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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Sex-change men will soon be able to have babies

52 replies

whoputthecatout · 04/11/2017 18:22

Jesus wept. Is there no end to this insanity?

Post edited by MNHQ

OP posts:
hipsterfun · 05/11/2017 12:51

Hasn’t Robert Winston expressed some concerns about the epigenetic unknowns with respect to IVF, in women? It would seem prudent to have a better understanding before adding uterus transplants into male bodies into the mix.

Thetoothyteeth · 05/11/2017 12:54

@hipsterfun prudent doesn't come into it when the equalities act is in motion. There are biological women who need this procedure, it was developed originally for them. But the only way to prevent trans women having access is to make it unavailable to biological women.

hipsterfun · 05/11/2017 12:58

In female bodies, how does it work with transplants, does anyone know? What about the medication to prevent the body rejecting the transplant, is that safe for embryos/fetuses?

WickedLazy · 05/11/2017 13:00

Jesus wept

Thetoothyteeth · 05/11/2017 13:15

@hipsterfun they have to take immuno suppresant drugs - im not sure if they have a window where they can be reduced during certain times of the pregnancy. It's a big operation, very vascular and lots of microsurgery involved.
The immuno sup drugs are why they are developing tissue engineering of organs

Potato25 · 06/11/2017 02:06

First they tell us what it means and feels like to be us; then they try and claim our safe spaces; and now they want to claim our biological functions too????

FizzyWaterAndElderflower · 06/11/2017 06:55

Without getting all technical on us all, do they have all the requisite tubes and purple wobbly bits to connect a uterus up to? Or is it all going to be a bit gaffer tape and superglue?

How about brains? Presumably there's all sorts of systems in a woman to deal with the co-ordination of a pregnancy (when to make you itchy all over, when to make your feet swell, when to make you crave orange juice etc.) - are these existing but latent in men? Or will they need to be artificially controlled?

CocoaXx · 06/11/2017 07:25

Yes potato and the only explanation I think is that men hate women, or the idea that women are inferior in history has now been extended to the idea that the natural prototype ‘woman’ can be improved upon by the artificial version. Some (all? many?) men love power and scientific careers will be riding on this, pharmaceutical profit margins ditto, and lots of male entitlement over women.

QueenLaBeefah · 06/11/2017 07:36

It's never going to happen. Apart from anything else it is highly unethical to experiment this way on a living, growing baby.

Anatidae · 06/11/2017 07:44

Without getting all technical on us all, do they have all the requisite tubes and purple wobbly bits to connect a uterus up to? Or is it all going to be a bit gaffer tape and superglue?

Yeah, basically. It’s not like adding a spare part to a car. Various wobbly bits would need to be added in, and the womb is only one small part of pregnancy. There’s a fuckton of hormones etc that need to be coordinated. The uterus itself isnt an add on, it’s supported by a complex ligament and connective tissue set. Blood supply, innervation, hormones...

In principle, it can be done. We are not there yet by any means though. Whether it should be done is a different matter (and in my opinion no it should not.) there are places in the world still that are the wild west in terms of medical ethics though. I think it’s depressingly correct to assume that if they can they will.

Interesting point above about organ donation. I would happily donate various other bits and bobs but absolutely no way my uterus to a bloke.

Anyone else feel like they are being erased? I feel like there’s such a massive backlash on feminism. We are gradually getting there with racism, but sexism is still societally OK in a way that racism/religionism is not.

PoodlesHaveBetterHairThanMe · 06/11/2017 07:57

f we accept the argument that research shouldn't be undertaken into allowing trans people to have children because the money should be spent on IVF, then common sense means we also accept that IVF shouldn't be carried out because the money could be spent on helping poor and vulnerable children that are already alive.

I really disagree. I was told, like many women I'm sure, that because I was over weight I would not be "helped" to have a baby. I was denied clomid which is something very simple, very inexpensive despite having PCOS which is a genuine medical condition that also causes, you guessed it, weight gain.

Like women who are "too old" "too fat" or whose partners already have a child, I was not considered a priority on the NHS as despite being a non smoker, nearly teetotal (at the time) I could not have a totally healthy pregnancy.

The males will not be able to have perfectly healthy pregnancies so if they are treated to the same NHS service as women they should not

be allowed this surgery.

Does anyone think it's fascinating they're trying to make this a possibility for women despite the inherent risks to the fetus when we're still telling pregnant women not to eat camembert or bagged lettuce?

There is a plus side to all this I guess, the recommendations will go out the window when blokes can get pregnant,. They'd never put up with it.

PoodlesHaveBetterHairThanMe · 06/11/2017 08:00

Can we discuss brains for a second, I accept I don't have a clue on this. But it seems to me that in order to have a womb you need the wiring to run the womb? Do all people have this capacity? If you transplanted a cat tail on my arse would I be able to wiggle it? If I had cat ears stuck on would they do that 180 thing?

HemlockIsSpartacus · 06/11/2017 08:13

Poodles That's a fair point

Ereshkigal · 06/11/2017 09:26

It's never going to happen. Apart from anything else it is highly unethical to experiment this way on a living, growing baby.

This is what I hope. They would need to pump so many hormones and drugs into a male (at least women already have the right hormones) that it couldn't possibly be healthy for the foetus. And as pp have pointed out, when women are told not to drink coffee, alcohol or eat soft cheese.

Anatidae · 06/11/2017 13:07

If you transplanted a cat tail on my arse would I be able to wiggle it? If I had cat ears stuck on would they do that 180 thing?

Interesting question. The brain has astonishing plasticity and different regions can take over an action sometimes if the original bit that dealt with it was damaged.

However, you’d need a direct plug in to the musculature, the correct musculature AND the connection to nerves to even begin to have a framework the brain could start working on. Theoretically, with the right muscles and nerves and a feedback loop to the brain it’s doable. Total science fiction just now though.

AssignedPerfectAtBirth · 06/11/2017 13:16

It's completely unethical. Frankenstein science and utterly obscene

Sentimentallentil · 06/11/2017 13:59

Well I would argue that we don’t really understand pregnancy and birth well enough to mess around with this.
There’s lots of functions of the female body that we don’t fully understand, breast milk and vaginal bacteria being examples.
Maybe we should try and understand pregnancy and birth in women’s bodies before trying to replicate it in a mans body.

Though can you imagine how quickly there’d be better pelvic floor rehabilitation? And pelvic girdle pain? No man would accept the ‘treatment’ of being told to just keep his hips level and sit on a chair to put his knickers on.

OneFlewOverTheDodosNest · 06/11/2017 14:16

Well I can't imagine how an implanted uterus could properly support the bloody supply across a placenta, never mind the complexity of hormones.

Also, we know that any uterus that is used won't be grown in a lab, it'll be much easier and cheaper to steal them from poor women as an extension of the surrogacy industry in places like India.

OneFlewOverTheDodosNest · 06/11/2017 14:25

*blood supply obviously...

CocoaXx · 06/11/2017 14:52

It has been done on a woman though, which is a different matter as the rest of the biology would ‘fit’, I think

Anatidae · 06/11/2017 15:50

I think the transplants were done from family? I think it was a mother to daughter or aunt to niece? Am I wrong on that? I should know...

hipsterfun · 06/11/2017 16:25

This year, a study in mice raised the concern that paracetamol taken in pregnancy may affect masculinity, and another that it may be linked to ADHD (though not clear if correlation or causation).

Yet, according to Wikipedia, the first successful pregnancy in a uterus transplant recipient required a ‘regimen of triple immuno-suppression was used with tacrolimus, azathioprine, and corticosteroids. Three mild rejection episodes occurred, one during the pregnancy, but were all successfully suppressed with medication.’

Seems a bit of a risk to me.

CocoaXx · 10/11/2017 06:49

hipsterfun yes, that is a very good point, I would imagine that we simply do not know the effects of these drugs on the fetus and child in future (and their children - dibestroel (sp? DES for short) was a synthetic hormone given to women to reduce morning sickness, which caused reproductive cancers in their offspring, and now their children’s offspring). It’s not like there have been no examples of drugs adversely affecting the fetus.

CocoaXx · 10/11/2017 06:51

Thalidomide being another obvious example