It’s a simple shift
Britni de la Cretaz’s ludicrous piece in The Atlantic made me curious about her, so I found another article by her on Trevor MacDonald, this one for Rewire last May. It is, if anything, even worse.
In his new parenting memoir, Trevor MacDonald talks about pregnancy and breastfeeding as a trans man—and why we must dislodge the idea that bearing children is only women’s labor.
No, we mustn’t. That’s not something we need to dislodge. For one thing, it’s not true, and for another thing, women are not The Powerful Caste that we need to dislodge. If Trevor MacDonald wants to live as a man, fine, go ahead. If he wants us all to pretend that men bear children, he can fuck right off.
That was the subhead. Here’s the opening paragraph:
Pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding are acts often associated with womanhood. We talk about pregnant women and nursing mothers, but this language—which depends on the male-female gender binary—seems inadequate as trans and nonbinary folks are increasingly visible in the parenting sphere.
Nonsense. Pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding are not “acts often associated with womanhood” – that’s a fatuous way to put it. Skirts, giggles, gossip are among the items “often associated with womanhood” because they’re social; pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding are not in that category. No, “this language” does not seem at all inadequate. (Also, what is this insistence on trans “folks” – what is the allergy to the word “people” when trans issues are on the table? Except of course when the subject is abortion rights, which pregnant “people” need.)
By sharing his experiences and documenting the many challenges he faced as a man who planned to give birth and nurse his baby, MacDonald asks readers to reconsider everything they think they know about what it means to be a gestational parent. By the end of the book, readers come away understanding that despite a person’s gender, pregnancy and nursing are universal experiences and valid regardless of how they happen. MacDonald’s voice is an important and necessary one in the birthing community, and there are surely many more people out there like him.
No. Pregnancy and nursing are not universal experiences. Saying it doesn’t make it true, and it’s not true.
Rewire: You talk a lot about struggling to find literature that you related to because pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding are typically only associated with women—and motherhood. Can you tell me about the kind of language you’d like to see used to talk about these experiences and why it’s important?
Trevor MacDonald: I think I was a bit naive at first when I was reading those materials. I felt like, “If only the authors knew, I’m sure they would have used different language. They just didn’t know about people like me.” And that’s definitely been the case for some of those authors. Many are starting to change language and using words like “parents” or “pregnant people.” It’s a simple shift, really.
Yeah, kids! It’s easy to erase women! Just stop saying the word – talk about pregnant people instead. (Not pregnant folks. No no, that would be vulgar.) Except when you need to blame women of course; then you have to say the word.
Where I was naive, though, is that there are some people who really don’t want to use inclusive language. Ina May Gaskin is one. I had read her book [Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth] during my first pregnancy and had been so inspired by her writing, and the birth stories are so valuable and needed. I was so hungry for information about what others had experienced. I love that book so dearly, and to realize she really was opposed to including gender-diverse people in her writing was really upsetting. [Gaskin signed this open letter by Woman-Centered Midwifery, a group of “gender-critical” midwives who believe that biological sex determines gender and were concerned about the Midwives Alliance of North America’s use of gender-neutral language to talk about pregnancy and birth.]
Erasing women isn’t “inclusive.” Erasing women from pregnancy and reproductive rights is the opposite of “inclusive.” Trans men should not be campaigning to erase women. It’s revolting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c
So wait, throughout all of human history, men have been able to gestate and lactate, yet they’ve been forcing women (and only women) to do all of the reproductive labor for the entire species? We feminists have been asleep at the wheel! We need to drop everything right now and address the staggering implications of this millenia-long enslavement right now.
I’m so confused. I hear transmen say that they always *knew* that they were men because they felt uncomfortable with having a woman’s body with breasts and a uterus and vagina and vulva. So if they don’t identify with those parts, that’s fine, and if they want to get rid of them, fine, I’m all in favour of adults having complete bodily autonomy, but how can they then go on to celebrate the use of those parts to make a baby?
And I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me what gender *means* and what it is *for* under scenarios like this.
Such is the power of language, and social media. Which are inchoate and birth rights. Or maybe just a postmodernist fad?
Maybe it’s time to instil an anti-fad-eh?
Not me, but you know, all the rest of you people must do my bidding this time!
1. All together now: SEX IS NOT THE SAME AS GENDER.
2. Universal experience? Are you kidding me? I don’t even consider pregnancy one of my own experiences and I’ve actually been pregnant (considering that I scheduled the termination within 60 seconds of taking the HPT, I really don’t understand the experience of someone who carries a wanted pregnancy to term).
WTF? I’ve lived too long.
Oh fuck you no, I haven’t read that open letter but that’s not what “gender critical” means. Biological sex is biological sex. Gender is not determined by biological sex. Gender is social norms prescribed according to sex. We oppose those.
You’re the ones confusing the two. Please stop doing that.
Blockquote fail, sorry.
Unfortunately, I’ve been seeing “folks” become the standard plural of “person” for a while now. Politicians, especially, seem to prefer “folks” to “people.” It makes me yell at the radio all the time.
I know; the politicians’ use of “folks” has been making me want to bite things for years. But the ubiquity of it among “allies” talking about trans issues is striking.
I wasn’t aware of it until someone pointed it out last summer in reference to one of Jason Thibeault’s posts attacking me. Sure enough, trans folks this, trans folks that. Ick.
What’s wrong with “folks”?
I’m not American — and I think that’s largely an American thing — so I hardly ever say “folks”, but it doesn’t irritate me.
Is it too, um, folksy? Too old-timey? Too cloying? I’m curious why it makes
folkspeople want to yell at the radio and bite things.Too cloying, too fake, too patronizing, too hokey, too gratuitous, too pandering – etc.
Basically it’s just fake as hell. I hate it for the same sort of reason I hate the politispeak term “working families” which in the US has for some reason replaced “workers.” (I suppose I know the reason, really – “workers” sounds too lefty.) It’s just utterly bogus and manipulative.
Also, because folks is an old-timey, rural-associated word, I think it’s being used to normalize a point of view which is rather new. As if all the women in history who ever dressed in men’s clothing to get freedom to do things women were forbidden to do or escape sexual demands were not proto-feminists but rather trans men, and as if all the men in history who put on make-up and dresses because they wanted to escape soldiering, have an entertainment career, or gratify themselves were all trans women. Because it has to be a deep-seated identity, not something people have historically done for a broad variety of reasons, many which are applicable still.
If you are gestating / giving birth to / breastfeeding a child, you are doing a biologically female thing. Because the goddamn definitional difference between sex and gender is that the former is a division along anatomy / genetics / bodily function lines (sperm production and associated anatomy = male, ova production and gestation= female), and the latter is bunch of bullshit behavioral expectations we are better off discarding.
In other words, you should be free to present yourself however you wish without needing to have the ‘right’ anatomy for that presentationand hence you can be biologically and genetically female and yet not want to be a woman. Modifying your visible anatomy to combat body dysphoria and hence present as a man does not make your uterus male, and claiming that it does suggests that sex must match gender.
It amazes me that there is a split among trans activists on this point, even though the very concept of trans people relies on sex not having to match gender.
Reading the article, I was reminded of the scene in Junior (a comedy in which Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a scientist who becomes pregnant as part of an experiment) when the main character confesses what he has done to his female colleague, who is also the biological mother of his child. She is angry and says something to the effect that men have so much and now they are trying to take away the one thing that has always been exclusively female. Watching as a child, I was puzzled by that reaction.
At the end, McDonald says he just wants to start a conversation. Sadly, conversation is impossible if anyone who disagrees on any point is subjected to character assassination and shunning.