Trans pregnancy: new book chapters and article

Over the last couple of years, members of the Trans Pregnancy project team have been quietly plugging away writing up more of our findings from our 2017-2020 research.

Recently, three new books have come out which include chapters based on our work, plus we have just had a new academic article published. I hope all of these will be useful for expanding knowledge about trans people’s experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, in ways that will be useful to community members, healthcare providers, and researchers.

The Conversation on Gender Diversity (edited by Jules Gill-Peterson, published by Johns Hopkins University Press) is a collection of short trans studies essays originally published on The Conversation. It’s written in an accessible way and priced affordably. It includes our essay “Giving Birth as a Father – Experiences of Trans Birth Parents“, which provides a concise introduction to the topic and to our research.

Photograph of a book, The Conversation on Gender Diversity. The cover features a blurred crowd of people and a large trans flag with the trans symbol on top of blue, pink, and white stripes.


The Routledge International Handbook of New Critical Race and Whiteness Studies (edited by Rikke Andreassen, Catrin Lundström, Suvi Keskinen, and Shirley Anne Tate, published by Routledge) is a hefty academic volume with a series of articles which critically interrogate whiteness. The book includes our essay “Whiteness in research on men, trans/masculine and non-binary people and reproduction: Two parallel stories“, in which we reflect on both the racialisation of both trans pregnancy and childbirth, and on the whiteness of our research team. It’s currently only available in hardback at “academic” prices, so I encourage people to order it into your local library if it is of interest to you. I’m also very happy to email people a copy of the essay if you’d like to read it, and will be making a version freely available on this site as soon as the copyright agreement allows.

Cover image of a book, The Routledge International Hardbook of New Critical Race and Whiteness Studies. The cover features a colourful aerial photograph of a river bend.


Trans Reproductive and Sexual Health (edited by Damien W. Riggs, Jane Ussher, Kerry H. Robinson, and Shoshana Rosenberg, also published by Routledge) is another academic book, this time focusing on topics including intimacy, sexual violence, sex education, and reproduction. It includes our essay on “Young men, trans/masculine and non-binary people’s views about pregnancy“, drawing on focus groups undertaken with young people to ask about how they see their reproductive futures. Again, this book has academic pricing, so we would greatly appreciate people asking their local library for a copy, and you’re welcome to contact me if you’d like to read the essay.

Cover image of a book, Trans Reproductive and Sexual Health. The cover image is an abstract grey circle with messy lines extruding from the top right.


Finally, we’ve just published an article in the journal SSM – Qualitative Research in Health. Titled “Medical Uncertainty and Reproduction of the “Normal”: Decision-Making Around Testosterone Therapy in Transgender Pregnancy“, this article looks at decision-making around cessation of testosterone during pregnancy, and critically explore some of the assumptions that get made in medical writing and practice.

Free talk: Making Trans Pregnancy Possible

This Friday (25th September) I will be presenting findings from the Trans Pregnancy Project at the LGBT Foundation’s Future of Trans Healthcare conference. Topics under discussion will include men, transmasculine and non-binary peoples’ experiences of conception, the impact of testosterone, and the language of reproductive health services.

The conference runs for two days through Thursday and Friday, and is free of charge. It’s possible to drop in and out or attend the whole thing. My session is scheduled for 1pm on the second day.

Read more and register to attend here.

Interview on Acadames podcast

webfront8Earlier this year I took part in an interview for Acadames, a super-cool podcast “that explores whether being a woman in academia is a dream, game, or scam”. The episode is now available! I really enjoyed speaking with Whitney  Robinson about my work, and hope you will enjoy our conversation just as much.

Today Whitney speaks with Dr. Ruth Pearce, a social researcher and feminist scholar based at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. Ruth discusses her current work with the Trans Pregnancy project, why gender equity schemes are so important in academia, and offers tips for resiliency when facing online harassment and political backlash. Along the way, she shares stories of her life as a trans woman, how academic institutions in the UK differ from those in the US, and the similarities between organizing a concert and organizing a conference.

Click here to listen.

Trans Pregnancy poster: initial findings presented at WPATH

Cross-posted from the Trans Pregnancy blog. Image shows a woman standing in front of a poster display board, smiling.

In early November, I presented a poster at the 2018 World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Symposium in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The poster outlined a number of initial findings from our first research interviews, which have so far been conducted in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The WPATH Symposium is attended primarily by healthcare professionals working specifically in the field of trans health, so the poster was designed especially with this audience in mind. Our future work will also speak to the needs and interests of trans people who become pregnant as well as professionals specialising in fertility and reproductive health. Plus, we will be exploring what trans pregnancy means for understandings of sex and gender.

You can click on the poster image below to read and download a copy for yourself, or click here for a PDF version.

Through our Twitter account I also reported on two sessions at the WPATH conference which were all about trans fertility and reproduction. You can read these Twitter threads by clicking on the links below:

WPATH oral presentations: Fertility

WPATH oral presentations: Reproduction

To find out more about the context of trans pregnancy and people’s experiences, please do explore our website. We have already published a series of law and policy reviews and are adding more resources all the time.

We are also still recruiting research participants from Australia, European Union countries (including the UK) and the USA. If you are a trans person who has been pregnant and you would like to talk confidentially with us about your experiences, please click here to find out more.