Human bodies are increasingly treated like used cars in our brave new world of gender identity. Body shops, aka “gender confirmation surgery clinics” have plenty of spare parts that are junked, discarded, or reinserted into different shells according to the body owner’s professed gender identity. And why not? It’s a lucrative new medical specialty, with plenty of eager new mechanics ready to serve their dysphoric clients.
First, you gotta redefine the car models to make the parts more interchangeable. Marketing is all in retail sales, so a good start would be excising the word “woman” from any discussion about giving birth. This makes the uterus a disembodied entity, decoupled from its formerly female mooring.
A group of midwives called Woman-Centered Midwifery recently wrote an open letter to the Midwives Alliance of North American (MANA), decrying MANA’s replacement of the word “woman” with “individual” in their literature and guidelines.
We are concerned that, except for in the trademarked section from the Midwives Model of Care, the word “woman” has been erased from the MANA core competencies document and replaced with “pregnant individual” and “birthing parent.” We recognize that the words maternal and motherbaby were not removed from the document, implying that the reviewers maintained a mutual and shared respect for the sanctity of the motherbaby unit in midwifery. But women are now all but missing from the language, as if we can separate woman from mother from baby. Woman is recognized now only in relation to her baby. This is harmful to female adult humans; we women have fought long and hard to be recognized as autonomous beings.
The response from MANA (“birth for everybody”) was swift, and despite a lot of lofty and condescending verbiage, their message boiled down to this: You natural-birth midwives are just a pack of transphobes.
The purpose of this response is to explain why and how the Open Letter is harmful to transgender, genderqueer and intersex people, why midwifery documents should be gender inclusive, and why people of all genders should be welcomed into midwifery care. While we are focusing on birth-related care in this letter, it is important to notice the subtle and insidious ways the “open letter” attempts to erase the lives and narratives of transgender women and other women who cannot or do not give birth.
So trans men can give birth and MANA doesn’t want to refer to them as “women.” But surely we can all agree that trans women, whom MANA appears most concerned about “erasing,” cannot give birth, so “pregnant individuals” will never refer to them.
Not if groundbreaking gender surgeons get their way.
In Sweden, researchers have succeeded in transplanting a uterus “which resulted in the birth of a healthy and fully developed child, carried to term by its birth mother.”
According to Dr. Sherman Leis, founder of the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery and a pioneer in surgical techniques for transgender men and women, “The brilliance of this scientific work and clinical trials in Sweden is that the uterus is being implanted in a way that does not require it being connected to the recipient’s Fallopian tubes or ovaries, which obviously a MTF patient does not have.”
So I predict a boom in the body spare parts business. Plenty of organ donors (who undoubtedly will be paid for their altruistic gestures) are likely already lining up. Heck, people are selling their kidneys on eBay, why not the bleeding, useless bag of monthly nuisances?
But here’s an idea to make the whole process more efficient. With all the dysphoric women wanting to rid themselves of their useless uteruses (typically damaged anyway by all the testosterone they’re injecting), why not set up an efficient assembly-line operation to quickly transfer the organ from the FTM to MTF with a minimum of fuss and bother? Instead of having to dig around for women–I mean, “uterus havers”– who are willing to have their spare part yanked out for the right price, why not line up the donors and recipients in tidy hospital wards, side by side, with all the tubes and surgical paraphernalia sitting companionably between them?
Think of the profits. Think of the lifelong friendships that will arise from these reproductive engine swaps. The trans men would sleep soundly, knowing that their worthless birthing bag was being skillfully transferred to a body that would use it properly. Mission accomplished for the surgical grease monkeys.
Of course, the ultimate goal is to get “trans kids” on the used part assembly lines as early as possible. So they won’t have to put up TOO long with internal organs that are just so wrong for them. Who needs a damn uterus and egg follicles when you’re six anyway? I can’t wait for the trans kids’ books: “Judy’s uterus was wrong but it was just perfect for little Jason, who now goes by ‘Jazey’.”
Why wait? Donate to the female repro organ donation center today. The uterus you give will brighten the future of a REAL woman. And good luck with that phalloplasty, man!
LOLOLOLOL!
I’m picturing all the Judys and Jasons in a hospital ward like the big room they slept in in the Madeline books! Painted in that same style. 😝
It’s the trans “men” who somehow get pregnant that the the bad midwife association is trying not to offend. I’d just like to mention that as a 53-year-old woman who never had kids that I do not feel erased by that Women-Centered Midwifery women’s letter. Hooray for them! 🎉🎉🎈🎂
I am appalled by this response by MANA to the open letter written by the midwives of Women-Centered Midwifery. There was no trans-phobia in the midwives letter, merely a request not to deny the biological reality that it is women who give birth. ”We do not give birth with our gender identity but with our biology,” I fail to see how that can be argued against.
We seem to live in times where ”acceptable speech” is more important than biological reality. Following dogma and ”teaching” is the path of the true believer. Questioning or rejecting parts of the ”official” code of practice and belief is heresy and Thomas Aquinas had much to say about that. Are we really returning to such times? Why the need to control more and more free speech and even thought?
Also I’m confused. The MANA response talks about the ”insidious ways the “open letter” attempts to erase the lives and narratives of transgender women”. Surely the issue here is women who identify as ”transmen” and are biologically able to give birth as long as they have not had hysterectomies. I really fail to see what a ”transgender woman” has to do with child birth except as the partner of a woman (I refuse to use cis or the prefix biological) whom he has impregnated. Here I can see the need for some tact, but the whole scale erasure of Woman as a biological entity is unwarranted.
I share your dismay and justified anger.
I am similarly confused as to how this letter can possibly be “erasing” trans women. Even if one were to insist that “trans women are women,” the complaint makes no sense – the fact that only “women” will ever need the services of a midwife (for their own selves, anyway) doesn’t imply that needing the services of a midwife is a requirement to BE a “woman.”
I mean, hell, I’m a middle-aged woman (adult human female, even!) who is childless by choice and so will very likely never need to see a midwife (for myself) but that doesn’t mean I’m not a woman. Am I excluded as a customer? Well, yeah. But I’m not “erased.” I just don’t get it.
I blame post-modernist gender studies academics for destroying the inherent clarity and precision of the English language. The fact that you have to tie your brain into semantic knots to even attempt to understand their pontifications and rationalizations says it all. The not-nice word for it is mindfuckery.
“Also I’m confused. The MANA response talks about the ”insidious ways the “open letter” attempts to erase the lives and narratives of transgender women”. Surely the issue here is women who identify as ”transmen” and are biologically able to give birth as long as they have not had hysterectomies.”
I see this pattern ALL the time. Feminist groups bending over backwards to include transwomen with women, to name “cis”-men as the problem, and then nary a word spoken regarding transmen.
Now transwomen resolutely throw transmen in with “cis” men and proclaim that they had male socialization and privilege all along, have no biological concerns in common with the rest of the female population, and have no right to an opinion on what misogyny is.
Female libfems on the other hand I haven’t seen go out of their way so much to proclaim this, and they must instinctually recognize that female pre-transition children would obviously have been treated to the female experience (indeed how often do FtT narratives involve childhood sexual abuse?) but lest they upset their new male masters and disturb the transhive, it seems they just opt to ignore transmen altogether. Women being erased and ignored to placate men. Gee what a surprise.
1) Exactly!
2) Transhive! 🐝 Too perfect.
This is so alarming, I feel like we’re being invaded by the body snatchers. How far can this go before people wake up?! Check out the lawyer for MANA. She is a genderqueer who works for the US Military! http://www.palmcenter.org/blog/indra_lusero “As the Director of the Transgender Military Initiative, I am thrilled to be commissioning 11 studies to enhance the quality of information available for evaluating transgender service in the United States military, and to address questions related to readiness, morale, welfare, personnel requirements and management.”
Holy crap! The military? It’s like the vampires in the British version of the TV series Being Human. Attempting to Infiltrate ‘Key Sectors’, or whatever their phrase was.
Also I don’t see how having a bunch of auto gonna files in the military could be good for morale. Sexual fetishists especially ones were willing to go that far are, um, kind of obsessed with their fetish. Like that’s the only thing there if they’re willing to think about. But, you know, gay people blazed a trail there. So more coat tails for trans to ride on. 😠
About the MANA letter, I wanted to say: McCarthyism. It’s not just the constantly telling people what they can and cannot say. It’s when people don’t conform to all of that these McCarthyites claim that they know something negative about us. That we are bigots. Like Jerry Falwell, hate-filled and crazy.
Dang, I forgot to correct the spelling of ‘auto gonna files’ before I pressed post. That’s how it’s spelled when I dictate. Of course I meant autogynephiles. ☺️
Yeah, but they auto gonna file lawsuits when those bad midwives call their patients “women” while helping them through the next contraction…
To 4thwavenow
LOL!
The Transgender Military Initiative is funded by transgender billionaire James “Jennifer Natalya” Pritzker http://forward.com/culture/208832/how-colonel-jennifer-pritzker-pushes-for-transgend/
Pritzker is a conservative who has funded many conservative causes and politicians, many of whom are noted for being anti-gay and lesbian rights and are supporters of forced pregnancy for women (anti-abortion). “Over the years, Pritzker has primarily supported conservative causes, like the National Rifle Association, and Republican politicians, including Sen. John McCain, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and Illinois figures like comptroller Judy Baar Topinka, pundit and presidential candidate Alan Keyes, and Rep. Aaron Schock.” Thats from the Advocate, think they’d care about a billionaire heterosexual who funds anti-gay candidates suddenly identifying as one of the LGBTs, but they dont. http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2013/11/12/trans-billionaire-reporting-duty
I had to read the response from MANA to see how they twisted themselves in knots explaining their side. I liked this one in particular (the first sentence–in quotes–is from the original Open Letter to MANA, the remaining two sentences are MANA’s nonsensical response):
“The whole concept that a man can give birth is premised on the supremacy of technology over women and nature, and the primacy of ideology that is detached from our animal, natural selves.” This statement claims that a pregnant person who identifies as male is somehow asserting dominance over nature and detaching themselves from the natural world. We assert that there is nothing more natural than knowing oneself.
Transactivists need to redefine the word “nature” to make this work for them. Obviously, someone had to tamper with *nature* to get a pregnant male. This idea that medical interventions are needed for someone to become more *natural* are ridiculous. “Knowing oneself” does NOT trump the biological reality of one’s *natural* body.
This letter from MANA and that amazingly horrible graphic from your last post are total propaganda/political spin. There must be quite a lot of money floating around to convince the masses.
So it’s basically the Capitol from Hunger Games now, yeah? Anything goes, vis a vis extreme body modification? Because to me there’s zero diff between these latest developments and giving furries/otherkin what they want to make themselves into the animals they want to be (erm, think they ARE). Zero diff between this and elective amputations for people with body integrity identity disorder / apotemnophilia. (Yeah, the latter is a thing. Look it up. Sigh.)
Whatever you want, if you can scrounge up the cash, there is some doctor ready to take it. And some psychologist or social justice warrior explaining to the rest of us that this is a Good Thing, and that anybody who thinks it’s not is simply on the Wrong Side of History.
You know what, peeps? I’m a veteran of multiple miscarriages and fertility treatments. I regret some of the stuff I did to my body in the quest to make bio babies. In the end we adopted babies. I wish we’d gone that route even sooner, but the bad consequences actually started fairly early in the process of pursuit. Some of gender surgery stories are not going to end happily, long term. The body has a way of trying to restore equilibrium, you know?
If it’s the nature of humans to keep reaching for the brass ring … not a lot we can do about that impulse. It’s a consumer society, and when there is money to be made, providers will step up to the plate. But that doesn’t mean I have to participate in this deconstructionist insanity, where words have no actual meanings. And it doesn’t mean I have to encourage my kid to participate, either, just because my kid prefers short hair and boys’ clothing. I am gonna hold that kid’s hand, but I will also be steering this bus as much as humanly possible away from this lunacy, until the day she yanks the wheel out of my hands for good. I can only hope that, by then, she’ll be able to recognize the fact that some roads don’t lead to a beneficial destination.
What a joke. A ‘free floating uterus in a man? That is a man’s masturbation/sissy fantasy. The only thing they did in Sweden is transplant a uterus into another woman that had a natural place for it . To implant it in a man is wasting a woman’s organ.
They would have to change men’s hip bones which are not designed to carry life.
What about the weight of a baby?
Men’s hipbones are not bowl shaped to hold the weight of the baby centered. A woman’s is-This prevents internal injuries from a free-floating growing human sliding off the pelvis stretching out some man’s lower gut due to gravity. A babies foot drooping down to the ball sac would end that sex fantasy. The uterus needs to be attached to the hipbones to keep the babies’ weight in the center. Male hipbones won’t allow this, and have no bowl shape for a baby to grow. -Even if they attach it to the men’s hip bones, This man will have back problems because his hipbones are pitched different and do not center the weight of another human growing. A free-floating 30lb mas pitched forward -with kicking?
http://nh-chs-anatomy.pbworks.com/f/male%20and%20female%20pelvis.png
Then there is the birth canal, Babies pass through the ‘bottom of the hipbone ‘bowl’
. Men’s hipbones have a different angle, closed pelvis, No bowl, just a ledge that will be internal ledge that will become very sore as the child grows larger and puts weight on that one area.
It will remain a sex fantasy for rich white men in first world nations- not a realistic medical pursuit that will improve the lives of humans being born. We are in a time of over population, so it is not about bring in needed life, it is a sex fantasy. It is a narcissistic sex fantasy similar to Ed Gein’s [transgender crossdresser] obsession with cutting these same female reproductive organs out of corpses and wearing them tied in front to cover his penis while he danced in women’s skins. [Read about him.] He was a trans with a porn addiction in the 1950s.
When female sexual organs from corpses -was not satisfying him, he began killing women and harvesting their sex organs to play with.
Men with the deranged idea that they can replace women- or cut them open to get things
to use as new sex toys to try out, is nothing new for mentally unstable men.
Wowser! Great info. Nice bone pic. 😊
Ed Gein was the basis for the Anthony Perkins character in Psycho.
Holy moly. That Ed Gein story, while clearly an extreme manifestation of transgenderism, still is such a crystal clear illustration of the basic premise. Women are a costume, a literal skin to try on, a sissy fetish for you to play at, and most importantly — that which so often goes unsaid but is the undeniable founding principle –they just aren’t human.
Great anatomy lesson too! You know, whatever self-harm they want to engage in, all the money they’d be happy to waste, it’s unethical but whatever. But to think of the welfare of the hypothetical babies – I seriously cannot even bear the thought that this could ever be done legally. I’m not doubting that they’ll try, but from an emotional standpoint it makes me so sick. I just can’t even handle it.
This disturbing rhetorical trend of “if I am not being centered and made the top priority, then I am being erased” is so incredibly tiring. Being a woman is about never being centered and this organization proves that. No one gets to be catered to all the time in every facet of life. I am so deeply frustrated with these biological men continually re-orienting the world to focus on their narcissism to the exclusion of everyone else in every conceivable situation (and that so many people go along with it).
I hit peak trans on an issue similar to this, when three young “trans women” demanded that Planned Parenthood and NARAL re-do all of their print and digital media to remove references to “women.” They had to be told that the government dictated what could be said in their material because of funding issues. But moreover, these young men were so self-involved they had no idea about the political delicacy surrounding the funding of these organizations. I was furious that anyone would demand that these two groups spend even a penny of politically vulnerable funding to cater to young men who would never get pregnant.
Last, if guys want to have uteruses, they need to come with electrodes to simulate menses, and a bloating mechanism so your clothes don’t fit 7-10 days each month, etc., so they can really know what it’s like having a uterus.
Every time someone uses ‘center’ as a verb in this context, I kind of want to barf. Maybe that is female conditioning, the aversion to this demand, since women’s needs are emphatically NOT centered. In most contexts, within the family and at work, the conditioning is — “be a good helpful girl, support everybody, put your own needs/wants last.” Especially as a parent of children, that is the paradigm, SO much more than it is for men.
For these natal males to be insisting on it makes me shake my head in disbelief. If they want to be women? I mean, if they ARE women? Then get out of the center, and stop asking everybody to put your needs first. Women do not do this. (It’s so telling that FTMs also do not generally do this.) Equality, civil rights, lack of harassment, those are all good things. I am on board with those things for everyone, including people who make life choices I don’t agree with. But expecting to be everyone’s top priority all the time, because … feelings? Those are not realistic demands. Not for women, not for men, not for anyone with any sort of healthy psyche.
Nobody gets to be first all the time. Nobody gets feelings protected all the time. That’s not the planet we’re living on.
I don’t like the verb “center” either but it has a long history in feminism and, of course, has now become a very important term for TW.
“I hit peak trans on an issue similar to this, when three young “trans women” demanded that Planned Parenthood and NARAL re-do all of their print and digital media to remove references to “women.” ”
Isn’t if funny how it is always the transwomen pushing for the erasure of women when the fact of the matter is that the semantics in question would only be “excluding” transmen? If transwomen claim they’re women they’re women they’re women then fine, if they want to fantasize that the PP pamphlets talking about women are talking about their uterus-less bodies too, then fine. It should be hordes of transmen taking up the fight to be included as the “pregnant individuals” but in reality I very rarely see them as the instigators.
I am one of the authors of the Woman Centered Midwifery letter. It is most certainly transmen causing us grief in the midwifery community. These females hate being women so much that they decide to identify with our oppressor class, then they come into women’s sacred space (midwifery FFS!) and tell us that we are oppressing them by saying things like “women give birth.” It’s total insanity. While I know that in the larger world it is MTTs who are makeing our life hell, in midwifery it is FTTs who are the primary bullies.
Thanks so much for your comment, Mary Lou. Often feminists shy away from any criticism of trans men, out of solidarity. But this is very interesting to hear. Just curious, have you had any luck at all trying to reason with any of these FTT (“female to trans”)–ever? Also, I’m wondering what, if anything, supporters of your cause can do. The retort from the MANA is so discouraging. Are you planning any other communication or action around this issue?
To Mary Lou Singleton, that is so horrible. Every gob of solidarity I have, to you. They’re like naughty children kicking over the card table. If they want to be men why are they having babies? Shouldn’t they be ignoring you like ‘regular’ men?
It’s like the deconstruction crap when I was a student. But that stayed in the classroom. Mind you, even there it was about wrecking things so no one could do regular, normal scholarly work.
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Mary Lou, thank you for clearing that.The confusion was not in your open letter, but in the response by MANA, who not only ignored your concerns but used it as an opportunity to accuse you of, among other things, transphobia against trans women; which wasn’t even the issue. Bullying, gaslighting, mindfuckery, whatever you call it, MANA is guilty of that. I might call it libel and consult a lawyer.
Also, I am beyond saddened that women who identify as MTT could despise themselves and other women so much to target a caring profession who’s sole objective is to care and assist the category of people who give birth, ie WOMEN, and their babies. Obviously, not all women can, or choose to, give birth and this does not make one or the other in any way superior or inferior to the other. However, those who do give birth need, and are very grateful to, the midwives who care for them.
To Mary Lou Singleton, I can’t figure out how to reply to you, first ****thank for your activism for women****! That is indeed surprising to hear about the transmen. I wonder if my thinking in part results from the common phenomenon where in various arenas, women (ie transmen in this case) do actually have things to say, but when to comes to platforms they receive fewer opportunities to actually express those opinions to an audience and their voices are heard much less than men in the same arena. So it seems most transadvocacy from major trans websites and well known blogs at least seem to come from men (ie transwomen). Of course I do think in general transwomen are prone to more hostility and aggression as well. But that’s still very interesting to learn about the transmen. Honestly women, you are still women! Sorry you don’t like to identify with the word anymore, but hurt feelings don’t change reality and thinking you’re a man doesn’t give you the right to decide we don’t exist.
This seems very current:
Monty Python did a great job with this–in 1979! Strange how this could NEVER be made today.
But 4th, it does not need to be made today. Because it’s the reality today. 😣😖😲
OMG! Now we know how to help people reach peak trans. We start out by saying “It’s pure Monty Python.” 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Thank you!
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So, midwives are now being constrained to use the euphemisms ” pregnant individual” and ”birthing parent” instead of ”woman” despite the fact that only ”women” can become pregnant and give birth. Anything other will cause upset to transwomen we are told.
But, are ”women”, if that class of individuals still exists, allowed to feel upset if the class of individuals known as ”fathers” appropriate the word ”mother”? This article from The Georgia Straight http://www.straight.com/blogra/534076/vancouvers-leading-moms-include-news-anchor-mi-jung-lee-trans-activist-morgane-oger * doesn’t even stop to ask when it reports on Vacouver’s Leading Mom’s Event…….”This year will include the event’s first transgender mother as a speaker: Morgane Oger. Oger is the chair of the Trans Alliance Society and has been frequently featured in the pages of the Georgia Straight speaking about transgender issues. Oger, who was featured in the Georgia Straight’s 2014 Pride issue focus on LGBT parents, is also the mother of two children.”
No, No, No……Oger is a father, a late transitioning, autogynophile who put his fetish before his family, and I for one, as a woman and a mother am upset, really upset. Women carry children for 9 months and give birth, some at considerable discomfort and health risk to themselves; not men, not fathers, but WOMEN, who after that experience earn the right to call themselves MOTHERS.
This has got to stop; this eroding of women’s experiences and identity. It is the worst kind of misogyny as it is being enabled by other women and mother’s all in the name of being ”inclusive”.
Being inclusive of all women who have made achievements as mother’s is a laudable thing, but one has to draw the line at a certain point, and that is to recognise that only females/women can be mothers.
There is, in fact, legal precedent for not allowing a father to change his status as ”father” on his own children’s birth certificate, at least in the UK, http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2015/04/23/birth-certificate-cannot-be-retrospectively-changed-to-reflect-fathers-gender-reassignment/
(It’s an interesting case and the Judge ruled that although the applicant had the right to change his own birth certificate from male to female he did not have the right to change his status as ”father” on his children’s birth certificate).
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