Abortion and transgender identity, or how society won’t allow me my body!

As someone male bodied, but not male identified, I often find it hard to discuss feminism and women’s rights amongst cisgendered women. The sense of harassment…or rather alienation I feel is inevitable I guess. I have not grown up being perceived as a woman, therefore I have no access to a female, or simply “non-male” identity. However I beg to disagree. Our psyches have multiple foundations. Gender and sexual identities are steeped in neurology. Yet simultaneously they are also formed and even constructed to a certain degree. Our inner dialogues regarding our gender identity (or lack thereof) are complex, subjective, and wholeheartedly true…always! This is not “political correctness” obscuring the “science.” I am, in fact, through respecting transgender identities, refusing to infuse a hetero-normative bias into the normative science that is psychology.

This is why trans inclusion and queer identity have become essential towards a more “contemporary” understanding of how women are continuously disenfranchised by the patriarchies of the western world. Women (as recently highlighted by the debacle that is the American rights “handling” of the “abortion issue”) have never been allowed full access to their bodies, full independence. Female figures are scrutinized, idolized, abused, and degraded…in both literal and metaphoric terms. This remains the case with transgender individuals. The trans-community is not really allowed full ownership of their identities, and subsequently their bodies. They must past the “gatekeepers” of medicine in order to carry out the changes necessary for psychological harmony. Women must also pass these bars of oppression.

Say a 15 year old girl is raped. Brutalized and humiliated, one of the only things she can now do to both prevent more suffering and gain back a sense of control, is (if she can afford it) get an abortion. However, depending on which state she is in, she may have to get her parents to “approve” her decision. As if she needs her guardians to “approve” her decision to not have child whilst still one herself. Her parents may abandon her if she asks, depending on the extremity of their views. She may then be forced to get a “secret” abortion if necessary (I will not even go into detail about this disturbed procedure.)

And also, let us not forget that abortion (like everything) is an issue of class and socio-eonomics. The rich will always have access to contraceptives and safe and rare abortions. The rest of us…nope!

I am writing this post both to express my fury over the recent assault on women’s rights that’s occurred in the U.S., and also to highlight the fact that many individuals, female or male bodied, female or male identified…have felt the chains of patriarchy trap our bodies…ourselves.

Only when we respect all identities and all bodies…only then, will this issue cease to be.