Yet more insanity from Academia

[Imnobody4]

Sally Hines has a hand in this. Why should pregnant transmen have to stop testosterone?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667321523000811

Medical uncertainty and reproduction of the “normal”: Decision-making around testosterone therapy in transgender1 pregnancy

Some extracts:

But what happens when medical science doesn’t yet have all the answers about how patient behaviors may relate to health outcomes for both the pregnant person and the fetus—particularly when they may create potentially-divergent health outcomes for the pregnant person and fetus? How do patients and providers understand and weigh relative health risks and benefits as they formulate, dispense, or work to interpret and follow medical advice at this complicated intersection? How might assessment of health risks, and concomitant medical advice for behavioral change, reflect historical and ongoing social practices for creating “ideal” and normative bodies and people?

We find that the medical science around the potential effects of gestational parent testosterone therapy on fetal development in-utero or infant secondary exposure during the postpartum period (e.g., via chestfeeding/breastfeeding) remains nascent at best (Oberhelman-Eaton et al., 2021). Previous research repeatedly demonstrates how ambiguity and uncertainty is associated with authority-(re)establishing practices that may either intentionally or inadvertently involve stigma, discrimination, and poor care (Doan & Grace, 2022; Freeman, 2015; Poteat et al., 2013; shuster, 2019, 2021) and gendered precautionary practices that work toward avoiding potential risk through protecting embryos, fetuses, children, and families above all else (MacKendrick, 2018; Waggoner, 2017).

These precautionary and expertise/authority-(re)establishing approaches had the result of shoring up social constructions around binary conceptualizations of sex and sex hormones and was driven, in their explanations, by a focus on attempting to (re)produce normative bodies and people.

The logics guiding current medical advice around precautionary testosterone cessation in pregnancy involve potentially troubling assessments of the sorts of risks testosterone exposure in the prenatal and postpartum environments may pose for later child and adult development: namely, potentially heightened likelihoods of autism, obesity, intersex conditions, being lesbian and/or trans. In this way, precautionary practices of protecting the offspring of trans people become, paradoxically, a method of social control through safeguarding against reproduction of some of the very same characteristics held by some trans parents themselves. It also raises the specter of panoptics of the womb and epistemic injustice as it simultaneously reflects elevation of the epistemic authority of medical professionals and erosion of the epistemic privilege of trans gestational parents (Freeman, 2015).

This work aims to make room for further consideration of testosterone therapy during pregnancy for trans people, with a call to more fully consider their mental and physical health alongside predominant precautionary approaches for safeguarding the normativity of their offspring. Doing so attends not only to the social control functions of working to prevent non-normative bodies and people, and the artificial binarization of sex and gender in medicine and society, but also that between mental and physical health as it insists upon increased attention to the mental health concerns and well-being experienced by trans people before, during, and after pregnancy.

I had to go off and research a reference from "Brave New World" in which there were people called "freemartins", female but with male characteristics. I had forgotten the word, but knew it came from cattle. It is applied to cows which develop as a twin with a male, and are infertile, and built like an ox, useful as draught animals. It is the exposure to testosterone in the womb that does it, but they don't develop male aggression.
More's the pity, as the poor girls will need to assert themselves against their "mother" and her chums and medicos.

This is a discussion that comes up over many different medications. How do we balance the health of the mother with the health of the baby? So I’m not too outraged at the premise.

The reality is that if a woman wants to engage in behaviour that is potentially damaging to the health of the foetus, including taking testosterone, there nothing anyone can do to stop them. And nor should they.

So apparently 'academics' can publish a pack of ill informed outright lies with no evidential basis these days? De-fund these subjects.

This is some chilling Mengele like shit. Let's experiment on babies so as to prop up academic theorising and gender identity ideology?

This bit is utter lies - I don't believe there is any evidence suggesting testosterone in pregnancy or breastfeeding is linked with these conditions. It's outright made up. I bet that there are far more concerns about conditions like cancer, heart attacks, and early death with exposure to such a potent, unregulated drug, before you get to any issues such as this.

The logics guiding current medical advice around precautionary testosterone cessation in pregnancy involve potentially troubling assessments of the sorts of risks testosterone exposure in the prenatal and postpartum environments may pose for later child and adult development: namely, potentially heightened likelihoods of autism, obesity, intersex conditions, being lesbian and/or trans. In this way, precautionary practices of protecting the offspring of trans people become, paradoxically, a method of social control through safeguarding against reproduction of some of the very same characteristics held by some trans parents themselves.

I DO NOT BELIEVE that any doctor suggesting testosterone cessation is concerned about 'potentially heightened likelihoods of obesity, autism, being lesbian or trans' or is interested in social control. They are interested in the health of the baby, that's it, whether there's a potential to irreversibly harm the child.

I also was told to stop breastfeeding when I had to take an antibiotic that is actually licensed for use in newborns (you know with safety data and everything). I was told to pump and dump for the course, and then had to relactate later. It was painful and very, very difficult but I did it.

Anyone who's willing to expose a baby to an unregulated, powerful hormone in this way should have their parenting skills under question and social serviced involved. Medics in this country are urging caution about giving puberty blockers and cross sex hormones to teenagers, so exposing a tiny baby to these drugs without any evidence about the consequences is just so wrong.

Agree with PP - parenthood isn't a right. If it causes so much harm to your mental health and identity to have to stop testosterone for long enough to gestate / breastfeed then don't have a child. It's a choice.

If you can't put the child first, then you're probably not going to make a great parent.

Imagine if people were writing papers not just justifying but celebrating drinking during pregnancy. Or taking cocaine. And claiming that medical advice against this was some sort of dreadful repression by conservatives seeking to take us all back to the 1950s.

Because that’s what this is akin to, except it’s taking cross-sex hormones so it must be not just OK but incredible and good. 🙄

Meanwhile, in the real world, women make all sorts of lifestyle changes during their pregnancy. You get women panicking because they are a bit of brie or used some household cleaning product on MN all the time.

That she is teaching others is the scary part.

We should not assume that trans identified women are more likely to ignore medical advice than other groups. The majority of women do follow medical advice around safety when pregnant.

It is most certainly ‘normative’ to prevent the birth of disabled children. It’s not crackpot to say this. It becomes a very difficult line to draw if you say that any mother with a condition that may affect the health of her baby should be prevented from getting pregnant.

The starting point of these writers is that testosterone treatment is essential for certain women. We can dispute that, but if you believe it to be the case then the logic follows.

One of the authors of that report also wrote this:

Fat and trans: Towards a new theorization of gender in Fat Studies.

Who knew there was such a thing?

Is fat now a gender?

Not sure, but I reckon it must be a new 'Identity'. Embrace and celebrate the fatness.

It’s not a new identity. People in fatness studies/fat activist academics have been banging the fat identity drum for more than 20 years now.

The whole identity culture, whereby every aspect of the self is turned into some sort of fixed identity really does suggest a fragmentation and lack of integration - which is a form of dissociation usually associated with trauma.

The scary thing is it's not just gibberish, it's very strategic gibberish, a way to establish a career.

It's easier to build an academic reputation being controversial than being boringly accurate. But (being a historian myself) I thought science subjects had some safeguards against this. Ha.

To be clear, people like this woman are outliers, but they do a great job spoiling everyone's reputation.

Didn’t you know? Everything is transphobic including medics thinking you should maybe stop powerful hormones when pregnant because they can adversely affect unborn babies. And female sexed people should be given said powerful drugs because of their gender dysphoria while doing <checks notes> perhaps the most inherently female thing there is.

Whereas of course if you’re a bog standard regular pregnant woman, expect a lecture if you try and buy any OTC prescription for a medical need even when proven to be safe in pregnancy.

Are you claiming that all advice given to pregnant women is based on ‘normative’ assumptions of wanting a healthy baby?

Well, yes. This is something that disability rights advocates have been talking about for years. The perceived pressure to abort disabled foetuses. The criticism of parents who decide to have a baby when there is a high likelihood of passing on a genetic condition. There was thread here recently where a deaf pregnant woman was rounded on for hoping to have a deaf child.

A bit off topic but a nontheless interesting look at the world of academic identity politics.

https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-fat-studies-63108

But if they think they're men, why do they want to be pregnant?

That is because it is quite perverse, no? The child and its physical integrity in the world are secondary to the desires and even trauma responses of the adult.

I don't think it will be up to them to decide whether to keep taking testosterone though, unless they've stockpiled it ahead of time.

Doctors can refuse to prescribe medication - prescribing in pregnancy is a tough area with such varying evidence that we err on the side of caution with most things.

Surely the answer is not to carry a pregnancy if you can't do it without taking testosterone. A child is not a right.

Which is not infrequently of one of the motivations fo anti abortion activists - based on the fact that their mother had considered aborting them in early pregnancy. An existential threat.

People wanting to feel validated is at the root of most of this - and everything else is secondary. The whole world must conform to one's needs for validation - even if one's own condition is rooted in disordered thinking, ill health or other traumas.

I’m just making the point that it’s a slippery slope with potentially wide ranging implications once you start policing the bodily autonomy of pregnant women. When you start trying to decide who can and can’t become pregnant.

I know on FWR we see taking testosterone as vanity/misguided/individualistic but that’s not how these authors see it. They see it as an essential or an intrinsic part of the person.

That is, of course, based on the assumption that a woman must, or does, have bodily autonomy, even when pregnant - which is based on purely individualistic concepts of the person, with the relegation of the foetus/child to the status of irrelevant.