Fertility Fest 2019: The Invisible Man

My latest blog post for Fertility Fest is about the male experience of infertility and why men's voices are so often missing from the narrative.

Is infertility seen as the woman’s problem? Are men’s emotional needs seen as less important? Are men uncomfortable talking about this issue? Are we uncomfortable (or disinterested) in listening to men talking about this issue? .

More and more men are starting to break cover, and step out of the shadows to talk more openly about male infertility — to make the invisible man visible. At Fertility Fest 2019, ‘The Invisible Man’ will feature artists and experts to explore all these issues: including performances from film-maker Tom Webb, theatre-maker Toby Peach, singer songwriter Bob Strawbridge and rapping reverend Elis Matthews, followed by a Q&A with Sheryl Homa, Director of Andrology Solutions and Michael Close, Director of LogixX Pharma, chaired by writer and journalist Sarfraz Manzoor.

The Invisible Man

Please do read the full post on the Fertility Fest blog, share, and let us know what you think

Related posts

For more on male factor infertility, check out some of my previous writing:

• Why treatment for male infertility is failing both men and women

• #FertilityFellas: a brief history of male infertility

Fertility Fest 2019: Avalanche

My latest blog post for Fertility Fest is about the super exciting news that THE Maxine Peake will be starring in the stage dramatisation of Julia Leigh’s powerful IVF memoir Avalanche: A Love Story - the centrepiece of Fertility Fest 2019. 

When I first read Avalanche, I remember being blown away, not just because it's a brilliant read, but because it offered a genuinely different (and very, very much needed) take on infertility - telling the warts-and-all truth about a lengthy - and unsuccessful - fertility journey. Which is exactly the mission I have for my Uber Barrens Club book project

And it's MAXINE BLOODY PEAKE. Absolute goddess of stage and screen - so, yeah, I'm pretty excited (no pretence of playing it cool here).

Check out the post and please do consider buying a ticket to come and see the play for yourself

Avalanche will be running from Sat 27 Apr to Sun 12 May 2019 

For more information, performance schedule and to book tickets, visit the Barbican website

Fertility Fest 2019: Our Mission - Fertility Education

My latest blog post for Fertility Fest 2019 is the 3rd in a 3-part series about Fertility Fest’s 3 big aims

The third pillar of our social mission is something that’s so, so important - to improve fertility education. Young people need to learn more than how ‘not to get pregnant’, they deserve a more rounded and robust understanding of human fertility so they have the best chance of creating the families they want in the future — with or without children, with or without reproductive science.

(The irony that I spent 2.5 years working on the government teen pregnancy prevention strategy, credited with halving the rate of teenage pregnancies (& one of the most successful public health campaigns ever) and yet I turned out to be infertile, is not lost on me!)

There’s been some incredible progress with the development of the Fertility Education Initiative and, most significantly, the fact that fertility education and menstrual health are going to be on the new revamped curriculum for sex and relationships education from 2020 onwards. But now we need to advocate for what we think that curriculum should cover.

Our Mission: Fertility Education

Please do read the post, share and let us know what you think - really hoping to see as many of you as possible at the Fest in Apr/May!

Fertility Fest 2019: Our Mission - Public Discourse

My latest blog post for Fertility Fest 2019 is the 2nd in a 3-part series about Fertility Fest’s 3 big aims

The second pillar of our social mission is something we're all hugely passionate about - improving the level of public conversation about infertility and reproductive science

Since the first Fertility Fest in 2016, there's been SO much change in public awareness of infertility, and how we talk about it. You only have to look at what's happening in this community - with podcasts such as The Fertility Podcast, Big Fat Negative, The TTC Life Raft, Cat Strawbridge’s #EveryStoryMatters Instagram Lives (amongst many, many other initiatives in this fantastic insta-family) now at the vanguard of tackling the issues around this subject

This post looks at the new taboos that still need to be settled, and the difficult questions we need to ask about how changes in reproductive science are changing the way the human race is going to be made

Issues like genetic technology, surrogacy, donor conception, alternative families and womb transplants - just because we can does that mean we should?

Our Mission: Public Discourse

Please do read the blog post, share and let us know what you think - really hoping to see as many of you as possible at the Fest in Apr/May!

Fertility Fest 2019: Our Mission - Patient Support

My latest blog post for Fertility Fest 2019 is the first in a 3-part series about Fertility Fest’s 3 big aims

The first pillar of our social mission is a subject that’s very very close to all of our hearts - improving emotional support for patients.

There’s been tremendous progress, and now the HFEA Code of Practice has a dedicated section specifically for patient support: specifying clinics’ responsibilities to develop a patient support policy that codifies how the clinic will ensure all staff provide “appropriate psychosocial support” before, during and after treatment.

The code of practice says that “patient support should be patient-centred” - but what does patient-centred actually mean?

Our Mission: Patient Support

We want to develop a patient centred manifesto for what we believe clinics should be offering to fulfil this requirement - please do check out the blog post, and let us know what you think should be added to the list.

Fertility Fest 2019: Everyone has a story

I’m thrilled to be writer-in-residence for Fertility Fest 2019, which is shaping up to be the biggest and best Fertility Fest yet - recently named by the Evening Standard as one of the best London arts festivals in 2019!

How Fertility Fest changed my life

Here’s my first piece for the Fertility Fest blog, about how the festival has evolved over the last 3 years, and how Fertility Fest changed my life