“Embracing the gamut of human possibility and to defining for themselves what is normal.” March 26, 2008 Jill A pregnant trans man tells his story of discrimination, mockery, hope and family. It’s a short piece, but well worth a read.
I caught this on boingboing a couple days ago – my heart goes out to that family, and I wish them all the best. They’ll be facing quite the uphill battle; I can already hear the war drums beating. “Playing God” this and “appropriating female power” that … ugh. I just hope they know they’ve got support where it counts.
Wow, I think that’s great! I’m glad they’re doing what’s best for their family. I hope more people see past their prejudices and support them.
It was a good article, but it leaves so many unanswered questions. It would have been nice to have had more experiences, to have gotten perspectives from some doctors, including some information about the impact of the testosterone and the wild variation and flux of hormones on both the health of the pregnancy (could that have been a factor in the ectopic pregnancy he suffered?) and on the man. Talking with some transmen friends, they raised the issue of what the flood of female hormones and the body changes would do to the underlying body dysmorphia that comes hand in hand with transsexualism. It would’ve been great if any of that had been addressed. It’s a good article, but not at all what it could’ve been. I hope for follow-up.
It is a really cute story. I was kind of surprised when the DJ on the rock station I listen to brought it up. The DJs on the station tend to be pretty sexist and they managed to be pretty transphobic about it too. Saying things like his wife was actually a lesbian since he still has a vagina, that maybe he just transitioned to get married because of no gay marriage, that having a vagina means he isn’t a man and shouldn’t be legally called one without a penis. Usual stuff.
Sorry, no can like. A pregnant man? No, she’s not; a male id in a female body minus the chest alteration, pregnant, perhaps. I feel for all confused human beings, and we all know how many severely conflicted people are out there, however, somewhere, lines have to be drawn. If you choose to reassign your gender to be male, surgically remove your breasts, and take a female companion, why then decide to relinquish the drug therapy that assisted you to appear ‘male’ and go to numerous clinics to assist you to become pregnant? Why not adopt? The whole affair reeks of self-aggrandising neuroticism. All sections of society, be they gay/lesbian/straight fall out of love and separate. Whatever legal problems ensue are a gold mine for lawyers and another problem for the community. As for creating your own normality/reality, yeah, great. Look how it’s worked for the Bush administration.
@Dreama: After stopping the testosterone treatment, no other hormone treatmenent followed and according to the article the body regulated itself after a couple of months on its own. He’s probably more safe now than people who rely on hormone treatment to get pregnant and experience a whole lot of other side effects. The ectopic pregnancy may still be a result but then many other healthy women have ectopic pregnancies, too,
Who made you the arbiter of gender, waldo? Because, you know, it seems to me that the only confused person here is you. Thomas and Nancy, from the interviews I’ve read, seem rather clear on the matter, in fact. How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible. Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. Sounds pretty clear to me. You’re not alone in your confusion, but I’d hardly call that good company.
I saw this story first on Feministing, and then saw it again on CNN and my local news. I’m glad that trans issues are being addressed in the mainstream media, but seeing it on tv also made me really uncomfortable. I felt like the only reason that the news channels picked the story up was so that they could say, “Oh my! It’s a pregnant MAN!” and then cue the vaudeville circus music. For them this was a freakish oddity that they addressed with PC language so that they wouldn’t get killed — but the reason they put the story up in the first place was evident in their treatment of it. What do you guys think? Do you feel like this story has been treated fairly in the mainstream media?
What Roy said. Not to mention how offensive it is to refer to a man (yes, trans*men, even pregnant ones, are men) with female pronouns. The whole affair reeks of self-aggrandising neuroticism. Why? He and his partner wanted children. She couldn’t have them. He could. He made great sacrifices to become pregnant. That, to me, sounds like a couple who are going to continue to go to great lengths to do everything for their child.
I feel for all confused people, too–like you, Waldo. Folk like you have this problem where they look at people like the brave pregnant man in this article, or me, or a whole lot of other folk, and call us “confused,” when what you actually mean is “confusing.” We confuse you. We make your worldview problematic. We make messes of your rules. I’m not confused, and this man doesn’t sound confused either. We know who we are and what we are; the folk with the confusion, with the problem, are folk like you who can’t handle it. So I feel for you, so confused, so discombobulated and bugged by the existence of other people who you don’t even have to interact with, who see things differently from how you do. It must be a difficult life, always with your skin crawling with discomfort at folks you don’t get, and with you not getting so many of us who don’t see things your way. It must be isolating. It must be itchy. It’s enough to make a poor confused guy like you pretty self-aggrandisingly neurotic. Now, as to the actual article? What a lot of people are missing is where this guy is pregnant: my hometown, actually. And that is pretty goddamn bold. I don’t even visit there any more, I feel so unsafe. I really, really wish the best for him and his wife and their newborn when there is one, and I hope they stay safe. People get pretty nuts out there.
What Roy said. Not to mention how offensive it is to refer to a man (yes, trans*men, even pregnant ones, are men) with female pronouns. If you have a functioning ovaries and uterus, and use them to conceive and grow a child….. you are functioning as a FEMALE biologically. Intentionally. So using ‘she’ as the pronoun to describe a PREGNANT transgender F to M is not insulting. Unless you consider being a biological ‘she’ an insult. What I find insulting is complaining that folks use the female pronoun for an individual that is performing a female biological function. Males (biological) do not have wombs or eggs. Or would you rather we just ignore biology and pretend that they do? Are you really that uncomfortable with biology? The headline ‘Pregnant man’ is misleading. Makes one think some guy actually surgically got an egg to implant and grow on the bowel (with is theoretically possible). ‘Pregnant F to M transgender person’ doesn’t sound quite as catchy… but is a more accurate. I think it is cool that he / she could reverse the effects long enough to conceive and have the child. It shows both how plastic our bodies can be, and at the same time the underlying skeleton of biology. I don’t care what gender he decides to live as, or what future parental rearing role he fills. But producing an egg and growing a placenta, and carrying a baby to term.. that is biologically female, even though he is male in gender. Those are two separate, yet overlapping things (gender and biology). Yet we only have 2 pronouns. Maybe we need more. And if the use of a female pronoun to describe a person performing a female biological function (pregnancy) is insulting to you, I wonder why. -Jag
If you have a functioning ovaries and uterus, and use them to conceive and grow a child….. you are functioning as a FEMALE biologically. Intentionally. So using ’she’ as the pronoun to describe a PREGNANT transgender F to M is not insulting. I think perhaps we should allow transgender people to decide for themselves what’s insulting, no? Males (biological) do not have wombs or eggs. Or would you rather we just ignore biology and pretend that they do? Are you really that uncomfortable with biology? The headline ‘Pregnant man’ is misleading. The person in question is legally a man. He lives as a man. He identifies as male. Why does it matter to you so damn much if he uses male pronouns? But producing an egg and growing a placenta, and carrying a baby to term.. that is biologically female, even though he is male in gender. Those are two separate, yet overlapping things (gender and biology). So why should biology trump gender when it comes to pronouns? Pronouns largely relate to how one appears; people who have XX chromosomes but male sex organs are almost always referred to as “he.” This man has lived his adult life as a man. Why are we privileging biology over experienced reality when it comes to pronouns? And again, why do you care so much? How does it affect your life if we call this guy “he”?
Also, sorry, I’m feeling impatient today. This is not a Trans 101 or trans-bashing thread. Future transphobic comments are going to be deleted.
Your point about letting people decide for themselves what’s insulting is a good one, Jill. Personally I always find it offensive when people refuse to use the gendered (or non-gendered) pronouns trans*folk explicity prefer, but of course I can’t speak for anyone but myself. Thus, Jag, it’s not the female pronoun itself I find insulting–rather, the willful misuse of it. If there were, indeed, a way to allow a cisgendered (or biological, or whatever term folks prefer) man to carry a pregnancy to term, would those of you determined to call Thomas Beatie a woman be reacting the same way? In other words, would pregnancy still be a female biological function?
The coverage is so prurient. The focus of the news media when it comes to this story is not Thomas’ experience but his body. I brought up the story with my friends yesterday and the first thing they said was, “Oh my God! I wonder if he has a penis or a vagina!” The good news was that this gave me an opportunity to try to humanize the man to them, and explain a thing or two about the transition process (this was particularly urgent since one of our mutual friends is FtM.) I told them not to make assumptions about his body. Some transmen opt for phalloplasty, some are content with the clitoromegaly resultant from the testosterone therapy, etc. This could be such an interesting story to talk about if people didn’t make it into a freak show.
I was just looking on Google and there was some suggestion that this is a hoax or that the picture has been meddled with in some way. Just the idea that it could turn out to be a hoax depresses me, but if the story is true but the picture was faked to illustrate it, that’s an interesting comment in itself.
The “hoax” stuff seems to have originated with a neighbor who wasn’t aware Beatie was trans, and found it unbelievable that he wouldn’t have noticed a guy down his street was pregnant. Actually, this isn’t that uncommon — he is far from the first trans guy who’s been pregnant, and I remember reading another story a while back from a man who said that even at nine months, a lot of people simply assumed he was a thirtysomething bald, bearded guy with a big belly. The cognitive dissonance of wondering whether a man is pregnant is just too great for a lot of people — it doesn’t even occur to them. As for the coverage and the willfully clueless “biology IS destiny, dammit” (note: that’s among the things I think it should be patently absurd to assert on a feminist blog) comments on this thread… my first thought is that there are so many people and institutions in this world that are willing to “tolerate” trans people, but only as long as we don’t break any rules associated with our gender. It’s a perfect example of the extra layer of gender policing and double standards that affect trans folks — anything “girlish” a trans man does, no matter how unremarkable it would be on a non-trans guy, will be interpreted by some people as evidence of his “real” gender. And pregnancy is just a very extreme example of what people think the rules are: only women get pregnant. Of course, as mk points out, if a non-trans guy were to somehow carry a child, ectopically or through some other means, we would not immediately insist that this makes him a woman. We all understand, whether we admit it or not, that there is a lot more to gender than that. Beatie and other trans guys CAN simultaneously be pregnant AND receive a lot of male (and heterosexual, he’s married)) social privilege, pee in the men’s bathroom without comment, carry male identification, and basically move through the world as a man, being socially interpreted as a man. No matter what you do, there is going to be a contradiction in any kind of limited, biology-based, rigid-binary worldview here, whether you regard him as a man who can be pregnant, or a woman who just happens to be treated by all kinds of social and institutional systems as a man. Which of those gives you more cognitive dissonance? Which of those is more antisocial and removes you from the reality-based community? Trans people exist, we’re not going away, your brain will just have to deal with it. Also: little light, your response made me crack up!! Thanks!
Jag and Waldo’s comments were pretty horrible- I’d be in favor of the moderators shutting out stuff like that. Thanks to everyone who responded against their statements. I guess I assumed that if you’re reading a story about a transgender person on a feminist blog, you at least have the background to realize that gender isn’t just whether you have a womb or eggs. Even without that background, you would be able to figure out that the wife didn’t stop being a woman when she lost her ability to become pregnant. Couldn’t you then realize that the husband is still a man even though he is pregnant? If not, please take your transbashing somewhere else.
It’s how I roll, Holly. And Jill, thank you for a kind of moderation I see all too rarely, here and lately in general. If I’m any indicator, it means a lot to plenty of members of the Feministe community that you’re doing this kind of ally work. God, I just want to send this couple a fruit basket, or something. A fruit basket and a Taser.
i have to admit when I saw the picture my cognitive dissonance crashed like cymbals! But that’s me. It takes a little dissonance to grow! It’s a really great thing he’s doing for his partner! Very courageous. It just really makes me weepy when you know how much that child is going to be loved by them!