Employment law and pregnant men

Cumbersome but interesting situation for Keyboard

Shame the key question about how a desire to be pregnant can be reconciled with a desire to be male was dismissed. (Unless I missed it). There might be key issues there.

Find it odd that much of keyboard personal experience was presented as for others to learn (ask if you want to learn). Hope there was something positive for Keyboard on the Thread as well. I find dialogue as a two way enrichment experience, but one has to be opened to it.

Being a parent is not a right. Having a healthy body is not a right. Being pregnant is not a right. Having said that, I wish the NHS could satisfy people with those desires if money was no objection. Some people have to pay for cancer treatment. Mums, Dads, all people with small kids or kids about to settle for their own families, just to have a few more years. It's quite probable that taking cross sex hormones reduce life quality and life expectancy, that's why some parents are asking caution. So difficult to decide were money goes and for what.

Hmmm - while I do agree broadly with what Gorgon is saying, this is not at all the position Jellyfish is in and they are not demanding costly fertility treatment after having rendered themselves infertile by hormone treatment or surgery.

Jellyfish's partner has insufficient sperm after hormone treatment & will need a donor, but Jellyfish's OWN fertility is unrelated to being trans/hormone treatment (they have had none) and is due to PCOS and something as yet unidentified. This could happen to anyone and is no reason for denying fertility treatment. Surely acquiring donor sperm is relatively straightforward and can be done relatively cheaply privately compared to IVF etc.

Thank you for taking the time to share your experiences and answer people's questions keyboard. It must be very difficult for you. I wish you all the best in your fertility journey.

Loveyouradvice

I second your point about the rights of a baby. This seems to be totally forgotten about.

Society has a responsibility to the human rights of children & babies.

So for example while for some self-Id laws and policies are 'just paperwork', for a woman they would potentially remove the right to identify, organise and have any legal protection of sex based rights. So the argument that it doesn't affect all women if they aren't trans is not correct. I do understand how it could be missed though if not thought through properly.

The best thing to do re laws and regulations like this is to ask the people going through it.

The best thing to do re laws and regulations is to consider the impact on the whole of society and ensure they are workable and consider and balance the rights of all involved.

I agree with Gorgon actually.

I'm baffled as to why anyone would do something knowing it would damage or completely destroy their fertility (which must be one of the main goals of transitioning?), and then later demand some kind of magical reversal (which presumably just isn't always possible, even with all the money in the world?)

It's a bit different from a negligent case of "quick, swallow these pills to survive this emergency, and ah, sorry about that unexpected side effect", isn't it?

Either someone is mentally healthy and intelligent enough to transition (in which case they're responsible for making a choice about their fertility and taking ownership of it) or they're not.

I know all too well the fucking agony and tedium of infertility, it's ruined a large part of my adult life and made my future feel very bleak and miserable, so on one level I can completely sympathise.

But if I'd been doing something to actively cause it for a number of years which I knew would have that affect, I wouldn't be now blaming the NHS for not making magical provisos for me, I'd accept that I'd fucked up and I'd be looking into private healthcare or other options.

Maybe it comes down to what people are told before they start changing their body, but then why are we letting them transition without proper procedures and thorough counselling first?

Erm..... just finding it very strange that the rights of the child are not being considered at all... nor even what is best for the child....just what is best for the parents. This makes me very worried for the child's future - the art of parenting is often putting their needs before your own, however painful.

My understanding of breastfeeding is that your baby will benefit most from your milk, unaduulterated by hormones.... While understanding that your partner, as a transwoman, might want to breast feed I do think we are right in the UK for not making it possible.... those hormones in the milk a newborn is drinking are I imagine toxic and certainly untested....

I completely understand the need to be pregnant and carry a child, but I cant understand a man desperate to become pregnant.

Im also horrified on one hand you want the NHS to provide hormones that cause infertility and then fertility treatement.

The NHS simply cant fund it. Weve already seen debates about whether IVF should be offered at all, and in some areas the provision is appaling.

But you want to appeal and complain and cost them bloody more money so you can be a pregnant man and you believe its the fault of the NHS the childs Mummy cant produce sperm.

Sorry, Ive lost my point. My head hurts.

I wanted to be a man at one point in early teens so that I wouldn’t have to get pregnant/give birth.

I can’t pretend to understand keyboard

“Problem = infertility
Cause of problem = taking hormones that cause infertility
Therefore problem = self-inflicted. By taking hormones that directly cause the problem”

So the answer to that was that dysphoria is real and requires treatment?

What about a trans person who didn’t have dysphoria but just took the drugs as part of some attempt at /exploration/self-expression/experimentation.

Is there no circumstance under which taking drugs that sterilise you when you are not ill is self sterilisation?

Voice I agree with you completely. It has appalling consequences and I dread to think what kind of situations we might be facing in 15 or 20 years time when all of these people who rendered themselves infertile at such a young age suddenly realise they want to have children.

It will be terrible for them as individuals, and even more terrible for us as a society in general if they all start demanding fertility treatment as well.

It would be hideously unjust if women whose partners have previously had a child with another woman are denied fertility treatment, but those who have made themselves infertile deliberately are given it.

This is one of the issues that really worries me when people are transitioning so young. If trans people are taking hormones that make them infertile then this is something that needs to be fully explored and understood at the time. It's such a huge decision to take at a relatively young age.

@keyboardjellyfish Thankyou for coming back. Your situation sounds complex. And I sympathise with the "I hate my body" feeling.

I hate my body. To the point that I have tried to deliberately damage it. You talk about your partner's dysphoria and from your posts it seems you struggle to accept who you are physically. No-one should feel that level of dissonance about the body they occupy. Many of us do, but it doesn't manifest as wanting to identify as the opposite sex. I think transgenderism, it's source and resulting identity disorderedness needs much more detailed thinking. I 'get' not being happy with your physical self. I really do. But so much of how we perceive of our physical manifestation is dependent on healthy early development I do struggle with the idea that you want to be male but still crave the biological need to bear a child. I couldn't give birth vaginally. I felt defective. I felt my body had let me down and that I had somehow failed in the job of being female. So yes I get your point but surely you can't e levy to have it all ways?

Exactly Gorgon! It's the misappropriation of hard won rights that is so depressing.

It's so upsetting. One of my close relatives was a leading employment lawyer from the 1960s until a couple of years ago when they retired.

Back in the 60s, it was more or less fine to discriminate openly against women, elderly people, people with disabilities, gay people, BAME groups, religious minorities, etc.

The laws about discrimination and unfair dismissal were absolutely needed and essential to tackle this.

And now people are exploiting those laws to try to get special treatment for entirely self-inflicted conditions, like taking drugs that they knew would cause sterility, or being extremely overweight/obese (www.personneltoday.com/hr/obesity-discrimination-first-uk-tribunal-finds-obese-worker-eligible-for-disability-protection/)

It's such a travesty and exploitation, predominantly by wealthy white people, of laws that were originally put in place to defend the rights of people in minority groups. Awful.

This makes my head hurt....

Taking drugs to suppress male hormones and rendering oneself infertile is surely the very definition of sterilising oneself on purpose? And therefore the ridiculously small coffers of the NHS can't cover the treatment?

And please consider very carefully the implications of insisting on being regarded as the father in every single aspect of your putative DC's life. I'm an adoptive mother, and not having a full medical history is starting to throw up some real issues for my DD. Put simply, if you have a DD, your partner's family history of the incidence of breast cancer is immaterial. Ditto for early puberty and incidence of miscarriage (though I understand that a disposition for endometriosis is something that can be passed through either parent)

I really do wish you and your partner well, keyboard, I understand only too well the primaeval longing for a baby and having bits that won't cooperate. And I don't claim to understand gender dysphoria. But I do know about parenting a child in difficult circumstances, and I hope that you get adequate counselling of the risks and issues you will need to manage if you are successful in having a baby

Its not discrimination. It is, for once, common sense.

I believe that if you are disabled and receive medical treatment which impairs your fertility then the NHS doesn’t class you as self sterilised.

I thought otherwise but am no expert. If this is the case, then it certainly seems like indirect discrimination.

I understand what others are saying about scarce resources, but scarce resources don't mean the NHS gets to discriminate between patients because of particular comorbidities.

Were they advised of this possibility prior to treatment?

Is this what they're telling you negates the indirect discrimination, Keyboard? Because it seems the logical explanation. Since the NHS doesn't generally perform reversals for sterilisations in any cases - even when they are performed for pressing health reasons - it may well be hard to show discrimination.

I have sympathy here, as I would for any couple whose other medical issues had involved sterilisation for reasons other than not wanting children.

I believe that if you are disabled and receive medical treatment which impairs your fertility then the NHS doesn’t class you as self sterilised.

Gender dysphoria isn’t a choice

What IronMan said. Equality of opportunity means that all people who are infertile through no fault of their own are given the chance of fertility treatment on the NHS.

Yes, and it also means that anyone who deliberately removes their own opportunity is excluded from help to gain it back. Everyone is treated the same, as it should be in this instance.

Gorgon

Equality doesn’t mean treating everyone the same. It’s about taking into account their particular circumstances and giving them the same chances. Equality of opportunity

Omg Gorgon did you actually just say that? Where have you been for the last 40 years of human civilisation?

Same place we've all been, and she's entirely right.