raptortooth asked: I actually agree with you about not making them the center of the debate. That's not how you get results. I'm not talking about every trans* man giving their opinion on abortion. But should a trans* man who has personally had an abortion be ignored on the basis that he is male? I realize that making him the center of the issue would be upsetting to people, but should that mean his experience doesn't have any place in the debate?
I’ll reply to both the asks here:
As I said before: with limited resources, the fight—and make no mistake, it is a fight—needs to be streamlined in order to be effective. Consequently, the circumstances of those who cannot become pregnant isn’t as important as the relative ‘risk’ of those who can. So, I do feel as though those women who cannot become pregnant shouldn’t be the centre of the debate—and that’s actually something that gets held up in statistics. You don’t see menopausal women saying, “Well, what about us?!”, and you don’t see clinically infertile women saying, “Well, by focusing on women’s access to abortion, you’re oppressing those of us who will never need one!”
That is quite literally something I have never seen; why then, should trans* men (who likewise make up a statistically miniscule percentage of people utilizing the service) be allocated a major seat at the table?
The debate isn’t about them, is it?
If this was a question of “Who should get affordable, need-driven, egalitarian gynecological health care”, then yes, by all means allow trans* men to have their opinions—it’s an issue that is relevant to their concerns.
But pregnancy—and more specifically, the termination of said pregnancy?
That isn’t something that the trans* male community generally needs to worry about, is it? However, to answer your question: If a trans* man who, during his time presenting as female (or however you want to word that), conceived and aborted wanted to participate in said debate, I personally wouldn’t have a problem with it.
He’s used the service and as such, has experience with it.
What I question, (on a personal level), is the rhetoric coming out from certain subsets of the * community that argues that this focus on ‘women’ as opposed to ‘uterus bearers’ is somehow oppressing someone. Excluding a group from a debate isn’t oppression, especially if that said grip has, at best, fairly tenuous links to the debate in question.
Anecdote time: It’d be a little bit like me, a lesbian who likely will never require access to abortion services, getting upset because the movement ‘privileges’ the voices of bi and het women above my own. I would have no right to be; since it’s unlikely that I will ever use the service, I have no real right to complain that it’s not targeted towards me.
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