https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/775367857580498945
Singal’s linked article is about pinning down the numbers on how many trans youth need pregnancy services. Within that is the exchange with Saewyc:
During an email exchange with Science of Us, Elizabeth Saewyc, a youth-health researcher at the University of British Columbia and a co-author on the study, said that she was about to head off on a trip and wasn’t able to break down the pregnancy numbers by natal sex for me in time for this post, but pointed out that in the broader survey from which these numbers were drawn, about 75 percent of the sample was female at birth, and that she thought it likely the percentage would be about the same in her subsample (Veale, the paper’s lead author, echoed this in an email). But she also said she didn’t think this was particularly important: “I’ve been a public health professional and researcher involved in sexual and reproductive health issues both clinically and from a public health perspective for 20 years, but I’m not sure what the public health issue is that would require a focus only on those who become pregnant, as opposed to any of those involved in pregnancy, either becoming pregnant or causing someone else to become pregnant.” More broadly, Saewyc had “always been curious as to why people put so much emphasis on pregnancy-related research and monitoring that is solely focused on the person with the uterus, when, at least for this age group, there are always two people involved in creating a pregnancy, whose lives and decisions are often affected by this reproductive moment, and who may be further involved in parenting, if the pregnancy leads to a birth.”
She isn’t sure what the public health issue is that would require a focus only on those who become pregnant, as opposed to any of those involved in pregnancy, either becoming pregnant or causing someone else to become pregnant.
She’s in the nursing department at UBC. She’s in the nursing department, and she isn’t sure what the public health issue is that would require a focus only on those who become pregnant? She isn’t sure why the focus isn’t equally on the people causing someone else to become pregnant?
I know why. I have no medical training, but I know why. Pregnancy happens inside bodies, and it causes huge changes to those bodies, and some of those changes are very uncomfortable, and some can be dangerous. Also, the future baby that the pregnancy is gestating may have some medical needs during the pregnancy. Also, the future baby that the pregnancy is gestating will do better if the pregnancy-haver does certain things and avoids doing certain things. That’s why. None of that applies to the people causing someone else to become pregnant.
She’s a nurse, and she has always been curious as to why people put so much emphasis on pregnancy-related research and monitoring that is solely focused on the person with the uterus, when, at least for this age group, there are always two people involved in creating a pregnancy? It’s for all the above-mentioned reasons. Pregnancy is internal to one body, and that body is what needs medical attention. The body can, with luck, do the whole thing by itself, but pre-natal care improves the odds and the comfort of the pregnancy-haver enormously, so that’s the reason for the emphasis that Saewyc claims to find so mystifying.
The people causing someone else to become pregnant may well need all kinds of social help and support, but they don’t need any medical support connected to the pregnancy. I hope most nurses have a firm grasp on this point.
Comments
10 responses to “Solely focused on the person with the uterus”
If it weren’t for signs of common sense like yours, I wouldn’t want to live on this world anymore.
So you would put all the responsibility of teenage pregnancy on the young women(“If you get pregnant it is your fault, whore!”) . Guess young men shouldn’t worry about condoms or even learn about them since they have no bearing on how young women get pregnant.
What is public health: http://www.cdcfoundation.org/content/what-public-health
Sorry about being hyperbolic but I do not think the professor was wrong in what she said.
Is she claiming that 25% of pregnant people are trans? If so, citation needed.
compressed nylon – that’s a very odd question. No, of course I wouldn’t put all the responsibility of teenage pregnancy on the young women. But pregnancy itself is something that happens to the pregnant woman, not to the impregnating man. You must have completely misunderstood.
Well, Lady M, it looks like she’s saying 75% are female at birth…that’s confusing, too. Aren’t trans men female at birth? And if they’re not, can they get pregnant at all? This seems very convoluted and incomprehensible to me, as a biologist.
iknklast, I’ve been informed by the righteous that biology is a cudgel used to oppress trans people. So we both of us better shut up now.
The 75% assigned female at birth is for the entire survey.
Veale is saying that the subsample of people who had been “involved with a pregnancy” is likely to be about the same. That seems like a big assumption, and an unnecessary one to have to make, even on short notice, I should think, depending on how their survey data is organized..
Also, it seems to me that it shouldn’t be controversial that while being “involved” with a pregnancy is potentially life changing and even traumatic for both partners, the impact and consequences are medically, emotionally, and usually economically profoundly asymmetric. This is not a contradiction, and fair-minded public policy can and should take this into account.
@ 6 Lady Mondegreen
It’s possible you’ve misunderstood. Biological essentialism is a rationalisation often used to deny the existence of transgender individuals.
@Silentbob #8
No. I did not misunderstand.
As it happens, on that particular occasion I was arguing against the “male brain”/”female brain” essentialism that is central, not to trans individuals’ existence, but to the ideology of a certain loud contingent of trans activists.
I pointed out that “male brains” and “female brains” either exist, or they don’t. If they don’t exist–which was the position of the blogger I was responding to–then there is no point in claiming that sometimes male brains aren’t connected to penises, etc.–which claim was also made by the blogger in the OP.
I weary of such incoherence. It’s not good for anybody: not for women, not for trans people, not for anybody who gives a shit about decent epistemology.
I have also been chided and “unfriended” for insisting that biological sex is a thing.
I did not misunderstand, and I am not exaggerating.
Trust me. I have been shunned
No, Silentbob, you’re the one who has misunderstood. “Biological essentialism” isn’t a thing. What’s essentialist is thinking that one’s sexed body dictates one’s personality or character or nature. That is what feminists have been objecting to for decades. We don’t need it explained to us thanks.