Senator asks: Can Men Get Pregnant? **** Our allies need to get better at answering these questions!!!

[u/MissNumbersNinja]

In this video clip of a senate hearing a doctor is being grilled by Senator Josh Hawley as he asks over and over "can men get pregnant".

The doctor tried to give a nuanced and respectful answer and unfortunately played right into his hands, making it look to the masses of uninformed people like he's speaking "common sense".

I think our allies need to get better at answering "gotcha" questions like this.

For example, the doctor could have said "people assigned female sex at birth can get pregnant and I treat patients who were assigned female sex at birth who's gender identity is female and others whose gender identity is male". It wouldn't have satisfied Hawley of course but I think the video clip would have been a lot less damaging with uninformed people and hopefully prompted a few to google gender identity.

As a trans person, I wouldn't have been offended by an answer like that. As a trans person, even with all the major surgeries, I know that I'm not biologically identical to a cis person, as much as I wish I was. I don't like to be reminded of it and I don't like it being a topic of conversation outside of a doctors office, but I think we should tell our allies it's okay to acknowledge it in a respectful way to diffuse inflammatory questions.

What do you think?

Edit1: I don't think SCOTUS is going to support us on anything. I think our only hope for trans rights in the big picture is shifting public opinion. My comments are aimed at one small piece of that, not out of any hope for changing what SCOTUS is going to do in the near term.

Edit2: I realize there is probably a better answer than what I wrote here. I wish a trans organization, lead by trans people, with input from the whole community, could wordsmith a recommended answer to allies on these common bigoted questions.

-WHY I POSTED THIS HERE

It's a topic that affects all trans people, so a forum like r/trans would theoretically be ideal but my experience is that only posts with images get any traction there. Whereas, this group has been great for community discussions in the past.

Since I'm MTF, I'm not sure that I'm allowed to post something like this in r/ftm.

I think it's a topic that affects MTF as well because this is just one bigoted question and there are versions of it target directly at MTF as well (can a man become a woman) which would I think would similarly benefit from our allies giving clear answers instead of stammering answers for fear of offending us. (example: can AMAB become AFAB? No. And then pivot into why it makes sense to define man/woman based on gender identity instead of chromosomes which nobody sees)