Last night I watched a short lesbian film called ‘Birthday’
about two women who had one child together from insemination about eight years
ago and wished for a second. It turns out that the to-be birth mother fed up
with the turkey-baster approach ineffectively working has slept with the sperm
donor to conceive much to the disapproval of her wife.
It reminded me of a birthday gathering last weekend where babies
once again were the familiar topic of conversation, despite the group being gay
men and women. One of the lesbian couples there were in the process of trying
for a baby and my gay mate (the birthday boy) quietly whispered to me later
‘They asked me – but I said no!’
Babies came up again a few days later at an LGBT networking
event, when another gay mate jokingly commented that ‘he had never been asked
to be a donor – and wondered what was wrong!?’
His tongue in cheek comment a response to an increasingly
familiar subject matter that were once the realm of heterosexuals but are now
definitely a part of gay life – marriage, babies, children, schools - topics we
all agreed at the networking event which made straight parties boring.
Mixed friendship groups of lesbians and gays has
become akin to a family planning clinic where wombs and sperm are up for
bartering over during a night out. I find it sad that it’s come to this – where
friendship means the inevitable question will be asked with girls
propositioning their male mates and male mates getting personal with their
female friends. New friendships are made with the undertone of sussing each
other out for potential shared parenthood, whilst other friendships are lost
when your sperm or womb is pronounced as ‘not available’.
As an ever increasing number successfully make the move into
parenthood or seek it, they are re-shaping the relationship between the gay community and the lesbian community, the way we socialise, engage and
converse and where marriage, babies, children and schools are now a part of that.
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