Early this year, it was released that global superpower Beyoncé was with child. Not just one, but two children filled her womb. Creepy photoshoots revealed her bulging belly and praised her as a woman among women; a mother among mothers.
Surely, the sacred children in this womb contained some sort of key to unlocking the rest of existence. Surely they were the promised messiahs of a celebrity-worshiping generation.
Sadly, they’re probably not far from that to most of our culture.
People broke down in tears upon hearing the news and millions flocked to social media to share their excitement. But what I want to focus on in this post is not the celebrity cult or the weird portrayal of this woman’s body plastered across the internet.
I want to examine the language used about the two fetuses kicking in her tummy.
What I’ve realized when it comes to world-famous pregnancies like this is that the language shifts with the object. In other words, I’ll spend this post taking apart the idea that:
intent informs ontology.
One key thing to notice about Ms. Knowles’ pregnancy is that you’ll never see her unborn babies referred to as ‘fetuses.’ They are certainly children through and through. Any publication which would dare refer to these sacred infants otherwise would surely be scorned.
Yet these same publications, when writing about a Planned Parenthood client or otherwise nondescript pregnancy would have no second thoughts about referring to the organism inside the woman as a ‘fetus’.
What the woman intends to do with the baby is what shapes the language people use about it. If the unborn organism is unwanted, it is a mere fetus. A piece of tissue. A collection of human-esque cells. But if it is the twin children of Queen Bey, they are nothing short of royalty from the moment of conception.
What the humans intend to do with the child informs what it is.
For those of you not thoroughly bathed in philosophical jargon, ontology is a fancy word for what something is. It is the study of being. For instance, the chair I’m sitting on is, at its core, a chair. It has a thorough chair-ness about it which defines what it is.
Ontologically, it is a chair.