Shortly before I watched “Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth,” Jeanie Finlay’s documentary about a trans man embarking upon pregnancy and parenthood, “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling tweeted this unsolicited nugget of hatred:
‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?
Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate https://t.co/cVpZxG7gaA
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020
With this message, Rowling (not for the first time) not only erases the experiences of both trans women and men, but is gender policing. She is telling everyone — cis, trans, and nonbinary folks — who and what they are, that their bodies determine their identities. She doesn’t get to do that. No one does.
Freddy, the protagonist of “Seahorse,” contends with gender policing — both internalized and externalized — for much of his pregnancy. The doc begins with Freddy trying to conceive, which involves halting his testosterone injections, and follows him throughout his entire pregnancy, including the day he gives birth. As he says more than once in the film, he thought the whole process would be a lot easier than it actually turned out.
Between the decreased testosterone and the pregnancy, Freddy feels disconnected from and frustrated with his own body, even as he’s excited to have his baby and become a father. As his body softens and his hips fill out, he admits that he’s terrified other people won’t see him as a man. It’s a difficult situation, both physically and emotionally.
Freddy also grapples with whom exactly he should tell about his pregnancy — and whether it would be best just not to tell some people until after he’s given birth. “Seahorse” emphasizes that, just because people accept Freddy as a trans man, they may not be as keen about him being a trans man carrying his own child.
Obviously, Freddy’s story is specific and complex. Yet, I’m sure anyone who has had a baby will relate to him, as he struggles with the discomfort of pregnancy and his own sense of self. That was the case with Finlay, who told Women and Hollywood, “Meeting Freddy made me reflect deeply on my own experiences of being pregnant and becoming a parent, and the ways in which these changes affected my own sense of identity in unpredictable and unfathomable ways.”
“Seahorse” is challenging, for everyone. Freddy’s pregnancy forces him to have a lot uncomfortable conversations, namely with himself. The doc challenges its audience — and the wider, still extremely transphobic world — to expand its view of gender and pregnancy. Freddy is a man and a person who had a baby. These facts are not contradictory, nor are they even particularly novel. (Seahorse reproduction, for instance, involves females depositing eggs into males’ pouches. The male seahorses carry the eggs until their young emerge, essentially bearing their offspring.)
“I hope that audiences are able to embrace both the complexity of Freddy’s journey and the simple idea that Freddy is a man and that his gender didn’t change when he got pregnant and gave birth,” Finlay emphasized. “He was male at every single stage of his pregnancy and experienced it as a man.”
Hopefully, with the release of “Seahorse,” that won’t be such a surprising idea anymore, and as more stories like Freddy’s are told, we as a society will expand our own views of gender and identity — and stop dictating and dissecting trans and nonbinary lives.
“Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth” is now available on VOD.
