How To Get a Girl Pregnant: An Autoethnography of Chicana Butch Reproduction

“How To Get a Girl Pregnant” is a memoir documenting a butch lesbian’s questto become pregnant. This essay includes a short discussion of the text as autoethnographycoupled with an excerpt from the memoir. Throughout the memoir theauthor attempts to deconstruct normative conceptions of fertility and pregnancy.She explores the influence of gender and ethnic identities (butch and Chicana) onher experience in a fertility clinic, and on the lived conditions of reproduction. Herbody, at the intersection of gender, sexuality and ethnicity, produces knowledge forscholarly inquiry. The memoir was constructed through fieldnotes and reflectivejournaling. Her observations and analyses reveal insights into the sensibilities andvalues of fertility clinics, as well as those of the communities that have shaped her. Sheconsiders questions such as: How do heterosexist practices in fertility treatments leadto misunderstandings with lgbt clients? How does gender socialization influence abutch’s experience of fertility? How does one’s sense of individual power and desireoperate through reproduction treatments

“Le da la mano y le sonríe”: a plática on creating queer Chicanx children’s literature

In this conversation between Karleen Pendleton Jiménez and Isabel Millán, they reflect on their experiences as authors and their relationship spanning over a decade. As queer Chicanx authors and scholars, they share many of the same academic spaces and communities, such as MALCS and NACCS1 . In 2022, Millán published her first children’s picture book (“Chabelita’s Heart/El corazón de Chabelita”), whereas Pendleton Jiménez has been creating children’s literature since 19992 . Her latest book for children is a middle-grade chapter book published in 2021 (“The Street Belongs to Us”). In what follows, they offer us a curated collection of their personal reflections and dialogues regarding their lives, their children’s books, and their visions for the future

Whose personal is more political? Experience in contemporary feminist politics

Whose personal is more political? This paper rethinks the role of experience in contemporary feminism, arguing that it can operate as a form of capital within abstracted and decontextualised debates which entrench existing power relations. Although experiential epistemologies are crucial to progressive feminist thought and action, in a neoliberal context in which the personal and emotional is commodified powerful groups can mobilise traumatic narratives to gain political advantage. Through case study analysis this paper shows how privileged feminists, speaking for others and sometimes for themselves, use experience to generate emotion and justify particular agendas, silencing critics who are often from more marginalised social positions. The use of the experiential as capital both reflects and perpetuates the neoliberal invisibilisation of structural dynamics: it situates all experiences as equal, and in the process fortifies existing inequalities. This competitive discursive field is polarising, and creates selective empathies through which we tend to discredit others¹ realities instead of engaging with their politics. However, I am not arguing for a renunciation of the politics of experience: instead, I ask that we resist its commodification and respect varied narratives while situating them in a structural frame