Pregnancy is increasingly common among trans men. For Jason Barker, who has made a film about the experience, it changed his life
It’s hard to perform a somersault at 36 weeks pregnant. Towards the end of his debut feature film, Jason Barker is swimming in the London Fields lido in east London, a short walk from the flat he shares with his partner, Tracey. The screen is rinsed blue. Barker dances, makes a star. And then, very slowly, he turns full height in the water, his Hawaiian swim shorts flapping, his stomach a perfect, firm dome.
This is the viewer’s first sight of Barker’s pregnant belly in A Deal With the Universe, which premieres at the BFI Flare festival next week. And after seven years in which he and Tracey tried to conceive, it is a moment of pure levity and joy. “That swimming stuff that you see?” he says. “It felt like the first time I could ever say, ‘Yeah! I actually like this body. Love it. It’s brilliant.’”
Barker was born female. He transitioned roughly 20 years ago, at 26, soon after he met Tracey – though, as Barker says, before and after don’t really work in this story. The process of transitioning was gradual, “without hard edges”. The two of them hoped to start a family, but after a few years of Tracey trying to conceive with her own eggs, in 2003 they resorted to “plan B”. Tracey would be impregnated; Barker, who had undergone chest surgery but kept his ovaries, would supply the eggs. He bought a new camera to document it. Soon they would have a baby – and a film.
So Barker stopped taking testosterone. He delayed an appointment to discuss a hysterectomy. Well, it was just a short film. Not too disruptive. But the filming went on and on – and Barker ended up telling a very different story to the one he planned. The pregnancy he chronicled was not Tracey’s, but his own. And it changed his sense of who he was.
Pregnancy among transgender men is increasingly common. Sally Hines, a professor at the University of Leeds who is leading a three-year research projectinto the subject, says: “In the UK, if you look at how many people are accessing blogs and online forums and support groups, asking about healthcare because they are pregnant, or young guys thinking about the future … There is lots of anecdotal evidence that more people are doing it. When something becomes visible, more people think it’s possible.”
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
