Freddy McConnell, the female who was shocked to find out that having breasts removed would have an impact on the ability to breastfeed a baby later in life? Thus demonstrating a significant lack of informed consent in the proceedings?
Similarly from this article:
In 2013, I attended my third or fourth gender identity clinic appointment in London, the gap between appointments being roughly six months and the initial wait over a year. The consultant was giving me a risk/benefit analysis of starting testosterone (T) injections. The question of fertility came up. Had I looked into fertility preservation in the form of egg freezing? Shit, I thought, was I meant to?
“No…?” I offered.
Again, as a fully grown adult, McConnell was demonstrating a lack of full thought about major life events that are impacted by medical treatments.
My actual feelings about parenthood at the time, which I didn’t trouble him with, were ambivalent. I used to think I’d definitely have kids. Maybe I still would. Adoption, fostering and surrogacy all seemed like valid, albeit purely theoretical, options.
Echos of the leaked discussions from the WPATH Files, where clinicians discuss how naive children are about fertility options.
Coincidentally, in 2016 I learned that testosterone probably hadn’t made me infertile after all. I discovered this by chance from a YouTube vlog. In the almost eight years since, I’ve carried and given birth to my two children via artificial insemination and donor sperm. I’ve also, perhaps unsurprisingly, become interested in the research around trans people’s fertility and our reproductive choices. Needless to say, there’s very little research of this kind, including zero empirical evidence that testosterone affects trans male fertility.
My bold. Yes Freddy, there’s very little research. Slow hand clap for you. So how can children consent, Freddy? How can anyone? “Hey kids, we don’t know what the impact will be on your fertility, but we are going to go ahead anyway and you can jump on YouTube and work it out later, ok?”
Freddy doesn’t understand the definition of the word “infertility”. It is not the inability to conceive at all, it’s the inability to conceive without the need for assisted technology after 12 months of unprotected sex. We don’t know if Freddy met the latter part of this definition, but Freddy required technology to conceive.
Freddy thinks that because Freddy was able to conceive, there are no issues with testosterone causing infertility. And there’s no doubt that women on testosterone can spontaneously get pregnant. But it is not known what the full impact is and it is known that females who have been on testosterone have had to turn to IVF in order to conceive. And it is not known what the impact of puberty blockers is but if a girl is blocked before her uterus and vagina has had a chance to mature, she will most definitely be infertile.
The entire article is Freddy outlining how so little is known about this area. The article is not the “win” Freddy thinks it is, but coming from someone who didn’t realise having breasts removed would impact their primary function, it doesn’t surprise me.