Trans Women May Soon Give Birth— A Trans Woman’s Perspective
The first successful birth from a transplanted womb has surgeons speculating about transplanting wombs into trans women’s bodies. Here are my thoughts.
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Here’s the link to the original article:
Surgeon Calls For Womb Transplants To Allow Transgender Women To Have Their Own Children
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“According to Inglefield, the procedure involving a uterus transplant done on transgender women would be “essentially identical” to the procedure done on non-transgender women. “This pioneering birth is extremely important for any trans female who would like to carry her own child,” Dr. Inglefield said during an interview with The Mirror.
“Because once the medical community accept this as a treatment for cis-women with uterine infertility, such as congenital absence of a womb, then it would be illegal to deny a trans-female who has completed her transition.”
First off, let’s fix some of this language:
a) Can we stop referring to women as “females.” This probably comes from cops. They have this annoying, dehumanizing cop-speak — “a 22yo male,” “a middle-aged female.” Female is an adjective. ‘Female’ could be a female cow, or a female hummingbird. A woman is an adult, female human* (see note at end of this piece).
b) “Completing her transition” is an old concept from TPATH, the standards created by Dr. Harry Benjamin over a half-a-century ago. We are moving past that now. A number of surgeries are available to trans folk to help them alleviate their dysphoria. A woman can have as many, or as few, surgeries as she feels she needs to. A woman can decide to have facial feminization surgery. Or not. A woman can choose to have breast augmentation. Or not. A woman can undergo orchiectomy or genital reconstruction surgery (orchiectomy + vulvoplasty). Or not. It’s an individual choice, and no surgery should ever be done to meet some societal expectation of what it means to be a woman.
