ABSTRACT
Introduction On 30 May 2010, when most of Swedish society was preoccupied with an uncritical celebration of mothers and motherhood, quite a different story unfolded on the Internet. The same day, liberal-1 and trans-activist Amanda Brihed (2010a) wrote the following on the collective blog of the liberal activist network Liberati:2
Today, a large part of the Swedish female population is celebrating Mother’s Day in one way or another. And with them, also a significant part of the Swedish male population. But for the people who have been born in-between, or who have not had the chance to be born in the right body there is as a rule almost nothing like a Mother’s Day. Surely they can celebrate their friends, siblings, their mothers, grandmothers. But they will never themselves be celebrated. For the transsexuals and intersexed who have been sterilized as a condition for them to become themselves, there is no parenthood. They have been deprived of that right. It is a kind of an annulment of citizenship and human value we are talking about. (my translation, emphasis added)3
While not explicitly criticizing the event itself, Brihed swiftly abandons the rhetoric of Mother’s Day as an innocent familial celebration, turning the reader’s attention to the many people who, not necessarily out of choice, are excluded from such celebration.
*Emails: jenny.gunnarsson.payne@sh.se; jenny.g.payne@gmail.com
