“The gendered language of pregnancy”
January 2021: a male OB/GYN informs us on the Planned Parenthood blog that it’s not just ” ciswomen” who get abortions.
Abortion rights, reproductive rights, women’s rights, reproductive justice…these terms may seem synonymous to many, but in fact they represent an evolution and intersectionality of many struggles for individuals to choose when and how to be pregnant and/or parent. Language around abortion has always been fraught with controversy, imprecision, and rhetoric. The topic of ending a pregnancy in the United States is more than a medical procedure but also carries political, ethical, and moral weight. Pro-choice advocates may use sterile scientific language while anti-choice proponents use emotion-evoking language about life and personhood. While abortion has long been a language minefield, a new abortion language issue has arisen: the gendered language of pregnancy and abortion.
Gee, I wonder why the language around pregnancy and abortion would be “gendered” i.e. sexed.
In recent years, the visibility of the transgender community has increased significantly. With increased visibility, the transgender and non-binary community has also demanded more equitable and knowledgeable treatment by medical providers.
It’s not just the “visibility” of trans people that has increased, it’s also the number of them. Why? Because it’s an out of control social contagion. Also, how are we defining “more equitable treatment” here? It’s not particularly “equitable” to pretend that men can be women, much less to bully women into agreeing that men can be women.
In response, many family planning providers, like Planned Parenthood, have embraced the provision of transition-related care for transgender and non-binary individuals.
Good god. Why?
Indeed, the tenets of reproductive justice and self-determination have pushed these health care providers to extend beyond traditional family planning services as well as make their core services more inclusive.
It’s not reproductive justice to pretend that men can be women. Self-determination concerning pregnancy is not the same as self-determination concerning physical facts about the self. Self-determination doesn’t mean we can self-determine that we are cars or houses or Brazil or the space station. There’s a limit to what we can determine about ourselves.
While many changes were easy, abortion and pregnancy are highly gendered concepts, and the use of inclusive language remains challenging and problematic. While some can understand that a transgender man may need a Pap smear or experience a yeast infection, far fewer can think about anyone other than ciswomen becoming pregnant or needing an abortion.
Don’t. call. us. ciswomen. Don’t try to tell us we’re a subset of our own sex. Don’t find a new and trendy way to bully women.
Reflect on any experience you have had surrounding pregnancy. Do you imagine anyone besides cisgender women being pregnant? Many family planning providers similarly have had to struggle with their gendered roots in becoming more inclusive. Not all pregnant people identify as women, or have a feminine gender expression.
You reflect. You reflect on what “becoming more inclusive” means, and reflect on whether you really want to be telling the subordinated sex to become “more inclusive” of the dominant one. Then fuck off.
There is inherent tension in acknowledging an organizational history rooted in the women’s rights movement that lead to Roe v. Wade, but also left out many non-white, non-cis people.
Ohhh no you don’t. Apologize for PP’s failure to include non-white people all you like, but do not bring the absurd category “non-cis” into it. College kids who fancy themselves too special and unique to be just female or male are not comparable to brown and black people who’ve been pushed around and neglected.
While it may be challenging to use language like “people who become pregnant” as opposed to “pregnant women,” it is a minor discomfort that nowhere near exceeds the benefits.
Oh no it isn’t. Oh no it absolutely is not. Erasing women is not “a minor discomfort,” dude.
How about PP gets a new sign? IF YOU ARE PREGNANT, YOU ARE A WOMAN. IF YOU ARE A MAN WHO IDENTIFIES AS A WOMAN, YOU ARE NOT PREGNANT.
If one wanted to demonstrate that abortion denial wasn’t an attack on women, all you’d need to do is show that men are affected too.
Now religious types tend not to be all “TMAM”, so I can’t claim that there is some conspiracy here, but those who are all “TMAM” have a lot to answer for in undermining the coherence of the traditional arguments for abortion rights for women.
Ben Shapiro and other right wingers have already kindly thanked PP and other pro-trans cult organizations for claiming men can get pregnant since, if men can get pregnant, then men certainly have a say in abortion laws. Not that saying men aren’t women would stop them from legislating on women’s lives but PP sure cut the legs out from under women trying to fight for our rights on this issue. Guess that is why PP is so gung-ho on transing kids — if they lose their abortion money, they can get children’s chopshop dollars.
Children’s chopshop dollars are way better, because abortion is usually one and done, and transing a kid makes him a lifetime consumer of medical services.