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.

The fuckwittery of this article is outstanding.

You are spot on !

Why are these women so special that their children should receive less safeguarding in the womb? It also defies logic to have seen this:

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

So they are trying to say they know more about their bodies than medical and developmental science? People who need their bodies to resemble the other sex to be able to function are saying they should be considered to have a balanced and reasonable opinion about this?

there nothing anyone can do to stop them. And nor should they.

You should not try to stop a woman injuring her child?

This is very different from abortion. Women should have the right to end an unwanted pregnancy.

But continuing to take a non-essential drug that is likely to harm the child you intend to give birth to is an offence against that child.

This is all the end point/apex/apotheosis of western individualism gone rogue.

But even with legal abortion there has to be some limits, some boundaries, no?

That’s a big and complex question, with important issues on both sides.

Taking testosterone during pregnancy is very simple — don’t do it!

Dunno, but if you wanted to be a man would you really want to be pregnant? I mean wouldn't that be really triggering? Every time you saw your pregnant body, wouldn't that just remind you that genetically you're a female? I mean biological men can't produce an egg or gestate it, well not yet anyway, who knows what science will be able to do within the next century.
And whatever happened to the 'plain English' campaign where professionals were told to cut out the crap, weren't HMRC and the law society told they need to make documents etc more layperson friendly?
I mean the word panoptics doesn't seem to be in my OED, I know it's quite an old dictionary, but even google only comes up with tech companies, or some online currency / market place oddity. And how many times do they want to use the word epistemic? Honestly the whole document looks like it's been put through a thesaurus, with some made up words thrown in for good measure in an attempt to be 'cutting edge', what a load of old scrotum sacks.

It is unjust to value doctors' knowledge about medical science over trans parents' knowledge of their own situation.

@belleager you put that beautifully!

As well as prescription drugs it's also a discussion that comes up around e.g. smoking and alcohol. We don't punish women for smoking or drinking during pregnancy, or ban the sale of cigarettes and alcohol to them, though doctors know they're bad for the baby and strongly advise pregnant women not to do it.

Nowadays it seems that a basic sex education needs to spell out the fact that a trans identity doesn't protect you or your pregnancy or your baby from the effects of anabolic steroids. And basic health education means that doctors need to have that discussion with their pregnant trans patients, same as they do with pregnant women who are smoking or drinking or taking any other medication. Whether they or Sally Hines find the conversation empowering or not.

Exactly. It’s mind-boggling.
How is it possible for someone to be so gender dysphoric that their mental health depends on everyone seeing them as a man despite being biologically female, and yet pregnancy, childbirth and even breastfeeding (as long as it’s renamed as „chestfeeding“) are perfectly bearable for them?

Hines also appears to be arguing that the reasons for stopping testosterone (potential impacts on the foetus) are in themselves problematic because you're saying there are things you don't want, like autism and increased risk of obesity, so you're saying autism and obesity are bad, and that's morally wrong. So we should accept autism and do nothing to try and minimise the risk of a child having it, even to the extent of increasing the risk, because if autism isn't a problem, why would increasing the risk be a problem?

Presumably she's also totally fine with alcohol/smoking/thalidomide because who are we to say FAS or being born without arms or legs is a bad thing

How is it possible for someone to be so gender dysphoric that their mental health depends on everyone seeing them as a man despite being biologically female, and yet pregnancy, childbirth and even breastfeeding (as long as it’s renamed as „chestfeeding“) are perfectly bearable for them?

People are inconsistent. It reminds me of a woman years ago who was so afraid of birth interventions that she was determined to have an unassisted birth. In the end she allowed herself to be convinced that having a midwife present was "unassisted". And so long as the birth didn't get recorded in the safety statistics as "unassisted" I have no objections to her believing whatever kept her and the baby safe.

Even the routinely administered and much studied, synthetic hormone oxytocin has an impact on mother and baby during labour and after the birth. Bevause its production in the body is not initiated innthe hypothalamus, it does not interact with other hormones in the way that oxytocin in the body does and can impact the productiion of prolactin and therefore inhibiting breastfeeding and can impact mother child bonding and lead to increased post partum depression... yet.. ... this paper argues for the use of an entirely untested hormone throughout the whole of pregnancy.

The part of the srticle which seems to imply that attempting to impose normality on babies through preventing harm is truly mind bending. The first principle of medicine is . Do no harm.

If there is a belief, as implied by the quotes, that being trans and experiencing dysphoria is a medical condition needing treatment then either it is acceptable and does not need treatment or it needs treatment and the principles of medicine look to prevent conditions ahead of needing to treat them.

While medical professionals do advise women not to smoke or drink alcohol during pregnancy, there is never a situation where they prescribe controlled substances that are contraindicated without carefully examining the risks to mother and baby, explaining these to the mother and using all available evidence to ensure the best possible outcome for both parties.

It is incomprehensible that such an article has been published. The reasons for controls around medication are not to do with coercive control of society, they are to ensure that unwanted side affects are not incurred.

All medications have side efffects, some are so great that these medications are only given in extreme.circumstances. We do not have an automatic right to harm our own bodies or those of our unborn children in any way we wish.

Presumably she's also totally fine with alcohol/smoking/thalidomide because who are we to say FAS or being born without arms or legs is a bad thing

Thalidomide is a much better comparator than the attempt to distract with comparisons to inherited genetic conditions, Downs Syndrome etc. It's as if a woman decides that her need to not feel sick during pregnancy is more important than her baby's right to not be born without limbs.

It's obviously bonkers.

It's the difference between deliberately harming and there being accidental /natural harm / disorder.

I've noticed quite a few academics who use lots of long words (often incorrectly) to the point of it becoming word salad.

It's deliberate and I think stems from an awareness that their actual output is a bit shit, and so the need to make it seem more impressive than it is with long words. Alternatively it's an attempt to obscure the true intent so that it gets through peer review.

In this case trying to dress up in fancy words the idea that experimentation on babies is ok.

The thalidomide scandal was an accident....

Imagine if it had been done deliberately to validate the mother's identities. That's where this paper is headed.

If I remember from reading one of the issues of taking testosterone is the foetus’ failure to thrive. Who would deliberately do this to their child? Who would deliberately deprive a foetus of all that foetus needs to develop in the uterus?

It is so bizarre that these female people would likely be fighting to be fertile in any case, and then they deliberately choose to deprive their baby? It is almost like the pregnancy is just another performance or another ‘special’ event to make them unique. It is still ALL about them.

And no, sorry, if I can spare my child from predicted struggles that make their life harder to navigate, then I fucking will.

How fucked up do you have to be to shame mothers about wanting the best start for their child by effectively shaming them for their ‘normative’ efforts? ‘Normative’ when it comes to wanting good health outcomes for infants and your children?

They can just fuck off.

Hines must not have children nor know any children who are severely affected by autism, pda and communication difficulties. My heart breaks for the parents of the children I teach with autism in a setting for MLD and SLD. it's phenomenally challenging for the whole family. Some of these children are also extremely depressed and dysregulated.

Slippery slope arguments are problematic.

We already police the bodily autonomy of pregnant women in various ways.

We don’t decide whether they can or cannot become pregnant, but society does make decisions to, for example, remove children at birth from mothers who have demonstrated an inability to meet their (unborn) babies’ needs due to drug or alcohol addiction.

It doesn’t matter if TRAs or individual trans men feel cross-sex hormones is important or not a problem. The fact is that they are behaving in ways that suggest they are willing to damage their child’s health and development to meet their own psychological needs. This isn’t life of death stuff (despite the regular suicide related threats thrown around by TRAs); they won’t die if they don’t take cross-sex hormones in pregnancy. Not doing so won’t harm their health at all (but doing so may risk the health of both mother and child).

This is not just a matter of belief.

Taking cross sex hormones cannot be an intrinsic part of personhood. that’s a ridiculous position to take.

Your innate self cannot be contingent on a contemporary medical intervention. Except in the bonkers depths of transhuman belief systems.

You are who you are whether you take hormones or not.

garfieldeatscake · Today 08:57

I mean the word panoptics doesn't seem to be in my OED...

A panopticon is a prison, where all cells may be seen from a central hub. Are they saying that advising pregnant women not to take testosterone is like keeping them under surveillance, in a prison?

FFS!

Surely recognition by social peers of one’s gender goes out the window when you have a big pregnancy belly. Do they seem to think that people don’t know that it’s only women who carry babies no matter what identity people may try to portray. I too googled the researchers which include a TW and the NB (fat studies person). Not sure any have children. As soon as I found out I was pregnant I had an overwhelming desire to do what ever was needed to protect my babies. I realise not everyone feels the same but to me it was something I couldn’t control.

The response on twitter from some people with DSDs has been as you would expect. Horror that their bodies have again been politicised and their difficulties and health issues dismissed by people supporting trans people’s demands.

I can't get over that peer reviewers thought it was ethical to publish this.

It's basically fancy language to promote child abuse.

A friend of mine has several conditions that require lifelong medication. When she wanted to get pregnant she and her doctors spent enormous amounts of time and effort minimising doses, swapping therapies and discussing the relative risks and benefits of staying off various meds so she could breastfeed or going straight to formula so she could get back on one of the important ones immediately after giving birth. Women are routinely told not to take antihistamines, painkillers or antibiotics for the duration.

This. Plus also the women who make the difficult decisions to not have children or to only have one, because of considerations such as this.

@elodiedie .. we already police who can become pregnant in certain situations, especially where pharmaceuticals are concerned. This is the only example that I know of .. it's an acne treatment that must be combined with contraceptives due to the severity of the birth defects associated with the treatment.

Testosterone is not something that can or should be taken without full knowledge of the impacts to mother and baby.

The reasons for evidence based medicine, ethical committees and peer review are wrll established in healthcare, medicine and pharmaceutical research. There are many examples where these principles have been compromised, sometimes by well meant intentions, sometimes where egos, profits and other motives have been involved, sometimes where the thinking has changed.

In obstetrics, we used to break women's pelvises rather than give them cesearean sections putting the ability to have future children, above the consideration of risk to the health of the mother. Women were not always in a position to make a fully informed choice.

The area of medical ethics is incredibly complex and needs to consider many aspects. We need to allow different opinions and perspectives to be heard and considered in context of society as a whole. We don't alwyas get this right and we have to open to the possibility that opinions and norms evolve and change.

How fucked up do you have to be to shame mothers about wanting the best start for their child by effectively shaming them for their ‘normative’ efforts? ‘Normative’ when it comes to wanting good health outcomes for infants and your children?

This is it. The solipsistic core of the genderist project, exposed in plain sight. Sick beyond belief.