I am beginning to think about children. It comes on the back of considering my own birth: I’m a millennial who is nostalgic about the early internet, didn’t use a smartphone until I was 23, grew up with the development and eventual tide of gay rights, which, in the west at least, has re-formed as the movement towards trans* recognition. In short, technology, identity and physical transformation define my life so far. When I think about children, I am not thinking about the classic brood my parents wanted, nor am I thinking about adoption, IVF nor the legal ramifications of finding a random/generous sperm donor. I’m not that kind of queer.
I’m thinking more about the concept of reproduction, and our expectations about the final product. I’m thinking about lying in bed of a morning, and feeling the combination of myself and my partner – what Gabriel Garcia Marquez called “onion soup” – hot and wet against my leg. I’m thinking about what that stuff is, its reproductive potential, the possibility of our inert gloop becoming a fertile spume. Possibly these thoughts have been instigated by two things: the fact that I am becoming aware that I will probably never have kids because