Saturday, August 09, 2008

Forced Sterilization

Swedish Castration Proposal Opposed

The article is about transgendered people undergoing sterilization as a mandatory step in gender reassignment to prevent them from getting pregnant, or I assume impregnating.

That is so wrong. What if the person doesn't want to become a traditional female or male but instead a gender queer individual? What organ would they decide to forcible rip out of their body then?
I doubt they've even thought about this aspect of peoples choices, that it isn't male or female but instead there's a spectrum of genders they could occupy, though we don't have names for them.

What they mainly seem to be worried about is a FTM becoming pregnant. Conversely I'd imagine they'd be worried about a MTF impregnating her girlfriend with her penis, if she chose to keep it. But what is wrong with either scenario? In the second one you have a woman pregnant, very normal. She was just impregnated by her girlfriend, which isn't so unusual because of fertility clinics giving lesbian women sperm for home inseminations. In the first one it's a pregnant man, different but hardly disruptive. Everyone already knows what to do for a pregnant person, meaning maternity leave (a change of terms would be nice), and reduced strenuous physical activity toward the end of the pregnancy. So what's the big deal?

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