Pregnant trans men Guardian article

[Todayissunny]

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/mar/22/story-one-mans-pregnancy-trans-jason-barker

I just find this so confusing....
It tells me that we should just be able to live how we want to. We should absolutely not be defined by gender.

Or am I just really, really old fashioned that this is just absolutely crazy.

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

Max's story is heartbreaking

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.

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...

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.

It's all a bit Emperors New Clothes.

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.

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.

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.

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

It's astonishing to me that any surgeon would consider doing a mastectomy on a physically healthy 17-year-old struggling with 'emotional issues' (her words).I appreciate we don't have the full story and what else was tried to help her, etc, but I'm having difficulty imagining how that could ever be ethically justified?

I think it's called 'having your cake and eating it'. I sometimes feel that, as a 'natural' woman. I'm at the bottom of an increasing pile. Not only am I below men, in terms of consideration, I'm now below trans women, trans men, gender neutrals etc. My needs are becoming increasingly unimportant to the world.

I'm old enough to remember being turned down for jobs just because I was female e.g. because 'the men won't like it'. Feminism, for me, is a real and meaningful thing. I find the increasing lack of focus on the remaining (and increasing) unfairness towards women, quite dismaying. It seems to be everyone's turn apart but mine.

Max's story makes me want to weep. It is so sad and so wrong that a person who was unhappy and dysphoric was allowed to make such harmful decisions. Max will bear the consequences of these actions for the rest of her life, and the doctors and surgeons will never face any repercussions of the harm they have done.

And again, like that eejit in the Indie this morning, a narrative that fits with their story but isn't true: "Tracey went to New Look and bought a load of maternity trousers, but even the combats were embroidered with flowers. She had to get a needle and unpick them."

I managed to find pregnancy jeans, combats and work trousers without flowers embroidered on them. Thousands upon thousands of women do. Why do they always have to embroider their narrative to demonstrate just how terribly hard it is. It's just embarrassing.

Exactly CapnHaddock, statements like that are simply ridiculous. I have never owned a pair of flowery trousers in my life, no, not even when I was pregnant. I must have been womaning wrong again.

@busyboysmum do you have a link to where that piece by Max Robinson was originally posted? I am writing to politicians at the moment and might use it

I'm not sure as a friend posted it but there are a couple of articles below which are about the same person

4thwavenow.com/2016/04/27/shrinking-to-survive-a-former-trans-man-reports-on-life-inside-queer-youth-culture/

www.1843magazine.com/features/when-girls-wont-be-girls

the common conception of pregnancy as inherently female

Pregancy in humans is inherently female, as is producing eggs.

Some people attach a whole load of other sexist gender bollocks to the word 'female', but basically it means the sex that produces eggs.

Thanks @busyboysmum

It shows you cannot reduce people to easy categories

XX chromosomes = female

Only females can be pregnant.

There, that wasn't difficult.

As someone who has met Jason, he's a bloke. I'm an old dyke, I'm really good at spotting the whole sex thing and I can assure you, he's totally a bloke. From his balding head to his attachment to his caravan, he's a bloke.

You can make all of the assumptions you like about him and his family, (the idea of 'passive Tracey' did make me chuckle) but you really wouldn't want to share a changing room with him.

I can also assure you, he makes excellent films, sort of quite and touching and not in the least heavy handed. Well worth seeing.

Why wouldn't I want to share a changing room with Jason? Jason has a vagina and a uterus.

And actually looks quite a lot of old dykes I know

My contempt for the corporate media grows exponentially with every article I read about a female man being pregnant.
"Has anyone noticed that trans identified males "transwomen" make the news for sports, business, and politics while trans identified females "transmen" make the news for having babies?"-anon

From his balding head to his attachment to his caravan, he's a bloke.

How do you know that somebody is male because they like caravans and suffer from hair loss?

Pretty much every comment on the Guardian’s tweet linking to the article is along the lines that this is a woman who gave birth. Perhaps predictably, there are no TRAs at all jumping in saying “transmen are men” and the usual rounds of abuse. Funny that.