Trevor MacDonald is a self identified female-to-male transgender gay
man, who’s given birth to two children since he transitioned. He’s
expecting another baby in April. MacDonald explains he was born female
but transitioned to male by taking hormones and having chest surgery.
“When my partner and I decided to start a family, we got advice from my
doctors and I stopped taking my testosterone. Because my surgery removed
most of my breast tissue, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to
breastfeed, but I really want to try.”
He’s accused the midwifery community of “transphobia” in The
Huffington
Post
. MacDonald
argues that suggesting that trans guys who give birth are not men, but
actually women, because of their biology, is “highly offensive to trans
individuals because it denies our gender.”
Some midwife organizations have already begun to remove offensive
references that suggest that mothers are women, moving to instead call
them “pregnant people” and “birthing individuals.”
However, in a sign that all may not be lost in our culture, some midwifes, mothers and experts are pushing back.
In 2014, with little consultation, Midwives Alliance of North America
(MANA) decided that being a woman was not a necessary or relevant factor
for being a mother. They edited their core competencies document, and
in effect ordered practitioners to stop referring to clients as “women”
and “mothers” demanding they say “pregnant people” and “birthing
individuals” instead.
The change did not go unnoticed. At the end of last month a group
calling themselves “Woman-Centred Midwifery” (WCM) published an open
letter addressed to MANA, signed by hundreds of respected Midwifery
experts including the revered “mother of authentic midwifery” Ina May
Gaskin.
They wrote, very politely, that: “MANA’s attempts at inclusivity are
commendable in today’s complex world. We are concerned, however, by
accelerating trends in our culture to deny material biological reality
and further disconnect ourselves from nature and the body.”
Referring to the edited core competencies document, they protested that,
“women are now all but missing from the language, as if we can separate
woman from mother from baby.”
MacDonald feels that, “the signatures [on the WCM letter] of midwives
held in high esteem in the birthing community are especially hurtful,”
and argues that, “trans, genderqueer and intersex people have been
giving birth for as long as women-identified people have and we have
also encountered oppression.”
However, far from suffering from some “phobia” or irrational fear, WCM explain their quite rational reservations in the letter.
“We know as midwives that biological sex occurs at the level of our DNA
and the gametes we produce, and is immutable,” they write.
They acknowledge that “gender is cultural and gender norms vary across
the globe,” but state that, “Sex is natural, biological and objectively
factual,” and “Human beings, like the majority of other mammals, are
sexually dimorphic. i.e. there are two distinct biological sexes.”
Arguing that,
“by embracing the idea that any human other than those in a class called
women carry offspring to term, give birth to them and nurse them, we
are prioritizing gender identity over biological reality,” and that, “We
are allowing gender identity to be the primary way that we refer to one
another, even for a biological process like birth.”
