FAB Gab Episode 12: Jill Drouillard on Pregnancy and Creating a Gender-Inclusive Reproductive Ethics

11:23PM Sep 14, 2021

Speakers:

Kathryn MacKay

Jill Drouillard

Keywords:

trans

paper

reproductive

gender

sex

ethics

term

planet

transsexuals

pregnant

quote

debate

king

le guin

genderless

medical

fab

legal

france

narratives

Hello, and welcome to FAB Gab. This is the podcast for the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics brought to you by FAB Network. My name is Kathryn MacKay and today I'm joined by Jill Drouillard from Mississippi University for Women. And today we're talking about Jill's paper, 'The King Was Pregnant: Reproductive Ethics and Transgender Pregnancy, which is out in the latest issue of IJFAB. Hi, Jill, thanks for joining me.

Hi, thanks for inviting me.

Oh, no problem. Let's talk about your paper. So 'The King Was Pregnant: Reproductive Ethics and Transgender Pregnancy'? Can you give us the kind of elevator pitch about what this paper is about?

Sure. So the paper raises some issues that need to be addressed in order to think through a more inclusive reproductive ethics and ethics that takes into account the existence of transgender pregnancy. So one thing that I demonstrate is that how we respond to the sex gender debate has important ethical implications. And what I mean by the sex gender debate is how we respond to what is sex, what is gender, what is the relation between the two, what is woman? So how we respond to these questions makes important value judgments about who we consider the productive reproductive citizen to use Foucaultian terms. So I explore different forms of social, legal and medical narratives that I see as not giving a fluid understanding of fluid response to the sex gender debate. And more specifically, I address three barriers that I see as posing an issue for thinking of an inclusivity state sanctioned sterilisation non reproductive futurism and access to assisted reproductive technology.

Yeah, and I, you set up the paper with the Left Hand of Darkness from Ursula Le Giun. And that wasn't a story that I'd read before. So that was really interesting too, a kind of world where sex really was, you know, it's a genderless world. But then there were reproductive roles that seemed like they could be taken on. How come you decided to use that to frame the paper?

Yeah, so a friend of mine had lent me this novel. And what I found really interesting is that despite this being a genderless planet, Le Guin, nevertheless, the inhabitants of this genderless planet, they relied on reproductive difference, or reproductive sex to generate the inhabitants of this planet. And the reason I found this interesting was because in conversations that I had with students, this issue of reproductive difference is really a hurdle to thinking about an inclusive understanding of reproduction. Students can't seem to get past this notion of well, this assumption, that reproductive difference accounts for sexual difference. So when I saw this unfolding in Le Guin's novel, I thought, 'oh, well, this is, you know, very interesting, she's perhaps not going far enough, in her radical reimagining of a genderless planet'. And the title of the paper The King Was Pregnant' is actually a quote from the novel. There's a moment when it's broadcasted on speakers of the planet that, oh, the king was pregnant. And in the novel, there's an envoy, who is sent to this genderless planet, coming from a place where gender is very much still alive. So he hears the king was pregnant. And he responds with 'well, this is funny'. And Le Guin herself had said that she was really fond of including this quote, in the novel, because it contradicts our assumptions. We think, well, men can't get pregnant. And that same sort of bemusement, you know, comical response we saw in 2008, when the media here announced that the first man Thomas, you know, Beatie became pregnant. So, on the one hand, I was inspired by this, you know, speculative fiction, because of the emphasis on reproductive difference. Even though the king was pregnant, for example, there was still a qualitative difference in the king's offspring. So when the king or male genitalia during the mating ritual on this planet, the sons were called kemmering sons, but when the king bore female genitalia, that was a superior son. So even on this genderless planet, there was a real kind of qualitative difference in the female born, you know, mother, so I kind of wanted to explore that through the lens of, you know, the, the, you know, social narratives, medical legal narratives and our assumptions of the sex gender debate.

Yeah, was it the kind of discussions that you were having with your students and stuff around this that motivated you to write the paper?

Definitely, that was another huge motivation and I hope that the paper is really accessible. I tried to write it almost as if I was in dialogue with them. So when I teach ethics, there's a point when we talk about feminist ethics when we talk about the politics of identity, and we link that to contemporary issues of the public bathroom debate, trans athletes, and, you know, I asked students well, what do you think sex is? What do you think gender is? And I think they have responses that a large portion of the population has that well, sex, the Y chromosome, presence of the Y chromosome, that's a male. And then I'll say, okay, well, and then what about Swyer syndrome, where if someone who has the Y chromosome is female, and they have a uterus with, you know, an egg donation, they can have a baby is that then, you know, still a male? And they're like, oh, I didn't know if these, you know, what they would think of as exceptions. But well, maybe they're not exceptions. It's, you know, it's just the way that we've been, you know, taught this rigid, you know, biological binary, but I tried to just have them think that through and maybe upset some of the narratives that they're used to. So I was definitely in conversation with my students when I was writing this paper.

Yeah, I mean, that's such an interesting point is that we take the biology to be, you know, we're sort of told that it's binary, that it's XX and it's XY. But in nature, it's actually so much more complex than that. It's never... we've, we've simplified it quite a bit to fit a model of understanding. But yeah, I mean, so maybe you could take us through the main points of argument in the paper, especially regarding those three barriers that you mentioned.

Sure. Well, before I dive into that, I just want to say though, that even though I do mention things like Swyer syndrome, and I and I mentioned some some ways that we can approach the sex gender debate, one of the key points in the paper is that I don't want to answer it. I'm not interested in ontology at all. I'm not interested in settling this debate. And I think that's the problem when people do think that they've settled it, that I'm really interested in the moral complications of the response. So even though I do you know, kind of answer some questions, some ways to respond, I don't at all want to say that there's a universal correct response. But one thing in terms of state-sanctioned sterilisation, thank goodness, direct forced legal sterilisation is becoming a thing of the past. So in 2017, the European Court of Human Rights, they had ruled that sterilisation requirements for legal gender recognition was sorry, recognition was violated human rights, and France, you know, upheld that ruling. So 2017, that's very recent. But only recently, actually, just a couple of weeks ago, France extended access to its assisted reproductive technology to single women and lesbian couples. So up until a few weeks ago, you had to be in a heterosexual couple and show a cohabitation of at least two years. So this is progress. But at the same time, this revised bioethics legislation, it was touted as Manif pour tous, assisted reproductive technology for all women. But it's not for all women. It expressly excludes trans persons, both trans women and trans men. So, for example, in France, if you're a transgender woman, and you decide to undergo hormone therapy, and you want to freeze your sperm, and then later have your partner use your sperm, you can't do that. Because you're trans, you can't have access to a sperm bank. Or even if you are a trans man, and you have a uterus, you can't have access to IVF because France, the legal, you know, all the laws, they say you can switch your gender recognition, but then it has to align with their idea of sexual difference, which is really their definition of, you know, sexual difference in terms of generativity so you can become a man, but then for them, men don't get pregnant, and that's very problematic. Other issues in sterilisation that I talked about, is the state of Georgia for example, there's still a medical requirement there's not forced sterilisation, but the medical requirement... the laws are very vague. So it says that you need a doctor's note. Well, that could be from a psychologist, it could mean you know, hormone treatment. And there's nothing wrong with taking hormone treatment, if that's your choice, but if it's forced in order for you to align with a certain understanding of you know, sex gender congruency, then that is a type of forced sterilisation because such treatment could potentially lead to you not being able to reproduce. So I talk a little bit about that. So the second barrier I talk about is non reproductive futurism. And Lee Edelman is its main proponent. So basically, he calls upon queer couples to embrace the death drive and to resist the hetero normative framework of the family, and to resist looking at the child as you know, the figure of the future. So he calls upon queers to, you know, have no future if the child is symbolically representative of our future. And I see where he's going with this. But I think that he is problematic because he sets up this binary where heterosexuality is associated with fertility, and queerness is associated with only pleasure and resistance, not with fertility. And I do take seriously the desire of queer couples to, to want to have children. So I see some issues with that. And the third barrier I discuss is access to assisted reproductive technology. Um, so I already talked a little bit about in the case of France and while I don't mention it in the article, I should have, (laughs), but another barrier is just different insurance policies. So even in places like the US where you may be able to access, you know, a sperm or egg bank, and IVF, insurance won't cover it if you're not, you know, labelled medically infertile, which is another another challenge.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I didn't realise that. And I suppose medical infertility must have a fairly strict definition?

Yeah, I mean, usually medical infertility, it's trying for at least two years. And, of course, there are tests, but in the case of queer couples, it's it's usually not an issue of fertility.

Right. Yeah. Interesting. Um, so were there any, like specific challenges that you faced when you were trying to write this paper? Or perhaps what was the most challenging part of writing the paper?

Um, I think one of the challenges that I met was taking into account some of the nuances in language and how fast different terms are changing. So I know that some external readers, they had remarked that in my initial draft, they were worried about my using the word transsexual, for example. So I quoted Jacob Hale, he wrote an article on how that was called, 'How Non-Transsexuals Should Talk About Transsexuals'. And I quoted Dan Irving as well, when he talks about historically, transsexuals, were not allowed to undergo any sort of form of surgery because doctors were worried that their procreative capacity would be taken away. And even though I was quoting these authors, I still had to, you know, put it in a footnote that the term transexual could be taken as outdated, it could be deemed offensive. And I didn't note this in the paper, but um, as I, you know, dive more into trans studies, the word transsexual has become more appropriated. I know Andrea Long Chu, she uses the term, there are other trans persons who prefer the term because they see themselves as well it's sex, not gender that they're transitioning into. So there's all sorts of, you know, nuances that we have to be careful about, especially in a paper when, you know, I want to really highlight the complexities of the sex gender debate, the last thing I want to do is, you know, alienate someone by using inappropriate language. There was another term that, that I had to specify. So I was quoting Pat Califia when he talks about FTM communities, and FTM stands for female to male. But for some trans persons, this isn't the current language they would like to use to describe themselves, some prefer M to M, male to male, because for some trans persons, they felt as if they were a male, all along. And such transitioning, quote, unquote, is really about making that transition visible to the public. And on paper.

Yeah, no, that's really interesting. And you're totally right, that it... language changes so quickly in this area, it seems like and I think it's interesting too that to think about how even those acronyms FTM, or MTM, they're still using female and male. So they're kind of they're still using the sex identifier, if you want to call it that, or what we associate as the sex identifier, rather than the gender one. So it's not W to M or something like that, or I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, and it's important to note, you know, not... and I discussed this in the article that there isn't a universal understanding of what it means to be trans. Some people have this idea idea that it is just about sex transitioning or gender transitioning. You know, some people would like to be called genderqueer. Some trans persons, you know, they believe that this is something that they've experienced all their lives. Some trans persons, it's temporal, it happened at a certain time that they felt a need to transition. So there's a multiplicity of experiences, there's not a universal understanding of what it means to be trans. And it's this complexity of the issue, and the lack of understanding this type of fluid becoming, that leads to these kind of social, medical and legal narratives that limit the, you know, the choices that individuals are able to make.

Absolutely, yeah, the the world of people's experience is definitely far more nuanced and broad and complex than the medical model would like it to be. It'd like it to be tidy and simple, I think (laughs). So, um, what are the final kind of takeaway messages that you hope people will leave your paper with?

The final takeaway, I mean, I had already stated this, but I really want to emphasise ethics over ontology. Um, you know, just just recently, I had attended a book panel for Hil Malatino, he wrote 'Trans Care', and at some point, he said something along the lines of like, Oh, I'm tired of, you know, ontology, we need ethics. And I think that this is so true. Now more than ever, especially on a personal level, when I was a graduate student, I was a little, you know, too imbued in the academic language of doing my own sort of form of ontology. And then, you know, as I become a mother, and as I become, you know... or just more experienced in the practical world I'm just 'No, you know, we need more ethics and you know, less ontology'. It's these, you know, our want to categorise people to put people in a box that it's, you know, it poses a lot of challenges.

Yeah, absolutely. So the final message of your paper is make it more complex...

(laughs).

(laughs)... rather than less. Well, thanks so much for speaking with me Jill. It's been really a pleasure.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

No problem. And thank you everyone, for listening to this episode of FAB Gab. You can find Jill's paper linked in this episode's notes along with a transcript of our discussion. FAB Gab is hosted by me Kathryn MacKay and produced by Madeline Goldberger. You can find our other episodes on Spotify, Radio Public, Anchor, or wherever you get your podcasts of quality. Thanks again for listening. Bye.