From fertility to women’s sports to pregnancy, the female body remains stubbornly relevant in a culture increasingly determined to treat sex as negotiable.
We take our bodies and our biology for granted until something stops working the way we want it to because of disease or trauma or ageing. Ageing has an insistent way of reminding us that we are our bodies and our bodies are us. It’s possibly one of the reasons for what seems to be an enormous chasm between the generations: Those (mainly younger people) who treat medicalising healthy bodies - for the purpose of presenting as something other than their natal sex - as a human right v. those who treat such medicalisation as an affront to medical ethics (oldies like me).
May I comment? As much as I had to carefully concentrate and think while reading this, I also found it easy to read, and clearly written. I feel almost as if I'm reading my own thoughts expressed here. I also just before had read today's Substack from Stella O'Malley, where she advocates for wider acceptance for the psychologically valuable phrase, "transgender ideation".
If we can become self-aware of our efforts here, I see us as the leading edge of creating a better future for all of us. That simple, and that meaningful and hopeful, and profound. Thank-you.
KEEP UP the GOOD WORK, and let's keep playing ball fairly and freely!....
Insightful and clear, thank you. As feminist from the 70s, I grew up with a well-worn copy of "Our Bodies Ourselves" (Boston Women's Collective). I don't think theories that divorce the word "woman" from embodied women are in the best interests of those women.
Thanks for this well-argued essay.
We take our bodies and our biology for granted until something stops working the way we want it to because of disease or trauma or ageing. Ageing has an insistent way of reminding us that we are our bodies and our bodies are us. It’s possibly one of the reasons for what seems to be an enormous chasm between the generations: Those (mainly younger people) who treat medicalising healthy bodies - for the purpose of presenting as something other than their natal sex - as a human right v. those who treat such medicalisation as an affront to medical ethics (oldies like me).
May I comment? As much as I had to carefully concentrate and think while reading this, I also found it easy to read, and clearly written. I feel almost as if I'm reading my own thoughts expressed here. I also just before had read today's Substack from Stella O'Malley, where she advocates for wider acceptance for the psychologically valuable phrase, "transgender ideation".
If we can become self-aware of our efforts here, I see us as the leading edge of creating a better future for all of us. That simple, and that meaningful and hopeful, and profound. Thank-you.
KEEP UP the GOOD WORK, and let's keep playing ball fairly and freely!....
Insightful and clear, thank you. As feminist from the 70s, I grew up with a well-worn copy of "Our Bodies Ourselves" (Boston Women's Collective). I don't think theories that divorce the word "woman" from embodied women are in the best interests of those women.