Pregnant trans men Guardian article

Max's story is terrible. Who the fuck allowed her to have a double mastectomy at 17? That is horrific.

thanksjaneshusbandatcaresouth, that paragraph jumped out at me too.

I found it really sad (and revealing, of course) to read that he saw himself as somebody who thinks being an ordinary man is the best thing you can be.

And so he had pushed away femininity, but now realised how undervalued this work is … And it does make you think, ‘What was I pushing away? What was I scared of?’

busyboysmum, that article is absolutely heartbreaking.

I did this because I believed it would heal all of the emotional issues I was blaming on my female body. It didn't work. Now I'm still all fucked up and I'm missing body parts, too.

Isn’t hating your female body in a world that encourages you to be dissatisfied with what you were born with quite common? And then finding a new found respect for that form when it carries and nurtures life equally common? I’d say for myself and a lot of women I hear from, that you do feel differently about your body post pregnancy and birth than you did before and it’s a complicated relationship.

so glad this thread is on here. I thought I was the only one loosing my mind when I read. This person stoped taking testostone and hasnt taken any for 15 years! He is a pregant woman not a pregnant man.

PS: I'm using their prefer pronoun even if I dont agree as I dont want this thread or my comment deleted.

It's all a bit Emperors New Clothes.

X: 'I'm a man.'
Y: 'No, X, you're a woman.'

[Commentary: Hmm, you can't both be right. Let's see. What reasons can you adduce, X and Y?]

Y: 'She has given birth.'

[Commentary: OK, that clears it up. Y's right. X?]

X: 'I cut the flowers off my dungarees. I feel like a man. I like drinking beer from pint glasses. I had my breasts cut off. Oh, please, please let me be a man! I do so feel like I'm a man! Look, I'm in the paper! Please be kind to me!'

Y: 'OK, OK, X, you're a man. There, there.'

[Commentary: ( sotto voce ) Still and all, you're a woman, X. Sorry.]

Life can be tough.

I thought the article was really interesting and quite moving. Recognising the work and vulnerability of pregnancy is important. I’m intrigued to see the film now. Wish the research had been discussed beyond the ‘seems like lots of people are Googling this’ quote...

Heartbreaking story from Max, which shows how pushing people to transition is a really really bad idea and why we need doctors/therapists/councillors who will help people confused about their gender to understand what's at the root of their unhappiness.

And agree with everyone else who said the Guardian article is about a lesbian couple having a baby.

Max's story is heartbreaking

I'd really worry about what the male hormones she'd been taking would do to a developing foetus

Some found it masculinising. “They were more like a fat dude than they had ever felt before. As their body got bigger, they felt stronger.”... HOW, how the hell can pregnancy possibly in any sense be 'masculinising'... (which I don't even think is a real word).

I personally (despite hating nearly every moment of pregnancy) found the idea that my body could produce and nurture another life, made me feel a respect and an awarenesses of the strength and power of my body that I had not had before. I don't know that this is the case for these transmen, but I imagine that if I bought into gender idealogy, I could interpret these feelings of strength and power as signs of masculinity. Because power and strength according to gender = masculine.

Moving testimony

No wonder they want it suppressed

“The following is a quote from detransitioner and blogger Max Robinson, with her permission:

I transitioned FtM (female to male) at 16, was on testosterone and had a double mastectomy by 17. I'm 20 now and back to understanding myself as a lesbian, like I was before I found out about transition and latched onto it as a way to “fix” body issues created by the challenges of growing up in a deeply misogynistic and lesbian-hating world.

I absolutely am traumatized by what happened to me, and I'm not the only one. I'm a part of support networks for women who stopped transition that have over 100 members, and that's just the individuals who have gone looking for others with this experience and found us.

Early in my transition, I went through menopause. This caused vaginal atrophy and drip incontinence that has persisted for years. I piss myself slowly all day now; it's really not cute or fun. I refused to acknowledge it was connected to the HRT-caused vaginal atrophy that immediately preceded its onset until months after going off testosterone. Yeah, I signed a paper saying I knew that could happen. I also thought this treatment was my only hope for coping with the intense feelings of alienation/disgust with my femaleness. I was wrong. Transition didn't help. It did harm, harm that I now have to learn how to live with on top of all the shit I thought transition would fix.

My double mastectomy was severely traumatizing. I paid a guy, a guy who does this every day for cash, to drug me to sleep and cut away healthy tissue. I did this because I believed it would heal all of the emotional issues I was blaming on my female body. It didn't work. Now I'm still all fucked up and I'm missing body parts, too.

There is no surgery that will undo what's been done… adding synthetic materials to resemble the tissue of mine that was incinerated years ago would not help me. It took 3 years of stuffing down every negative feeling about my mastectomy before I was ready to face that what happened did harm to me. I was off hormones for months before I admitted to myself that I deeply, deeply regretted this surgery. The best way I can think of describing the loss is like killing a family member who I blamed for being a burden on me, and then realizing years later that the blame I put on them was extremely and tragically misplaced. It was not their fault, but they're gone now anyway, because I wanted them gone. I have lost my breasts and I have lost the chance to reconcile with my breasts. It wouldn't be easy, but it would be work worth doing. Now the work before me instead is reconciling with what I've done and with the chest I have now—flat, scarred, asymmetrical, and nerve-damaged. (Robinson, 2016)”

Comments section seems to have gone

The Guardian rarely opens comments on substantive issues as they often find that public opinion goes against the editorial slant. Cake recipes and restaurant reviews, on the other hand, almost always have comments open.

For some people it is not the easy case that they are defined by the sex they were born with

And yet, the newspaper article, is about a female being pregnant.

For someone 'not defined by the sex they were born', they sure seem to be trumpeting doing a major thing that that sex can do that the other doesn't..

a lesbian couple having a baby together, which is also lovely, especially as it wouldn't have been medically possible or socially accepted not long ago. But it seems like a weirdly regressive attempt to erase that by insisting that one of them has to be 'the man'

This

I also wondered why the wife wasn't allowed 'an arc'

Comments section seems to have gone.
I don't think there ever was one on the Guardian page! Comments are on the fb page only afaik.

BUT taking hormones to try to deny your biology and then completely embrace it and enjoy it - I cant get my head around it.

I struggle with this too. Reading the article left me with the impression that this was a lesbian woman who hated her body and therefore wanted to live like a man, with "man" being reduced to someone who has a pint the day their baby is born and who wouldn't be seen dead in trousers with flowers on them.
It seemed like he was desperately trying to make a pregnancy fit into his idea of masculinity, when it just doesn't work. The sycophantic and repeated use of the phrase "pregnant man" by the journalist really annoyed me. It's odd how both trans men and trans women end up erasing biological women!

Lesbian couples have been having babies for centuries.

I'm sure there will be trans women who will consider this article transphobic.

It's clearly nonsense. A woman who has a bi lateral mastectomy isn't a man and a woman who has had a radical hysterectomy isn't a man. And certainly a woman who has had both isn't a man.

I somehow came away from that article feeling incredibly sorry for his wife. Unable to be the mother who gave birth and then to have to go through mastectomy for breast cancer. All the while with a “husband” who gets to do all the woman stuff despite being a “man”.

I read the story and thought it's ok to reject gender roles even role names and pronouns to a certain extent don't really matter. Other than that it's a story of a pregnant woman. No other way about it.

The comments on the Facebook page are still there ?

Comments section seems to have gone.

Hopefully she uses the women's changing rooms. Dressing up as a man doesn't make her a man.