Thinking about fertility when you're trans or gender-non-conforming
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Why is trans and gender‑non‑conforming fertility care often hidden under men’s and women’s health?
The constant misgendering uh within the paperwork and groups and the systems, that that's really exhausting. Even if the people that you're encountering aren't doing it and are actually quite apologetic about it, it still just makes you feel very unwelcome and invisible a lot of the time.
Warning adult content. The hookup. It's something that's barely talked about and easily forgotten. That men can get endometriosis, that women can get testicular cancer, and that men can have their own babies. But for trans people, trying to get the right help when reproductive medicine is filed under men's and women's health. He's really tough. Hey, I'm Nat Tencich, and this is the second part of our look into reproductive health and fertility for gender non-conforming people. If you missed the first part, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts, like wherever you found this one. Just pop back to the previous one in your feed. Now, joining me in a moment is Freddie McConnell. He's a Guardian journalist and a self-described seahorse, a dad who gave birth to his own son.
And the story of his pregnancy, told in the touching documentary Seahorse, has made a large splash in the fight for trans reproductive rights. He just said, I'm a boy and I want to be a boy
and I did think, Oh my god, that means I won't have grandchildren from Freddie. I've always wanted to have kids one day. Not only women feel broody. I'm gonna have my own baby and I will be the dad. I love being pregnant. Everyone should experience it, shouldn't they? Especially men. Seriously awful. If men had to go through this all the time, you'd just never hear the end of it. This is a film about me having a baby, but what I feel like I'm going through isn't Me having a baby or pregnancy is like total loss of myself.
He joins me now to share more about his ongoing journey on the hook up. Freddie, welcome.
Hi, thanks for having me.
Thanks for being here. Um, firstly just wanted to say how's your how's your Bub doing? Is he okay?
Yeah, he's very well learning to talk and very physical right now, so it's pretty exhausting, but it's a great time.
Yeah, I can I can imagine. Um, let's first talk a little bit about your seahorse journey. You talk a bit about in the documentary about it, but why did you make the decision to to carry your own baby given how few people have done it before and I'm sure you thought heaps about the medical and social implications of it. How'd you land on finally taking that plunge, I guess?
Um, yeah, so well i it was a very long period of time that I took to come to the decision, so it's quite hard to condense um briefly, but I guess the key points were that I w always wanted to have kids right from when I was a child myself, you know, and that doesn't mean be pregnant, but I just wanted to be a parent. Um I always saw myself surrounded by a kind of brood of children and and so I always saw that in my future. Um and then I realized that I was trans in my early twenties, um and was told that if I transitioned with testosterone that that would make me infertile. So Um, that was something I had to get my head around and and grieve for a while. Um, but I knew that I needed to transition in order to live my life.
So I just thought, well, I'm just gonna deal with that in the future at some point, not really think about it too much right now because I just need to do this. Um and it was the right choice at that time, but Thankfully I was lucky enough to come across some community on YouTube and social media that was talking about the fact that there were trans men and always always have been, as you know, as long as there's been trans men, there's been trans men having babies. Um I discovered through my own research that what I'd been told wasn't true. And then it became more of a question of, well, uh, okay, if this is physically possible then is it emotionally possible? Is it socially possible? Am I allowed to do this?
And I didn't know at the time that I would struggle so much with dysphoria while being pregnant because a lot of the experiences I'd heard about from other trans men and non binary people were that they hadn't felt
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Why is trans and gender‑non‑conforming fertility care often hidden under men’s and women’s health?
0:00–4:56
2
How did Freddie McConnell decide to carry his own child despite medical myths?
4:56–13:36
3
What obstacles did Freddie face navigating doctors and gender‑identity clinics?
13:36–22:43
4
How does mis‑gendering in paperwork and forms affect trans patients’ sense of safety?
22:43–33:51