You may remember the MGTOW I wrote about who wanted to use human wombs as a sort of deluxe version of a 3-D printer — though only after removing the wombs from possibly unwilling donors.
This may be the most extreme example, but quite a few MGTOWs (and some alt-rightists) are obsessed with the idea of the artificial womb, which they believe could make cis women obsolete.
Now some Gender Critical types are getting just as worked up about artificial wombs but for an opposite reason: they want to shut down all research on uteri. “In this nightmarish dystopia we need to keep an eye on our wombs,” a Gender Critical Redditor called carnalhag wrote in a recent post on the FightFemaleErasure subreddit.
She posted a meme to make her point clearer:
“Don’t think this is outside the realm of possibility, wrote a commenter called sickendImagination, “this could definitely happen. The question to ask is, ‘why wouldn’t they?'”
ShmookyTheOpossum agreed:
These men have no shame, trying [to] make the pipe dream of birthing a child from a dead woman’s uterus come true.
When one decidedly non-Gender Critical Redditor asked the OP and her supporters why they were against organ donation, the question inspired a small flood of comments from a Gender Crit called Nuclear-Nuggets.
[T]his is sick shit. Only females need uteruses. It’s why no male has one. It’s not a heart or a kidney. Donating this organ will not improve any male’s health
The critic pressed further, asking
Would [artificial wombs] not make women’s lives so much easier? Would that not make childrearing so much easier for same-sex couples?
Nuclear_Nuggets went ballistic:
There’s no need to be venturing down of this perverted, disgusting & abominable road of trying to defy our biology to this extent so trans-freaks can cross off one more thing on the list of things that don’t make them men/women like cisgender people, because that’s all this is really about.
It’s good that none of these people — the MGTOWs, the alt-rightists or the Gender Crits — have any say in this research.
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It’s telling that they oppose research on a topic that could help same-sex couples, or could lead to advances in medicine for afab folks, on the grounds that “Trans women may also benefit”.
Because of historical misogyny, very little research has been done on uterii relative to other human organs. More research could lead to more advanced treatments for everything from surgical cancer to carrying an unwanted fetus to heavy periods…
But NOPE. Throw away every possibility if there’s any chance it may alleviate even the smallest amount of suffering for any amount of trans women, that’s reasonable, balanced, and moral!
Terfs like to say that we trans people are the Handmaid’s Tale, but I seem to remember that their obsession with wombs was a plot point in that book. Also, the author called the likes of terfs out in that very book as causing the dystopia.
Women can’t be women if they don’t have the womb. Such a feminist. Much wow.
A lot of TERFs subscribe to some form of Cult of True Womynhood™ style philosophy to the point where their very identities revolve around it. Anything which has the potential to invalidate their philosophy is experienced as an attack on their personal identities as well as womanhood in general… and sometimes even their role as gatekeepers and/or protectors of the divine feminine, if they see themselves that way. This is despite the fact that most other women don’t identify with their concept of “womanhood”.
A very common but not universal aspect of this: Real women bleed. Real women birth. Cis women like me who aren’t capable of either are honorary women just for having the right parts and being seen as women by society as a whole, but we don’t get a say in what makes a real woman, because we’re missing a big piece of the experience of True Womynhood™. (I’m fine, by the way. Never wanted kids. Saved me the ungodly hassle of getting sterilized.) And if I did want kids, and it could be fixed? Sorry, people are also going to use it in ways which dilute
our concept of womanhoodthe sacredness of femininity, so you’re just going to have to be a sacrifice.#NotAllTERFs, obviously, but it’s a common attitude.
…There even exist ones who are so possessive of Uteri, both their own and the general concept of “real” women be the true owners of them, that they’re scared of having it harvested from their corpses when they die and being used to benefit men directly, somehow. This isn’t actually that common that I’ve seen, as while TERFs tend to be a little on the paranoid side most of them don’t seem to be anywhere near that paranoid. The obvious solution to that is “don’t be an organ donor” – though if one is subscribing to an ideology where men are being trained from birth to violate women’s body autonomy, that response isn’t going to be taken well.
@Jon @Snowberry
Apparently I’m not Womyning Right on account of having no womb either. Never mind I never wanted kids and the damn thing caused me more trouble than it was worth on account of the fibroids and all the bleeding. Still, I’m sure the TERFs would move the goalposts just enough to include me while making sure to stick it to trans women because something something chromosomes something.
Sheesh. Both TERFS and MRAs seem to have hyped up having certain body parts/ functions to cargo-cult mystical levels and shuffled their identities onto the fact that they have them, as if having a penis or uterus absolves them of having to be less than dreadful people. Note: it doesn’t.
I have known many a ciswoman who would have LOVED to use an artificial uterus for having their babies. If it would be dangerous for them, or if theirs didn’t work right, or if it used to work right but didn’t any more, or if they just didn’t want to go through it for physical or mental reasons. LOTS of AFAB women would like one, and don’t care if other people have one too.
@Snowberry: Word. And it’s not like there’s a shortage of humans anyway.
I am probably too old to gestate my own electronics. But that’s OK, I have a credit card. There’s a limit to how large a piece of equipment your average uterus could hold anyway; you’re not going to get one of those desktop towers with widescreen monitor!
A womb is a 3D printer? That’s definitely one for r/badwomensanatomy.
If I could give my (admittedly thirty-five-year-old) uterus to a trans woman right now, I would. It and I hate each other, might as well give it to someone who actually wants one.
These terfs remind me of the breast feeding fanatics that use to plaque hospitals years ago. (they probably still do I haven’t been around them in years). They were insistent that the only good way to be a good mother was to breast feed infants. Never mind not all women/infants were suitable for breast feeding and that sometimes you have to use a bottle.
Slightly off topic: are TERFs still pretending to also respect cis lesbians and cis gay men(especially GNC cis gay men)?
@Snowberry
They have A LOT to say about childbirth along these lines, and celebrate natural birth as being Right and Moral and Womanly (as “medicalised birth” is pushed on women by those dastardly male doctors, apparently, and we’d be fine if left to get on with it. If you’ve had a c-section you’ve really missed out on that defining and magical womanly experience of having your perineum torn apart). Which isn’t particularly feminist in my view and massively effects policy, reducing access to choice in childbirth.
The idea of artificial wombs I must admit makes me feel uneasy, but in a similar way to loads of tech/scientific progress right now, it’s because of the hell world we are currently living in.
This trailer (specifically the first 10 seconds) is just perfectly apropos. Jensplaining, starring the famous women’s health myth debunker Dr. Jen Gunter:
@gijoel:
These terfs remind me of the breast feeding fanatics that use to plaque hospitals years ago. (they probably still do I haven’t been around them in years). They were insistent that the only good way to be a good mother was to breast feed infants. Never mind not all women/infants were suitable for breast feeding and that sometimes you have to use a bottle.
I’m hazarding a guess that the same folks are prepared to cite all sorts of wonderful herbal old wives’ remedies for milk deficiency and mastitis—Culpeper’s Complete Herbal has plenty of that sort of thing—but whose existence means that lactation wasn’t a guaranteed and foolproof process back in Ye Merrie Dayes of Olde, either.
OK, I’m not a doctor, and even though I am a cis woman I really don’t have much to do with all that down there…but the uterus doesn’t actually do all that much to develop the baby. I mean, it maintains the placenta and all that, but the actual growth and development of the baby is done by the baby itself, right? That’s the reason that premature babies can survive – it’s not the womb that builds the baby.
Of course I don’t know why I’m trying to establish facts when it comes to fools like these.
I’ve recently found out I’m probably the mother of a trans girl, so I’ve been on the trans internet a lot more than normal, and I was a bit shocked how much stuff fetishising trans woman gets returned on my searches. However it’s obvious most of it is by cis men, for cis men, and only tangentially about trans women. It is also clearly the foundation of a lot of TERF horror stories. A lot of TERFs must do bad-faith interpretations of obvious fetish stuff as if it’s trans women writing -they’d have to be stupid not to recognise it for what it is.
While I’m sure artificial wombs would be welcomed by many women, cis and trans, uterus transplants seems to be a fantasy trending amongst this right now. Anonymous comments will pop up claiming they have had a functional uterus transplant, or posting manipulated pictures of pregnant trans women etc, but it’s obvious scifi. TERFs might as well get outraged at tentacle monsters for all the connection with reality there is.
I don’t know if it’s medically possible. As in, some organs cannot be transplanted (yet), like eyes, pancreas, etc, and I don’t know the full list.
Of course, regardless of whether it’s doable, it involve having medication for life and being much more likely to catch disease because of theses medication, so it would probably only happen for a very very limited amount of people regardless.
The horseshoe theory could definitely be applied to men’s rights activists and transphobic “feminists.”
This is no different than all those manosphere sperm jacking hate fantasies.
Elizabeth said
Pro-tip, it’s for the lurkers.
To build upon the rest of Elizabeth’s comment, there is also currently no 3D printer capable of printing a living organism (or even a nonliving object) that continues to grow and develop after having been “printed”. Similarly, there is no way to make inanimate objects from living tissue.
So the whole claim is nonsense and can only be espoused by people who don’t understand either manufacturing or gestation. Of course, I kid; these folks just like reducing certain people to body parts in order to dismiss their humanity and justify violence toward them.
What is with the obsession with bodily functions as a marker of gender?
There’s also something really icky to me about the word “womb”. I think it’s the old-timey connotations. Or maybe it’s just that “womb” seems so much more tightly bound to gestation and pregnancy than “uterus” and that the idea of pregnancy terrifies me.
@Hambeast:
Thirty thousand years worth of tools and jewelry carved from wood, bone, and ivory are vehemently disagreeing with you from inside various museum display cases right now.
If they’re capable of vehement disagreement then they’re animate 😉
@Ohlmann
All three things you listed can be done, though! Uterii transplants are rare but have happened; I guess not ‘eye’ transplant, but cornea transplant is a thing; and, yes, pancreatic transplant does happen.
Though, all the uterii transplants I’ve read about were on cis-women. I don’t know if you could transplant a uterus into a genetically male’s anatomy?
@Lumipuna: I love Dr. Jen! (Her first book is on Kindle Unlimited now)
I offered my uterus (which worked but was a literal pain) to a cis-woman whose didn’t. I really would have done it if it wasn’t, y’know, the 90s.
@Ace : I didn’t know for pancreas and uterii !
Whole eye is a nervous connection problem in my memories, hence why cornea, who don’t have a big nerve coming it don’t surprise me (albeit surgeons are functionaly wizard to me). Pancreas I was certain there were a similar problem because of nerves !