me would regularly tell me that I had no choice in the matter, and that one day I would be pregnant, and it was just a fact of life I had to accept.

The messaging around pregnancy was effectively that it was something I had no choice in, no ability to consent to — I would be made pregnant by the passage of time alone, and I would be forced to carry that pregnancy to term and then parent the children I didn’t want, because that’s just life.

As I grew older, I learned that these are lies.

I don’t have to become pregnant. It’s not a fact of life that will happen to me whether I like it or not. I am not beholden to a mysterious biological clock that will render me mindless and unable to resist.