How Baby

Ah, June, when every corporation trots out its rainbows to attract those queer dollars… wait, this is a comic, not a business!! Hooray! Happy Pride month, y’all!

I’ve never met a box I didn’t try to break, so I’ve never felt comfortable really Making A Statement about who I am and who I love. Labels change, and their definitions change as well, and so do I. If someone recognizes something in me that speaks to who they are, then they are my kin; if they don’t, then it’s none of their business anyway. I’m too tired and old – in internet years, anyway – to want to prove myself to anyone who doesn’t see me.

Unfortunately, stealth has its disadvantages. About a month ago, someone accused me of ‘virtue signalling’ when I said that not all people who give birth identify as ladies, a phrase that implies I’m an outsider trying to get cred for being woke, or whatever Joe Rogan is telling people these days. Which is, you know, hilarious for a few reasons.

Maybe this is more obvious in the comic where two women are very slowly falling in lesbians, but the very limited space on the internet that is ‘mine’ is not a hetero-only space, or a cis-only space. Heck, the whole reason How Baby exists is because of my discomfort with gendered expectations of motherhood, and how I’ve navigated that in my life, and had to synthesize it with my identity – gender and otherwise. That’s queer as hell.

I feel like it’s especially important for me to say this year, the worst year in the United States for laws that target trans people, particularly trans youth, who are already at staggering risk of violence and suicide. As a neighbour, I’m grimly muttering ‘there but for the grace of God go we’ as we face the same political climate.

If you’re able, please consider making a donation to a local LGBTQ+ organization – there are so many, and they could all use help. Heck, throw $5 into someone’s top surgery fund!

Anyway, this is a lot of words to say a simple thing: that I’m proud to be who I am, whatever I am, and that I am loved – and if you’re celebrating this month, so are YOU. Happy Pride, from all of us!