Mick Hartley

Women, according to Freud, suffer from penis envy. At an early age they notice that boys have penises while they don't, and, sadly, never really get over it. Karen Horney suggested, in contrast, that men suffer from womb envy, "the envy that men may feel of the biological functions of the female (pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding)":

Womb envy denotes the envy men may feel towards a woman's role in nurturing and sustaining life. In coining the term, the Neo-Freudian psychiatrist Karen Horney (1885–1952) proposed that men experience womb envy more powerfully than women experience penis envy, because "men need to disparage women more than women need to disparage men". This feeling is stronger in men because they want to live up to the male stereotype of having the upper hand and dominance over everyone. 

We've moved on since those heady days of psychoanalytic theorising, and Freud's penis envy has not worn well. Horney, though, may well have been on to something. Men still "want to live up to the male stereotype of having the upper hand and dominance over everyone". We may be stronger, faster, tougher, but the one thing we can't manage is that central vital extraordinary business of nurturing and creating life.

Well, for the moment.

We heard recently from Alicyn Simpson, community navigator in the Gender and Sexual Development Program at Pittsburgh University's Department of Pediatrics, outlining the exciting new possibility of uterus transplants into trans women – because, after all, once these men decide they're women, as we've seen, they'll want the full deal.

Now here's Jean Hatchet in The Critic:

A recently published study discusses research into the possibility of transplanting a woman’s uterus into a trans-identified man. The research considerations and language used in the paper are astounding. The report into this dystopian horror discusses uterine transplants needing to be made available to a “more diverse population”. Quite simply, this means men. Crudely, but realistically, it means taking a female uterus and placing it in a man’s pelvis, followed by placing inseminated female eggs inside it to produce a baby and then removing the developed baby from the man’s pelvis.

The study itself acknowledges that some of the obstacles to be overcome are the differences in the male and female pelvis. There is a clear acknowledgement that sex is real, and yet gender identity is so fully endorsed that the author seems to accept as an inevitability that women’s body parts will be made available for men to “utilise” in order to more effectively perform gender.

The most mind-blowing part of the study revolves around “fourth party reproduction”. Here we find that a woman’s uterus will be taken from her and placed inside a man, a different woman’s harvested eggs can be placed in this appropriated uterus and may be fertilised by a second man’s sperm. There are therefore four people involved in producing the eventual baby in this science-fiction horror. Of course, it is also the case that the man appropriating the woman’s uterus and possibly a different woman’s eggs can use his own sperm to fertilise the eggs before the whole lot is shoved inside his pelvis for a few months. There is a concern about how viable it would be to link up the woman’s uterus to the man’s “neo vagina”. “Born in the wrong body” has never had more frightening resonance.

The grotesque picture does not end there. This trans identified man may wish to “retain” the uterus beyond the term required to extract the baby from his body. There are “worrisome” risks to this desire to keep performing “woman” by using her uterus. Continued immunosuppression would be necessary so that his body does not reject the appropriated uterus. A truth is revealed in the reasons given for this vain desire to keep her uterus which is, “for the purpose of menstruation and enhanced gender alignment”.

We return to the motivating factor as to why as Dr Liza Johannesson tells us, “Transgender women are also increasingly interested in this procedure”. Men who say they are women will not be happy until they have crossed every boundary between them, politically, physically and now biologically. Despite a man shaving pieces of his facial bone, inverting his penis to create a neo-vagina, accessing women’s spaces, stealing women’s sporting or arts awards, wearing wigs, dresses and make up, there is nothing that will feel more like gender identity triumph than taking a woman’s uterus from her and placing it inside himself. 

The actual well-being of the child, developing in a body unsuited biologically for such a task and subject to all manner of chemical, hormonal, and indeed surgical interventions, is of little consequence when the great prize of this "gender identity triumph" is so nearly within reach.