Academia Anthropology Politics Pregnancy

Elsewhere (319)

July 18, 2023 by David 142 Comments

Jennifer Lahl and Kallie Fell on “queered” health care:

The resulting effects… include… an unsettling disregard for biological sex as an important variable in both medical research and patient care. Instead, the new radical movement favours categorising individuals based on their self-identified and medically irrelevant “gender identity.”

A provocative new paper in the journal Qualitative Research in Health titled “Medical uncertainty and reproduction of the ‘normal’: Decision-making around testosterone therapy in transgender pregnancy” by Pfeffer and colleagues propels us further down the road of medical malpractice.

The authors, a group of transgender sociologists and enthusiasts, and healthcare activists, with not one medical degree among them, argue to dramatically move the goal posts of medical ethics, choosing to completely disregard the health, safety, and well-being of the developing foetus, all in the name of “trans” inclusion…

The authors argue that “gendered” pregnancy care is too focused on helping women have healthy babies, and that it might be okay for transmen to continue taking testosterone during pregnancy despite the known health risks to the foetus and effects on its normal development. The desire for “normal foetal outcomes,” according to the authors, is rooted in a problematic desire “to protect their offspring from becoming anything other than ‘normal’” and “reflect historical and ongoing social practices for creating ‘ideal’ and normative bodies.”

This is, quite frankly, insane.

Ah, but “highly gendered” and “offspring-focussed” health care – for pregnant women and their babies – makes it “challenging” for sexually dysmorphic women who wish to be perceived as men, even while heavily pregnant. In short, “Screw the wellbeing of the baby, the inhibited lactation, and the risk of serious birth defects. Just jack me up on testosterone and refer to me as Sir.”

I paraphrase, of course. But nowhere near as much as one might hope.

Somewhat related, Heather Mac Donald on fads, transgenderism, and defaults:

Announcing a trans identity gives young people the thing that they most crave: the ability to subjugate others to their will, in this case, via their pronouns and all that those pronouns entail.

A phenomenon doubtless familiar to regular readers.

And Noah Carl on the unspeakable:

Everything in that paragraph is true. In fact, I would characterise it as a qualified summary of the state of our knowledge…. No serious intelligence researcher would dispute any of this.

But of course, in the Current Year, you can’t simply state certain facts about race and expect to keep your job. How naive of [chemistry professor, John] Sherman to assume that you could discuss such things at a university… If Sherman wanted to broach the subject of race and IQ, he should have picked a location more conducive to free inquiry – like a warehouse or a bus stop.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

 




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