The news of a man who has become pregnant probably won’t make the right-leaning tabloid media like it used to. It’s clickbait that has run its course. We all know that this is a biological woman identifying as a man. The regularity at which this keeps happening may lead us to ask some more serious questions with broader implications on the sexual health and safety of women.

The Mirror in the UK has reported that Ryan, a 24-year-old drama student from Manchester, discovered a blessed miracle nine weeks into their female-to-male gender transition. Ryan was pregnant even though ‘he’ identifies as a man. Ryan wants to warn other trans men that they can get pregnant as well. 

The Mirror has turned an unremarkable heterosexual shag ending in pregnancy into a ‘teaching’ moment for trans people. The real story is, why do some trans people not understand the basic principles of biology and conception?

In 2013, when gay rights were really gay rights, The Mirror was nominated for a Stonewall Award. At the time, Stonewall was still a well-respected gay rights charity in the UK. Like most legacy gay rights organisations, Stonewall is now almost exclusively concerned with gender identity activism. While their focus has changed, the organisation sits loftily on years of goodwill, social acceptance, and the recent euphoric political victory of the gay rights movement. Stonewall has also developed a coveted model for training organisations and populations in its political ideologies. 

The Stonewall Diversity Champions program provides a ‘gaming’ model for media, government, and private organisations to compete for awards and rankings on a ‘Workplace Equality Index’. A higher ranking on the scheme is gained by training staff, purchasing consultancy, using language guidelines and ultimately reflecting Stonewall’s views and politics on sexuality and gender. In return, organisations get to share in the cultural capital of the once-great Stonewall.

The influence of diversity programs has become so widespread in the UK that someone Ryan’s age may have been surrounded by activist-generated information about sexuality and biology since they reached sexual maturity.

Systems like the Stonewall Diversity Champions program don’t work independently of broader political activism. Political activists around the world compete for cultural capital by mirroring the narratives of former gay charity behemoths and shaming individuals and organisations for dissent.

The shame and reward model has reached Australia in force.

Recently, the Leichardt Women’s Community Health Service (LWCHS) responded to a sustained online campaign by the LGBTI Rights Australia Facebook group, by issuing a (now familiar) grovelling apology and agreeing to sign up to the ‘Pride in Health + Wellbeing Program by ACON’. ACON (The Aids Council of NSW) is Australia’s very own Stonewall.

The sin that LWCHS committed was sharing a JK Rowling article and a Sydney Morning Herald article reporting on academics that are critical of ‘inclusive’ language in women’s healthcare.

Researcher Kit Kowalski claims that ACON receives ‘$17 million annually from NSW government and other government grants’. The stated purpose of ACON is slowing the spread of HIV, but its diversity scheme is bringing in serious money. The list of those participating in the scheme includes a number of government agencies such as the Australian Defence Force and The Australian Taxation Office. Corporate sponsors of the ‘Pride Inclusion Programs’ include IBM, KPMG, and Telstra. More importantly, the ABC and SBS are both paid-up members of ACON and their language guidelines.

ACON run the Australian Workplace Equality (AWEI) that is modelled on Stonewall’s now-controversial Diversity Champions Workplace Equality Index. The Stonewall scheme came under fire because of the way it appeared to ideologically and politically contaminate organisations. It was also shown to have distributed inaccurate legal advice.

ACON is far from politically neutral. ACON has prepared submissions to parliament opposing the right of parents to withdraw their children from sexuality education programs that are against the parents’ values or even scientific understanding. Sexuality education frequently involves gender identity ideology that teaches children that ‘gender identity’ is separate from biological sex. 

Modern ‘Gender identity’ based sexuality education has become a politically volatile issue and some have argued that it is at least partly responsible for the massive rise in gender dysphoria, particularly in girls.

It is fair to ask what ACON think about women’s bodies and sexual health, since they have embedded themselves in women’s health infrastructure. ACON tells us on their ‘women’ page, that they are ‘sex-positive’ and ‘sex work friendly’. These are highly political phrases. Feminists who highlight the negative impacts of pornography and prostitution find their concerns are drowned out by institutionally backed activists parroting a ‘sex work is work’ narrative.

The guidelines provided by organisations like ACON mould public language around women as a cultural rather than a biological person, ‘woman’ as a gender identity. Women who dissent from this understanding of ‘woman’ are disconnected from political engagement and often employment. Activists have been calling for the woman who posted the articles on the LWCHS Facebook page to be sacked. To be fair LGBTQ+ organisations have never pretended to centre the needs of women.

Press in the UK with long-term Stonewall engagement, like The Mirror, have been gradually ‘progressed’ from gay rights support into language dictates that comply with the gender identity ideology now integral to trans rights activism.

Traditional concerns for women like pregnancy, breastfeeding, STIs, and even lesbianism must now be spoken of in a way that disconnects women from their biological sex. Political issues like surrogacy and pornography are increasingly catering to interests of males who demand unregulated market access to the sexual and reproductive services of women.

The ACON sexual health advice to lesbians contains statistics that appear to be almost entirely meaningless. ACON claims that lesbians have the same sexual health statistics as heterosexual women but also ‘Women who have sex with women may be cisgender or transgender’, and that it is ‘important not to assume that women who have sex with women means two people with vaginas and uteruses’. So, to clarify, women who have sex with women may also be men who have sex with women.

ACON is the peak organisation advising women’s health services, media, and corporate equity schemes on ‘inclusive language’ in Australia. This language not only disconnects the word ‘women’ from any mention of our reproductive capacities, but it also removes from women platforms to engage in areas of traditional feminist activism around the female body.

After years of blanket media capture of this nonsense, it is no wonder a woman thinks that if she adopts a trans identity she can no longer get pregnant. We need to address this systemic corruption of our institutions because it embeds ideological interests at their core that makes it impossible to centre the needs of women, even in women’s health care.

Edie Wyatt has a BA Hons from the Institute of Cultural Policy Studies and writes on culture, politics and feminism. She tweets at @MsEdieWyatt and blogs at ediewyatt.com

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