High Court rules that a trans man......

OK, let’s try again. Being pregnant, or having been pregnant, or intending to become pregnant (still verbs, but stative rather than active) is something that is only possible for someone (i.e a woman) with female reproductive organs.

And for the avoidance of doubt (if the dog leg analogy upthread didn’t work for you), in the same way that all lions are cats, but not all cats are lions, everyone who is/has been/can become pregnant is female, but not all female people (i.e. women) are/have been/can become pregnant.

When I first started trying to get my head around gender identity and what it all meant, I remember being baffled at how the meaning of words seemed to be constantly on the move.

"Sex and gender are not the same thing"

"Some people don't identify with the sex that they were assigned at birth"

Surely it's the gender that they were assigned at birth, if sex and gender aren't the same thing. And so on.

After multiple hours listening to Jammiedodger and others (so that I could get my head around the world that my then 13 year old daughter had stumbled into), and with the help of some incredible and patient MN users (my learning journey is all here online 😁), I came to realise that what I was listening to felt like a sermon. That's what springs to mind too when I read an opener like words have meaning, with everything else that then follows it.

But the difference between a religious sermon and what I heard on Jammiedodger (and, amongst other places, in the transparents' group I was in for nearly two years) is that it goes from the innocuous and uplifting to radicalism incredibly quickly.

Here's my agender sermon in return:

Firstly, let's tackle that word "agender". Under normal circumstances it would be simple to understand. It would be obvious that by saying I don't have a gender, I don't believe that anyone else has one either. But no, under gender identity belief, it means I'm queer because I sit between or to the side of gender. Go me.

That's the world that a 21 year old female has grown up in, as mentioned by PPs above.

My daughter is now 16 and still hates her breasts, hates periods and so on. It turns out that the reason she wanted testosterone was not only to have a lower voice (a voice of perceived power), but for a stronger body so she can "beat the bullies". Some of her issues are also sensory and about rejecting a change to her body that she didn't ask for: she's experiencing autism-related puberty distress. Three and a half years ago, she stumbled across some words that made sense to her. Perhaps she wasn't really a girl at all, because none of those "girl" words felt right.

I'm hopeful that she's going to navigate through this difficult stage of her life with a healthy body and a mindset that embraces the reality of being a female with the attitude that there is no right way to "perform" this "role". See above for examples of the performative femininity and masculinity that either sex could do... not to be confused of course with the action "to give birth", which can only be done by a female, irrespective of whether she bites off the umbilical cord and roars or spends her pre-labour stage baking cakes.

Any 21-year-old female has grown up in a world where the meaning of words like woman and man have taken on a quantum-like quality. In this (apparently) enlightened world, they represent infinite possibilities until you grab onto one and it fits with your own feelings about yourself. This is (apparently) empowering. In this world, you can be a man who was assigned female at birth yet goes on to get pregnant and have a baby. In this world you're not constrained by "biological essentialism" because you've already recognised that you're not a woman who society tells you is expected to have babies. You don't need to push against that sexist expectation because it doesn't apply to you. You're a man because you feel like one and everyone tells you that this makes it so.

But alongside this empowering freedom comes the inconvenience of reality. Words still have meaning there too. For example, if you're a female who takes the level of testosterone needed to change your body to resemble that of a man there are some important words with fixed and known meanings: womb atrophy (expected within 5 years), incontinence (impacting 95% of users), increased risk of cardiac arrest (4 times that of other females), early menopause (ironically, what your body wants here is oestrogen and progesterone) and more.

My sermon could continue and if you've got this far, thank you for "listening". I'll end by saying that if you're a 21 year old female who gives birth, the law will record you as a mother. Every child has (or had) a mother, without whom they wouldn't be here. If you've become radicalised to believe you're not a woman, you and your child may miss the chance to explore what that feels like because, unless you tell them the truth, until your child is old enough to figure it out (which is inevitable), they may never know that their mother was there beside them all along. At this point you've shifted from being a victim of harm to a perpetrator of it.

So bully everyone into saying shit they don't really believe and then point to their 'use of words' as evidence that that's now what those words really mean.

Oh Bravo. This is the best codswallop you've come up with so far
Really, very well done!

I might have done some spot welding in the past. Bloody sills! I have definitely rebuilt a 2.4 litre Perkins Diesel engine and shoved it back into my Land rover. The only reason that I didn't wear pink is because I have ginger hair.

Where does this leave me? Apart from the obvious answer that only women know that pink and orange clash horribly?

The judgement has nothing to do with the right to reproduce (which is not an intrinsic right anyway).

No. That's why I asked, after reading every post.

Agreed. Above all else, what horrifies me is the impact on young and vulnerable people. There was a time when it felt justifiable to pretend the emperor has new clothes. We are long past that now.

MOAR babies!

Yep, definitely male.

Sadly my experience of many male colleagues is that they'd take the credit and leave a woman to do the work.

So actually, probably turns out it is pretty easy for men to give birth in a masculine way after all!

This exchange is making me laugh out loud, you are a funny lot😂

From having worked alongside men doing practical tasks, I suggest that in order to give birth in a masculine way, you'd have to whistle tunelessly through your teeth throughout the entire process😬

Oh, wait, here we go. I should have known there was a gif.

giving birth in a masculine way

Doing it standing up?

What about that poor kid's life?

Yes. That should do it.

I am actually now feeling a pang of guilt about my tongue in cheek embracing of gender identity belief.

Now that I'm a firm non-believer in the idea that we all have a gender identity, a gendered soul, I have to remind myself that some people really do believe that a man can have uterus and give birth - and that the way we know he's a man is because a) he's told us he is a man and b) he's demonstrating he's a man with his masculine actions.

As a non-believer, to me it's now utterly bonkers, but I do have to remind myself that it really is no more bonkers than believing that a child can be conceived without sperm and born to a woman who is still a virgin. I used to be a Christian and believed this too. Belief is incredibly powerful and defies logic.

However, I then think about the impact of gender identity belief on our language and on vulnerable people like the trans-identifying female that this thread is about. I definitely feel less guilty at that point.

It's so important that the impact of gender identity belief is shown up for what it is: a coerced belief in the idea that we all have a gendered soul that is separate from our body, enforced by the state as if it's fact with GRCs that allow official paperwork to be altered to match the person's belief and an NHS that is prepared to remove people's body parts and damage their endochrine systems forever so that their bodies more closely match their belief.

Biting the cord with your teeth, smearing the blood in your beard and roaring I reckon.

And then he'll paint a wavy line, break a drill bit or fold over a nail head, and then hand everything back and bugger off to the pub. Oh, and I forgot the bit where he demands a bacon sandwich before he even gets started. Or maybe that's just my lived experience.

How do you know he's a man though?
Do you police his genitals?

Surely if you are building something badly in a truly feminine way, you get a man to do it for you?

That might give mixed signals as it's equally possible to build things badly in a feminine way, perhaps with a shriek for example.

I reckon the best way to do it is to bring a toolkit and power drill along, then put some shelves up between contractions.

@ChillBarrog asked and answered in this very thread already. Scroll up.

What has this got to do with the right to reproduce?

I find myself transfixed by the thought of giving birth in a masculine way, and what that might entail.

Reassembling all the bits after and finding you have one left over, maybe?