Why all young feminists should read The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

I have never been interested in motherhood. Not carrying a baby nor caring for one. In part, my discomfort with motherhood and domesticity likely lies in my queerness and my feminist beliefs. And in part, because I am only a 22 year old recent college graduate. But I have never been interested in living a conventional, heteronormative lifestyle. It’s simple.

And yet, Maggie Nelson challenges all assumptions about what a heteronormative vs. a nonconforming family look like. The Argonauts, part-memoir and part-theory, tells the story of her pregnancy around the same time as her gender-fluid partner, Harry Dodge, was taking testosterone. Interwoven in this narrative of love and anxiety and change are examinations of theorists and artists—my favorites being Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Catherine Opie. The Argonauts is queer in its content, theory, and genre-transcending form.

Early in the book, Nelson recalls a friend’s remarks while looking at customized mug with their family photos plastered on it: “I’ve never seen anything so heteronormative in my life.”

This line sounds like something straight out of my or one of my queer friends’ mouths.

But Nelson calls it into question, asking: “what about it is the essence of heteronormativity?” “What about my pregnancy—is that inherently heteronormative?” “is the presumed opposition of queerness and procreation […] more a reactionary embrace of how things have shaken down for queer than the mark of some ontological truth?” “As more queers have kids, will the presumed opposition simply wither away? Will you miss it?”

This kind of questioning that Nelson navigates through personal anecdotes and theoretical examinations is exactly what young feminists and/or queers need to hear.

After I began studying Gender and Women’s Studies several years ago, I thought reading more Butler and appreciating lesbian art like Opie would reveal more about how I can live a feminist, queer life. But now, with my degree in hand, I know that it hasn’t. There are only more questions.

Reading The Argonauts also didn’t solve my questions about how I can live a feminist, queer life, but it does illustrate one example as Nelson creates family with her gender-fluid partner. And while they may appear heteronormative to strangers at first glance, that doesn’t mean that they are. Nelson somehow finds pleasure and comfort in revisions, change, and repetition—to me, that embodies a queer lifestyle more than appearances.

During college, I may have been interested in themes of domesticity, but only in an academic way. Now, I have to confront how domesticity will play a role in my real life. There's no pressure at age 22, but eventually I must question how I want my family to look like. This doesn’t make me any less interested in domesticity intellectually, but like Nelson, I may get to appreciate it from a new perspective. And even combine my theoretical knowledge of writers like Butler and Sedgwick with how I choose to live my life. That is freeing and exciting and still terrifying.

I’m still not interested in motherhood—personally. That can change. But it also doesn’t have to.

Like me, any young feminist or queer person should also open themselves up to the radical possibilities of how to live a nonconforming but comfortable life by reading The Argonauts.