JL at The Glinner Update:
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.
