Category: Gender studies

From CNET, originally a source of information about technology, “Women aren’t the only people who can get pregnant”:

Not everyone who gives birth is a mom. Trans, non-binary and intersex people can and do get pregnant, too, and they have a place in the parenting world.

Though it’s hard to fight the centuries-old idea that womanhood and childbirth are inextricably linked, the ability to get pregnant doesn’t automatically make someone a woman. Many of the issues that affect women can affect trans, non-binary and intersex people, too, and that includes pregnancy.

Yet fight we must!

Some helpful vocabulary:

Chestfeeding: Some trans and non-binary parents choose to feed their babies with their own milk. You can swap out “chest” for “breast,” and “chestfeeding” for “breastfeeding.” Refer to the milk as “chest milk” or “human milk.”

But don’t men have breasts? (After 1.5 years of coronalockdowns, sometimes pretty significant in size!)

Earlier this month, CNN celebrated two apparently healthy guys who didn’t give birth occupying one of the hospital beds that CNN also said were scarce to the point that Americans were dying for want of a hospital bed. I like the implication that the depicted individuals had actually pushed the babies out themselves (is there no limit to the credit that white men will steal?) and also that the browser renders this with a “99% acceptance” ad. Let’s hope that not even 1% of Americans would be sufficiently Deplorable to object to these guys getting credit for baby production.

See also “Why that tired ‘men v. women’ line won’t work with Texas’ new abortion law” (Arizona Central):

Harvard Medical School agrees, using “birthing person” to include “those who identify as non-binary or transgender because not all who give birth identify as ‘women’ or ‘girls.’ ”

And the apology from Harvard:

The webinar panelists used the term “birthing person” to include those who identify as non-binary or transgender because not all who give birth identify as “women” or “girls.” We understand the reactions to this terminology and in no way meant for it to erase or dehumanize women.

Women will not be erased, but let’s also not forget that men might be better at giving birth.

Not every corner of the CDC is up to date on this, despite energetic efforts. An August 24, 2021 page doesn’t mention using “birthing person”:

• not inmate, but “People/persons who are incarcerated or detained (often used for shorter jail stays or youth in detention facilities)”
• not disabled but “People with an intellectual or developmental disability”
• (great news here) not alcoholics, but “Persons with alcohol use disorder”
• not homeless people, but “People experiencing homelessness”
• not the poor, but “People with lower incomes”
• not crazy, but “People with a diagnosis of a mental illness/mental health disorder/behavioral health disorder”
• not foreigners, but “Asylee or asylum seeker”
• not illegal immigrants, but “People with undocumented status”
• not elderly or frail, but “Older adults or elders” (also, not Elizabeth Warren, but “Native American elder”?)
• not Afro-American, but “Black or African American persons”
• not Eskimo, but “American Indian or Alaska Native persons/communities/populations”
• not rural people, but “Residents/populations of rural areas”
• not Using MSM (men who have sex with men) as shorthand for sexual orientation to describe men who self-identify as gay or bisexual, individually or collectively, but “Using MSM (men who have sex with men) to mean people who report being male at birth and having had sex with a person who was male at birth, regardless of self-identified sexual orientation”
• not homosexual, but “Two-spirit”

(To the above I would add, in light of Maskachusetts law and the 69 governor’s orders, not pothead, but “Person who smokes healing essential marijuana every hour.”)

We’re in a fight to the death (ours!) against an unprecedented respiratory virus that has caused a global pandemic, but taxpayer-funded workers at the CDC had time, at least on August 24, 2021, to write up the above.

Related:

• “The Culture War Over ‘Pregnant People’” (Atlantic): Last year, a brand-new labor-and-delivery hospital opened on the well-to-do Upper East Side of New York City. Its name, the Alexandra Cohen Hospital for Women and Newborns, might strike most people as innocuous or straightforward. But to some people, the suggestion that a hospital where babies are born is for women is offensive, because transgender and nonbinary people who do not identify as women can also get pregnant and deliver babies. … I called Louise Melling, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, who leads projects on women’s rights and LGBTQ rights. Louise Melling: First of all, if we’re talking about “pregnant people,” that language says to people—to transgender men and to nonbinary people—“we see you.” It should do a fair amount of work to help address discrimination. If we talk about “pregnant people,” it’s a reminder to all of us to catch ourselves when we’re sitting in the waiting room at the GYN that we’re not going to stare at the man who’s there. We’re not going to be disconcerted. … It’s interesting to me, for example, that the CDC website now speaks of “pregnant people.” With every passing year, it’s more pervasive. My GYN just talked to me about this: “Oh, I just learned this,” and was really working to change her language. … I work on LGBTQ rights. My colleagues are people who are in pain. … They are threatened because of language. [i.e., some language is far more painful than childbirth and potential birthing persons who are concerned that childbirth will be painful should know that it won’t be any worse than hearing the term “pregnant woman”]

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“The Elizabeth Holmes Trial Is a Wake-Up Call for Sexism in Tech” (NYT, 9/15/2021) is a delightful intersection between two of the greatest gifts to this weblog, i.e., Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos fame and Ellen Pao. If you need a refresher on Pao-ology, see the following:

• Review of Ellen Pao’s book (see also What should Ellen Pao’s forthcoming book be titled? and Ellen Pao writes something kind of interesting)
• Ellen Pao is a “woman of color”
• Will the New York Times like their own plaintiff as much as they liked Ellen Pao?
• Love for Ellen Pao
• MIT built its own Ellen Pao before the Ivy League did: Gretchen Kalonji
• Global douchebag circuit: Aspen Institute, Ellen Pao, and Buddy Fletcher
• Litigious Minds Think Alike: Divorce litigators react to the Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins lawsuit (Pao could have made $227 million tax-free merely by having sex with her billionaire boss and harvesting via the California child support formula)
• Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins wrap-up
• Ellen Pao case shows how the moral landscape in the U.S. has changed
• What do readers in Silicon Valley make of the Ellen Pao case against Kleiner Perkins?

For Holmes, see Theranos was an immigration and H-1B story and Management lessons from Theranos.

Let’s see what the glorious Ellen Pao gives us via her platform on the NYT:

When she founded the unconventional blood-testing company Theranos in 2003, I was relieved to see a woman finally benefit from the hyperbole that dominates venture investing, a world I worked in for nine years, total. Why shouldn’t a woman show the same single-minded confidence that her male peers did?

But after it was revealed that Theranos was not transparent when its blood-testing equipment failed…

Holmes’s psychotic belief that she knew something that the PhD chemists at Siemens and Philips didn’t know was “single-minded confidence.” Diluting blood samples and then running them in the European machines because the Silicon Valley geniuses couldn’t make it work yielded incorrect results for patients (just like the European PhDs said it would), but that was only being “no transparent.”

… as Ms. Holmes’s trial for fraud continues in San Jose, Calif., it’s clear that two things can be true. She should be held accountable for her actions as chief executive of Theranos. And it can be sexist to hold her accountable for alleged serious wrongdoing and not hold an array of men accountable for reports of wrongdoing or bad judgment.

This is where I can agree with Pao. David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner was on the Theranos board and his firm was the chief enabler, according to the excellent book Bad Blood, of the continuing Theranos fraud. Yet he is not being charged with any crime.

Though never charged with crimes, WeWork’s Adam Neumann and Uber’s Travis Kalanick hyped their way into raising over $10 billion for their companies, claiming they would disrupt their stagnant, tired industries.

Remember the accusations of harassment, privacy violations, price gouging, misleading advertising and any of the other dozens of scandals at Uber? How about the genocide incited on Facebook in Myanmar, or its engagement-centric approach that led to the proliferation of anti-vaccination propaganda on the platform? Neither Mr. Kalanick nor Mark Zuckerberg has faced any significant legal consequences.

Meanwhile, a Tesla employee reportedly described part of a Tesla manufacturing plant as a predator zone for women.

Hmm… what is different about a Tesla that you can drive, admittedly at the cost of neighbors thinking that you’re a sanctimonious douchebag, compared to a blood testing machine that doesn’t work? And you could drive that Tesla or take an Uber to an actual functioning cubicle at WeWork where you could distract yourself from the pain of working by posting on Facebook some righteous hatred for the young people who refuse to get vaccinated against a disease that kills 82-year-olds.

This article is a bit of a letdown, but it is great to see these two female-identifying giants on the same page in the newspaper of record.

(What else do Ellen Pao and Elizabeth Holmes have in common? Nobody would ever have heard of Ellen Pao if she hadn’t been having sex with Ajit Nazre, a married junior partner at her Kleiner Perkins office. That was the basis of her story in the courtroom when she was seeking to extract cash from KP. Elizabeth Holmes’s story in the courtroom is that all of her apparently bad actions were a result of having sex with Ramesh Balwani, a guy in her office. Is it too much to ask that the New York Times devote some space to a woman who didn’t have sex with anyone in the office?)

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Apple News thought I would love “Singing songs of praise for our non-binary family” (The Sunday Times (not one of the tabloids!)) and the robot overlords were certainly correct. From the article:

The broadcaster Carrie Grant and her presenter husband once had three daughters. Now she is the only female

Carrie, 56, and her husband David, 65, the Songs of Praise presenter and former pop star from the band Linx have four children. The three oldest were born girls; now all are “trans/non-binary”.

This raises the question… if all of your children have changed gender IDs, what project remains open? Perhaps the family dog can be persuaded to get on the LGBTQIA+ bus?

Readers: if we can convince Mindy the Crippler to identify as non-binary or as a “male”, what should his/zir/their new name be?

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Messages from a suburban Massachusetts friend to a group chat:

• Philip, you were right to move out of here
• I just got into my daughter’s phone to read what she and her friends are talking about
• Friend: Guess what happened to day. G told me that M is bisexual and went on a date with R. G also said that she thought I was bisexual and had a crush on me in 6th grade
• [Daughter]: No way. Not M. Can’t believe it.
• Friend: Why is everyone bisexual now? We are literally the only ones left. I want more straight friends.
• [Daughter]: Me too. Nothing against LGBTQ people, but they talk about being LGBTQ all the time.

Another participant pointed out that maybe the identification as LGBTQIA+ is helpful/necessary to get into elite colleges. He referenced Harvard Law School, at which 17 percent of students are LGBTQIA+:

(Exercise for readers: See if you can walk around the campus and identify the “47% students of color”!)

“More Harvard, Yale freshmen identify as LGBTQ than as conservative, surveys find” (NBC, 2018):

Approximately 20 percent of first-year students at Harvard and Yale identify as something other than heterosexual.

Unless fully 20 percent of high school students identify as “other than heterosexual,” being non-hetero is advantageous in being admitted to Harvard and Yale.

Back to the heroine of our story… The daughter in the above chat session attends a public high school in a prosperous, but not crazy rich, suburban Boston town.

[How about middle schoolers? A local 8th grader came home and said that she’d been assigned to interview a parent regarding their attitudes toward the rainbow religion. The father, despite being a passionate Trump-hater and reliable voter for Democrats, failed all five questions in the daughter’s estimation. She then reported his attitudes regarding the official government religion to a government employee. I noted that the government had previously used schoolchildren to rat out parents for using drugs (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Abuse_Resistance_Education#Use_of_children_as_informants ). The 8th grade girl’s take-away? “I think they’re trying to convince us to become gay because they’re always talking about how great it is.”]

Readers: Is the prevalence of high school students identifying as LGBTQIA+ a regional variable, as this father supposes? Would a young scholar in a suburb of Tampa, Albuquerque, or Chicago be just as likely to identify as LGBTQIA+ as his/her/zir/their counterpart in the Boston suburbs?

Related:

• “Outbreak: On Transgender Teens and Psychic Epidemics” (Psychological Perspectives, 2017): … we appear to be experiencing a significant psychic epidemic that is manifesting as children and young people coming to believe that they are the opposite sex, and in some cases taking drastic measures to change their bodies. Of particular concern to the author is the number of teens and tweens suddenly coming out as transgender without a prior history of discomfort with their sex. “Rapid-onset gender dysphoria” is a new presentation of a condition that has not been well studied. Reports online indicate that a young person’s coming out as transgender is often preceded by increased social media use and/or having one or more peers also come out as transgender. These factors suggest that social contagion may be contributing to the significant rise in the number of young people seeking treatment for gender dysphoria.

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