The Bearded Lady Is Pregnant Now

On freak shows and the soft bigotry of trans expectations

That is not an actual beard. There is barely peach fuzz on that jawline. Call it a metaphorical beard, because this is not even the P.T. Barnum bearded lady beard. This is a self-harming woman. Her jagged mastectomy scars speak to her dysphoria, which is somehow not triggered by pregnancy, only pronouns.

We musn’t speak of her as anything but him, otherwise “he” might die. I have cropped the image of Logan Brown above not just to conceal the disturbing sight of those surgicalized-self-harm scars, but to make a point about the limits of what we are supposed to see.

The self-harm scars are supposed to blend in with the stretch marks. (They are in fact the stretched scar tissue of the mastectomy.) We are supposed to see a beard and a pregnant abdomen and celebrate the new “pregnant possibilities” of “gender identity.” We are supposed to idolize the scars rather than see them as self-harm.

We are not supposed to wonder if this is healthy for the mom or the baby.

We are supposed to find this glamorous.

Our daughters are meant to imitate the behavior being modeled.

Young lesbians in particular are supposed to imitate this behavior, but also heterosexual tomboys and other gender nonconforming women.

This is glamour. This is fame. This is good fortune. They will be celebrated for doing this.

For having babies. Just like all women, forever, were celebrated for baby-making.

Except in a beard. An unconvincing beard.

And scars where their breasts would be, had they not been convinced that cutting off their breasts would make them happy.

Facebook will censor images of female nipples.

Facebook considers the nipple of a “transwoman” to be a female nipple that must be censored.

Post a photo of a topless “trans girl,” even one without hormones or silicone, just lipstick and eyeshadow, and Facebook will ban it, strike your account.

If I embedded an image of a woman’s nipple, or a “transwoman’s” nipple, in this post, Facebook would block the post URL.

However, Facebook would be absolutely fine with a “transman” nipple. Positive images of trans self-harm are fine with Facebook.

Post an image of the scars with attention to the scars, however, and the Facebook user risks a content strike for transphobic hate speech.

These were the image rules at Facebook about 18 months ago, when I deleted my profile. Those rules may have changed.

My point stands: the female nipple remains controversial and subject to decency rules — unless it wears a beard.

Just as women have always been celebrated for pregnancy, women have been celebrated for various kinds of self-harm at various times, such as withering from melancholy.

This “man” is a woman being celebrated for pregnancy plus self-harm. It is a woke celebration of the same patriarchal bullshit as always. Not the right side of history, just history, rhyming.

This is child abuse. I am not referring to the absent breasts, though the child might. I mean the use of testosterone as a form of birth control, which is both ineffective and a sadly common trope among young “trans men.”

I mean the narcissistic control and neglect that, in the case of at least one child of a “trans man” that Exulansic monitors, has already led to a flattening of the baby’s head (plagiocephaly).

I mean growing up with a mother who demands participation in her fantastical inner life at all times, the recipe for a troubled child.

I mean the fetishization of an unborn child for the narcissistic supply of adults — not just the child of this mother, but the children of all the mothers whose “gender journey” will resemble this catastrophe.

We are being gaslit about their future.