What Fresh Hell Is This?

A new paper on testosterone use among expectant mothers puts narcissistic self-image over safety

Rapists in women’s prisons, adolescent girls forced to endure males in their showers and changing rooms, vulnerable children pushed down a pathway to medical transition and babies used to facilitate their own fathers’ breastfeeding fetishes. Just when you think you’ve seen the worst horrors of gender ideology…

A medical journal has published an article by a group of trans activist academics which advocates the taking of testosterone by trans-identified females during pregnancy, despite the proven and potential risks to the unborn child.

Monthly medical journal, Qualitative Research in Health, has published an article titled ‘Medical Uncertainty and Reproduction of the ‘Normal’: Decision-Making Around Testosterone Therapy in Transgender Pregnancy’.

The authors are Carla A Pfeffer, an associate professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan whose work focuses on sex and gender, Sally Hines, a professor of Sociology at the University of Sheffield whose work focuses on gender studies, Ruth Pearce, a lecturer in Community Development at Glasgow University and senior fellow at the Centre for Applied Transgender Studies, Damien W Riggs, a research fellow at Flinders University in Australia whose work focuses on ‘family diversity’, Elizabeth Ruspini, a Sociology professor at the University of Milan whose work focuses on gender studies, and ‘non-binary’ Francis Ray White, a reader in Sociology at the University of Westminster whose work focuses on gender studies.

You will notice that they don’t have one single medical qualification between them.

Dr Ruth Pearce - IMAGE CREDIT: Twitter

We might take a closer look at Ruth Pearce. He is a trans-identified male who describes himself as “A healthcare activist, punk musician, and feminist researcher, specialising in transgender studies and community development”. He says his specialist areas of research are trans health, ethnography and autoethnography, internet studies, women and gender studies, feminist and queer theory, and trans cultural studies.

His version of feminism seems to involve denigrating actual feminists who defend women’s sex-based rights by accusing them of ‘transphobic bigotry’.

He also peddles the myth that gender criticism is aligned with fascism.

Of gender critical voices in education and trade unions, he says that he wants to ‘root them out’.

Pearce had a prominent role in an NHS-sponsored community project called Improving Trans Experiences of Maternity Services (ITEMS). He has also worked with Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, developing posters with ‘gender inclusive language’.

In August 2022 Pearce appeared in a video called ‘Reproductive Justice for Trans People’. In it he said that the focus of his work on ITEMS was the policy and language surrounding ‘trans birth’ and the need to counter the claims that children subject to medical transition are robbed of their future fertility. Later in the video, Pearce said he wants to help trans people not only reproduce sexually but also to ‘socially reproduce’. This would be achieved, he said, by altering medical language and policy to promote transition to children and adults as a form of ‘reproductive justice’, thereby increasing the numbers of transgender people in society.

For someone who writes and talks so much about pregnancy and birth, Pearce doesn’t seem to understand human reproductive biology nor the basic tenets of human sexuality. In his 2010 essay, ‘Desirability’, he wrote that there are “Gay men who fancy men with vaginas”. He also referenced the ‘girl penis’, stating, “It’s on a girl’s body after all, so what else could it be?”

On which subject, playing in a band called Not Right at a Pride event in 2012, Pearce sang about his penis and testicles and why he doesn’t miss them.

Returning to the authors of this paper as a whole, they were the team behind the ‘Pregnant Man Project’ which was described as “An International Exploration of Trans Male Practices of Reproduction”. Not only only did they receive generous funding from Leeds University, the team also received a £500,000 grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The ESRC is a subsidiary of UK Research and Innovation, a public body of the UK Government funded through the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The research on which this horrifying paper is based was financed by British tax payers.

The article is a quagmire of buzzwords and trans-speak such as ‘pregnant people’, ‘chest feeding’ and ‘cisnormative’. Pfeffer et al argue that ‘gendered’ pregnancy care is too focused on helping women to have healthy babies and that it is acceptable for ‘transmen’ to continue taking testosterone during pregnancy, despite the proven and potential risks to the foetus. They claim that the desire for ‘normal foetal outcomes’ is problematic because it is born of a wish to protect babies “From becoming anything other than ‘normal’” and reflects the “Historical and ongoing social practices for creating ‘ideal’ and normative bodies.”

Jennifer Lahl (MA, BSN, RN) and Kallie Fell (MS, BSN, RN) are, respectively, the President the Executive Director at The Centre for Bioethics and Culture. Writing for Reality’s Last Stand, they describe this assertion as ‘insane’.

It certainly sounds insane. Pfeffer et al seem to suggest that clinicians concerned about the risks to the foetus of a pregnant woman taking testosterone are somehow guilty of medical ignorance, ableism, discriminating against trans people and exerting ‘social control’ over their patients.

The paper is based on a survey of 70 trans people and 22 health care providers who work with trans people. Participants were spread across Australia, Canada, Europe, the UK, and the US. 

Most trans-identified females voiced concerns over ceasing testosterone treatment during pregnancy, it is claimed. They were concerned they’d lose the male features they had developed - eg facial hair and a deep voice - which could result in them being ‘misgendered’. Others explicitly stated that wanted to be seen as a ‘pregnant man’. 

Most healthcare providers advocated a precautionary approach, warning of the potential risk to the unborn baby by a pregnant woman taking testosterone. Pfeffer et al criticise this approach but the clinicians’ concerns are perfectly valid.

The risks to babies being exposed to testosterone in utero are not yet fully researched or understood. However, testosterone is classified as a teratogenic, meaning that it has been linked to birth abnormalities. Scientists believe that female foetuses are particularly vulnerable to its effects. Testosterone is a ‘masculinising’ hormone - ie it guides the formation of male genitalia and inhibits the development of a vaginal opening in male foetuses - and it has been established that prenatal exposure in utero can cause birth defects in female babies.

Testosterone is classified by the USA’s Food & Drug Administration as a ‘category X’ substance in pregnancy due to the dangers it poses to a foetus. In the UK, the NHS warns it could ‘affect the baby’s development’ and clearly states, “Taking testosterone in pregnancy is not recommended”.

Yet Pfeffer et al believe women who identify as trans should continue to take testosterone if they become pregnant, prioritising the affirmation of a ‘sense of self’, as they put it, over the health and wellbeing of an unborn baby.

Lahl and Fell conclude, “Abiding by their paper’s guidance would land us in a vacuum devoid of medical ethics and a seismic shift away from the importance of scientific research and medical evidence in favor of activist directed healthcare”.