Despite the risks
A medical journal has published an article by a group of trans activist academics which advocates the taking of testosterone by trans-identified females during pregnancy, despite the proven and potential risks to the unborn child.
The trans activist academics are not, repeat not, academics in medical fields. They’re all sociologists.
Monthly medical journal, Qualitative Research in Health, has published an article titled ‘Medical Uncertainty and Reproduction of the ‘Normal’: Decision-Making Around Testosterone Therapy in Transgender Pregnancy’.
Scare-quotes on “normal.” That’s the ticket. Deliberately invite birth defects because “normal” is in the eye of the beholder. Yay sociology!
The authors are Carla A Pfeffer, an associate professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan whose work focuses on sex and gender, Sally Hines, a professor of Sociology at the University of Sheffield whose work focuses on gender studies, Ruth Pearce, a lecturer in Community Development at Glasgow University and senior fellow at the Centre for Applied Transgender Studies, Damien W Riggs, a research fellow at Flinders University in Australia whose work focuses on ‘family diversity’, Elizabeth Ruspini, a Sociology professor at the University of Milan whose work focuses on gender studies, and ‘non-binary’ Francis Ray White, a reader in Sociology at the University of Westminster whose work focuses on gender studies.
You will notice that they don’t have one single medical qualification between them.
Yeah I did notice that. It loomed quite large.
We might take a closer look at Ruth Pearce. He is a trans-identified male who describes himself as “A healthcare activist, punk musician, and feminist researcher, specialising in transgender studies and community development”. He says his specialist areas of research are trans health, ethnography and autoethnography, internet studies, women and gender studies, feminist and queer theory, and trans cultural studies.
He has a PhD in sociology from Warwick University.
Returning to the authors of this paper as a whole, they were the team behind the ‘Pregnant Man Project’ which was described as “An International Exploration of Trans Male Practices of Reproduction”. Not only only did they receive generous funding from Leeds University, the team also received a £500,000 grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The ESRC is a subsidiary of UK Research and Innovation, a public body of the UK Government funded through the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
That seems astounding to me.
All this “support” and “love” stuff is possible because it doesn’t cost anything, but giving away half a million pounds for fantasies about pregnant men? Why? Why would anyone ever?
The article is a quagmire of buzzwords and trans-speak such as ‘pregnant people’, ‘chest feeding’ and ‘cisnormative’. Pfeffer et al argue that ‘gendered’ pregnancy care is too focused on helping women to have healthy babies and that it is acceptable for ‘transmen’ to continue taking testosterone during pregnancy, despite the proven and potential risks to the foetus. They claim that the desire for ‘normal foetal outcomes’ is problematic because it is born of a wish to protect babies “From becoming anything other than ‘normal’” and reflects the “Historical and ongoing social practices for creating ‘ideal’ and normative bodies.”
What the unprotected babies will grow up to think about it is irrelevant, it seems.
This scares me. It’s one thing to try to avoid being horrible to people who have a health problem and/or a disability; it’s quite another to deduce that, because it’s mean to treat disadvantaged people badly, it’s therefore OK to create a situation in which there’s a high risk of someone else being irreparably damaged without their knowledge or consent.
The people pushing this are sociopaths. Sane people can treat those with disabilities with compassion and respect, and at the same time work to prevent anyone else getting the same conditions. It’s not disrespectful to people who already have a problem, to make every attempt to prevent others from getting it.
But perhaps I’m being generous, and they are actually psychopaths, and the only solution to ill health and disability that they can think of is to dispose of the people who have either. Preventing a disabled person from living their best life is not at all the same thing as preventing the acquisition of the disability in the first place; but they really show that they don’t care about anyone but themselves when they can’t be bothered to learn the difference.
It’s a death cult, isn’t it?
We say “We’re trying to prevent people having to live with ill health and disability!”; they say “You’re trying to prevent sick and disabled people living! Genocide!”
Not only that, there seems to be an objection to treating disabilities with an aim to cure them, because we are saying people are “defective”. Yes, their bodies are defective. No, they themselves are not worth less.
I have been screamed at for daring to suggest that I would like to cure my own disabilities. As a depressive OCD asthmatic with diabetes, I would love to be ‘normal’ – meaning, I don’t have any of those conditions. It doesn’t mean there is one right way to be human, it just means I could breathe without gasping, I wouldn’t get hung up on trivial things and obsess, I would feel happier, and I would not have to worry about systemic damage because of my ill-functioning pancreas.
I do have the right to desire that; I also have the right to desire that other people also don’t have to deal with lives lessened by not being able to do the things they want to do because of something physical or psychological preventing them.
How dare anyone concern themselves with babies developing “normative bodies.”
They should instead concentrate on babies’ developing abnormative bodies.
This bullshit can be considered under the rubric of The Blowfly Theory of Political Economy.
A cow unloads its manure in a field. In no time at all, every blowly downwind of this event knows all about it, and is heading for the scene of the action. Result: the cowpat is soon alive with blowfly maggots.
In much the same way, a human organisation such as (particularly!) a political party or company is created and without delay, every self-seeker and opportunist is headed for it, Likewise, it would appear, ‘The Pregnant Man Project.’ [!!!!] with its generous funding.
Is this the same article you wrote about a year ago or something new?
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2023/a-striking-paradigm-shift-in-medical-ethics/
“Autoethnography”? Seems pretty “normative” to me. If it weren’t it would just be autobiography, or more likely just the ramblings of that bloke at the party everyone’s trying desperately not to make eye contact with.