Can a man get pregnant

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

I can tell you there's a sizable contingent of cis guys who wish

[John Dule]

It would appear from the records of classical antiquity and the various pre-colonial societies of Siberia, the Philippines, Latin America, and so on, that humans have understood gender identity as separate from birth sex for perhaps longer than humans have kept history; examples can be found around the world of societies that recognize a social role for those who adopt the mannerisms of the other sex or of some liminal space between the two, at times within a religious context (some folks, including our own trans-adjacent pal Nathan, argue that gender dysphoria is best understood as a spiritual experience, although surely this won't appeal to you). Even setting aside gender non-conformity, gender roles have varied and evolved in various societies throughout history, some societies adopting characteristics in one gender that others see more in another, to the point that we can reject any idea of gender being solely informed by innate qualities of sex rather than subjective societal ideas.

Thus one might turn the premise on its head and ask, as I hinted at above: why has Western Civilization™ seen fit to reject these understandings in favor of the idea that there is no difference between sex and gender? Why don't you have to prove that the muxe or the babaylan are invalid ways of understanding oneself in relation to one's body or the ideas that emerge from bodies and that we instead must conform strictly to what we were born with? Why don't you have to prove that when I feel the sensation of compression squeezing hips inwards that beg to be those of a woman it's best merely to live with that deeply harrowing sensation rather than take a medication that my doctor at a world-renowned hospital has prescribed me with the aim of alleviating that phenomenon and making my form resemble what it tells me that it ought to be?

Ultimately, I can only speak from my personal experience and my own understandings of these ideas far greater than the scope of one person's understanding. I hope that I have done justice to these experiences and the great weight of questions that our species has pondered for as long as we have known thought.

I won't comment on your personal anecdotes and experiences. However, I will say this: Most of the historical "third genders" in other cultures that trans people point to are either not analogous to their cause or were fabricated quite recently (e.g. "Two-Spirit"). And in any case, the way that Siberians or Filipinos choose to communicate has no bearing on communication in English. If you want to add a word as stupid as "xir" to my vocabulary, you had better demonstrate pretty conclusively that it is useful in communication-- which it isn't, by the simple fact that 99% of people have no idea what it means or refers to. Other languages gender all their nouns, but you don't see me doing that in English and then arguing that the burden is on you to show why I shouldn't do that. If I were to do such a thing, I would probably come across as a tad unhinged.

The fact that the roles we assign to the sexes have changed does not mean the sexes themselves have changed. Another thing the gender crew likes to throw around is that picture of FDR in a dress. What exactly do things like this prove? Yes, gender roles are mutable. That was never in question.

Anyway, you seem to understand that I have no interest in giving attention or legitimacy to anything "spiritual," and I certainly will not alter the way I use language in order to conform to such a thing. You might as well tell me that I have to believe in ghosts because of the "experiences" a few dingbats have had with them. But as always, consenting adults are free to do as they choose, and no one has any right to stop you from seeking surgery so that your outward self matches your inward self. I think the trans movement would be better served by a heightened focus on the individual rather than demanding some kind of Hegelian recognition of their identity from everyone else in society-- my opinion on this shouldn't matter to you, nor should yours matter to me. So long as I don't violate your bodily autonomy by preventing you from getting surgery and you don't violate my right to free speech by making "misgendering" an offense, we shouldn't care what the other thinks.

The term "two-spirit" is indeed of fairly recent coinage, replacing prior terminology that is now considered outdated and offensive, and folks who subscribe to the contemporary Western conception of transness trying to totalize them as part of their milieu are engaging in misguided cultural imperialism, but those cultures did/do indeed have conceptions of gender non-conformity.

I never meant to imply that there should be any tangible penalty (besides being gently corrected) for misgendering, which I consider very frivolous; however, too many people blur the line in bad faith and insist that even being politely told to call someone by another pronoun that they prefer is censorship, which I don't have the time to deal with.

Ok, and I never implied that there should be any legal obstacle for a consenting adult to receive gender reassignment surgery.

[TheReckoning]

No one is “objectively” not black from a definition that is not inherently arbitrary.

Just because you're ignorant of the debate between how to categorize racial categories does not mean the debate does not exist with similar contention to the debate over gender definitions.

Ask any mixed raced person, especially someone who is 1/4 or less black if their blackness is universally accepted as valid, in the black community or out of it. There is debate on whether Africans Descended from Slaves and African immigrants belong in the same category. Then there's Afro-Latinx immigrants who emigrated from Latin American countries but whose ancestors in those countries were slaves stolen from Afrifa; many of them identify strictly as Hispanic and not black, and many of those who identify as black are told by non-Latinx black Americans that they're more Hispanic than black. Then there's Africans in Africa, many of whom feel solidarity with black Americans and consider them to be one people, then there's Africans who feel they're completely separate from black Americans and that the concept of race and blackness is not as important to their identity as it is for black Americans.

So, most of the time when we talk about black people, most of us agree on who we're talking about. Nevertheless, there is contention, especially when you try to pin down a specific definitive definition. That's the same thing with trying to pin down a specific definition for women or men.

You’re just proving my point that black has no definition beyond how people want to define it because people define it based on totally arbritary things. If gender is the same, then there’s nothing wrong with saying, “there’s only two genders, and they’re based in biological sex.”

Again, not my point. My point is, while looking to pin down a specific definition is going to involve semantic debate, we all agree that black people exist, just as we agree that men and women exist (I'm going to assume you don't believe nonbinary people exist, though I'd be happy to he proven wrong, so I'll leave them out of this for now, no pun intended). To exclude people who are clearly black who identify as black from being black based on whatever semantic loophole — perhaps they're an African or a Latin American immigrant, perhaps they're multiracial with whute-passing parents — defeats the purpose of racial categorization in general. To exclude someone who is clearly a man who identifies as a man — and let's add that this theoretical man has a penis and is legally recognized as man — from being a man because he wasn't born with a penis, and perhaps he gave birth before medically transitioning (but after socially transitioning), defeats the purpose of gender labels. If that's not a man, then what is he?

Black people exist because human beings have crafted the category of “black” to put human beings into. Males are not males because they happen to fit into some man-made categorization of human beings based on arbitrary characteristics, because maleness is 100% a real, biological phenomenon, distinct from femaleness.

Gender. And. Sex. Are. Not. The. Same. Thing.

Man. And. Male. Mean. Different. Things.

Woman.  And. Female. Mean. Different. Things.

For thousands of years, they didn’t, though- gender and sex were seen as synonymous. It’s only recently their has been a proposed difference between the two.

[If my soul was made of stone]

No one is “objectively” not black from a definition that is not inherently arbitrary.

Just because you're ignorant of the debate between how to categorize racial categories does not mean the debate does not exist with similar contention to the debate over gender definitions.

Ask any mixed raced person, especially someone who is 1/4 or less black if their blackness is universally accepted as valid, in the black community or out of it. There is debate on whether Africans Descended from Slaves and African immigrants belong in the same category. Then there's Afro-Latinx immigrants who emigrated from Latin American countries but whose ancestors in those countries were slaves stolen from Afrifa; many of them identify strictly as Hispanic and not black, and many of those who identify as black are told by non-Latinx black Americans that they're more Hispanic than black. Then there's Africans in Africa, many of whom feel solidarity with black Americans and consider them to be one people, then there's Africans who feel they're completely separate from black Americans and that the concept of race and blackness is not as important to their identity as it is for black Americans.

So, most of the time when we talk about black people, most of us agree on who we're talking about. Nevertheless, there is contention, especially when you try to pin down a specific definitive definition. That's the same thing with trying to pin down a specific definition for women or men.

You’re just proving my point that black has no definition beyond how people want to define it because people define it based on totally arbritary things. If gender is the same, then there’s nothing wrong with saying, “there’s only two genders, and they’re based in biological sex.”

Again, not my point. My point is, while looking to pin down a specific definition is going to involve semantic debate, we all agree that black people exist, just as we agree that men and women exist (I'm going to assume you don't believe nonbinary people exist, though I'd be happy to he proven wrong, so I'll leave them out of this for now, no pun intended). To exclude people who are clearly black who identify as black from being black based on whatever semantic loophole — perhaps they're an African or a Latin American immigrant, perhaps they're multiracial with whute-passing parents — defeats the purpose of racial categorization in general. To exclude someone who is clearly a man who identifies as a man — and let's add that this theoretical man has a penis and is legally recognized as man — from being a man because he wasn't born with a penis, and perhaps he gave birth before medically transitioning (but after socially transitioning), defeats the purpose of gender labels. If that's not a man, then what is he?

Black people exist because human beings have crafted the category of “black” to put human beings into. Males are not males because they happen to fit into some man-made categorization of human beings based on arbitrary characteristics, because maleness is 100% a real, biological phenomenon, distinct from femaleness.

Gender. And. Sex. Are. Not. The. Same. Thing.

Man. And. Male. Mean. Different. Things.

Woman.  And. Female. Mean. Different. Things.

For thousands of years, they didn’t, though- gender and sex were seen as synonymous. It’s only recently their has been a proposed difference between the two.

I assume all of the historical examples of gender non-conformity that I listed in my posts just went right over your head, then.

[sting in the rafters]

Leaning yeah but am a bit too ignorant on the subject to form an opinion either way lmfao Im ffringvn trippin sack rn and weak asf from the flame war weve gotten going.

[Sol]

The transgender movement ignores the distinction between gender and sex all the time. Funny how we don't see you criticizing when they do it.

For example: birth certificates list sex, not gender. But many of them insist on changing their birth certificate to reflect something they were not born as.

Pronouns also reference biological sex rather than gender, since throughout history they were automatically applied to a baby upon its birth.

This is actually quite funny because in actual usage pronouns are almost always referring to someone's gender.

Transphobes overestimate the frequency of misgendering because they wildly underestimate the number of trans people who are read as the gender they present as. Even in the era of history preceding the invention of hormone replacement therapy, there are quite a few examples of likely trans people who lived as the the opposite sex, and there are doubtless many more who were never outed.

People don't generally assume that random people they meet are transgender!

[TheReckoning]

Just LOL at the fact that a thread by an obvious sock/troll has gotten 6 pages of replies.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Trans men exist. So yes.(sane, abnormal)

Trans men are trans men.  They are not biologically a man, so no.  What they choose to identify as is different from what they literally are.  Thats not even a slight at them, its just literally facts.

See, this is the sort of definitions game that Antonio was talking about on the first page of this thread. Trans men obviously exist and obviously, in at least some cases, can and do get pregnant. That much is simply beyond denial. What purpose is served by the endless syntactical arguments about what specific type of noun phrase "trans man" is, arguments generally engaged in by people deeply hostile to one another on increasingly profound cultural and moral levels and often without any demonstrably accurate premises or rigorous definition of terms on either side? As far as I can tell the only purposes they serve are that of a make-work program for right-wing humanities scholars and that of a way for irreligious progressives to chase the high of being ruled orthodox at a first-millennium ecumenical council. It's a fundamentally frivolous and bad-faith way of approaching an issue area that involves genuinely serious concerns.

I'm happy to announce that I've changed my position on this due to my own framing. At this stage in the history of American academia, you'd have to be a Randian monster to oppose make-work programs for right-wing humanities scholars.

[TheReckoning]

What does it mean to be a woman or man? I have yet to hear an answer to this that did not fall back on gender stereotypes.

It's as the late, great poet J. R. Steinman once said: You'll never know what it means, but you'll know how it feels.

Really? Because I sure don’t.

Well, it's fairly simple. How do you know you're a man? (assuming you are one, of course--replace this with whatever your gender is if you're not)

I was told from a young age what my gender was by others, who determined it by what’s in my pants. I never saw any reason to disagree.

So if you had been assigned female at birth (like, ignore the obvious genetic fact that the person who would replace you in the AFAB Reckoning universe would most likely be a different person entirely because obviously it's not like the only difference between sperm cells from the same provider at a given moment is sex), do you think you would have taken the same path (i.e. grown up to become a cisgender woman)?

Honestly? It’s impossible to know for sure, but I personally don’t see why I wouldn’t grow up to be a cisgender women.

Fair enough. I don't know, I guess maybe most cis people just don't think that deeply about it.

A much more interesting question to ask a cisgender person would not be what you proposed, but instead, “Could you start living as the opposite sex now without much trouble?” Like if they could use opposite sex pronouns, dress as the opposite sex, and present as the opposite sex. Because unlike your question, it’s much more possible and doesn’t rely on being in a totally different reality than ours. In my opinion, I still think I could, but I personally wouldn’t like it.

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

A much more interesting question to ask a cisgender person would not be what you proposed, but instead, “Could you start living as the opposite sex now without much trouble?” Like if they could use opposite sex pronouns, dress as the opposite sex, and present as the opposite sex. Because unlike your question, it’s much more possible and doesn’t rely on being in a totally different reality than ours. In my opinion, I still think I could, but I personally wouldn’t like it.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. But that doesn't really take into account physical dysphoria, which I've suffered plenty from and was the point I was driving at re: "You'll never know what it means, but you'll know how it feels". Disco put it about as well as I could. While I don't feel most physical dysphoria about specific body parts now that I've been on hormones for three years, I do feel my genitalia to be a profane and alien growth. As for social fronts, I get a pain in my chest any time I hear someone call me "sir". Hell, sometimes even the knowledge that for every one person who thinks I'm a woman, there are a million who think otherwise is enough to send me spiraling.

[DaleCooper]

Since there's a lot of conversation about the debate over what people are referring to when they say sex or gender, I'll repost my take on that whole argument.

I think ultimately all this confusion stems from a single disconnect between the social progressive side and, to be blunt, everyone else. That disconnect is that the social progressives and especially the liberal academics seem to believe that all this time people have been conflating sex and gender, and referring to sex when they really mean gender identity. In reality, I think most people are and always have referred to gender when they actually mean biological sex. For most people, words like woman or man are basically just shorthand for biological male and biological female. When we refer to the ladies' locker room, we're not referring to a place where people with a feminine gender expression go to change, we're referring to a place where people with the female anatomy go to change. The progressive seems to believe that when an average Joe signs up for the dating app and checks the "Interested in Women" box, they're looking for someone that adheres to societal expectations for women, when in reality they're just checking the box because they want to be matched with people that have the female anatomy.

I don't know that I articulated this very well, but it's a disconnect that I've been noticing for a while now. Even if the left succeeds in completely confusing the language surrounding gender and sex, I think people will just adapt and use different words because ultimately the general public is concerned with biological sex, not gender identity.

This was from a different topic, but I think it applies here as well.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I'll just sidestep this controversy with dumb 90s humor:

[RosettaStoned]

I'll just sidestep this controversy with dumb 90s humor:

Oh my God.....I actually remember this movie.

[Beet]

Yes, a man can get pregnant if he is a trans man. However, a cis man cannot get pregnant.

[Matt24]

So 63% of this forum is transphobic? Really?

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

So 63% of this forum is transphobic? Really?

Honestly, that seems pretty low. I'm supposed to believe 37% of people genuinely believe I am who I say I am?

[Klobmentum Mutilated Herself]

So 63% of this forum is transphobic? Really?

Most of them are of the "I support trans people, but only in ways that don't offend my cis sensibilities, which is to say, I support trans people in like two ways that aren't that are pretty low priority for actual trans people. Trans Rights!" school of thought.

Compare this poll to the much broader "Are trans people the gender they say they are?" poll. If someone says a man cannot become pregnant, then by definition, they do not believe that trans people are the gender they say they are. However, if you ask them that broad question without getting into a specific thing like pregnant men, they largely vote yes, though there are far more no votes than one would hope.

[Orwell]

Like... what? Im way too high for this, but like. If Peebs transitions from MtF she wouldn't be able to get pregnant. If a woman transition from FtM and then decided to have a baby? Like maybe idk how all the hormone stuff works but it might make the baby a lil more like the average atlas poster. Better question is what happens if I start giving my baby tren to get him absolutely ing shredded

[Aurelius]

Like... what? Im way too high for this, but like. If Peebs transitions from MtF she wouldn't be able to get pregnant. If a woman transition from FtM and then decided to have a baby? Like maybe idk how all the hormone stuff works but it might make the baby a lil more like the average atlas poster. Better question is what happens if I start giving my baby tren to get him absolutely ing shredded

Thanks for bumping this thread! Atlas can now spend another half dozen pages arguing about its favorite dead horse.

[Klobmentum Mutilated Herself]

Like... what? Im way too high for this, but like. If Peebs transitions from MtF she wouldn't be able to get pregnant. If a woman transition from FtM and then decided to have a baby? Like maybe idk how all the hormone stuff works but it might make the baby a lil more like the average atlas poster. Better question is what happens if I start giving my baby tren to get him absolutely ing shredded

Thanks for bumping this thread! Atlas can now spend another half dozen pages arguing about its favorite dead horse.

Orwell is going fill a syringe with that dead horse's testosterone to make his kid absolutely f***ing shredded.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

No, this isn't some random girl in my class's poorly-written Omegaverse fanfic.

Men can't get pregnant. If a 'birthing person' gives birth, they are a woman. Trans men can be men, but they clearly aren't if they give birth to a child.

[Sol]

Men can't get pregnant. If a 'birthing person' gives birth, they are a woman. Trans men can be men, but they clearly aren't if they give birth to a child.

What is it about giving birth which meaningfully changes a person's gender?

[Mr. Reactionary]

Men can't get pregnant. If a 'birthing person' gives birth, they are a woman. Trans men can be men, but they clearly aren't if they give birth to a child.

What is it about giving birth which meaningfully changes a person's gender?

The adult human female part.

[Sol]

Men can't get pregnant. If a 'birthing person' gives birth, they are a woman. Trans men can be men, but they clearly aren't if they give birth to a child.

What is it about giving birth which meaningfully changes a person's gender?

The adult human female part.

I'm aware you firmly believe that trans people don't exist (or whatever circumlocution you would use to say that), I was asking theflyingmongoose whose in-between position appears to be inconsistent.

[Schiff for Senate]

I feel like it's high time this thread was locked.