Views: Thomas Beatie's pregnancy: What does it change?
Extended for the Online Edition
by Yasmin Nair
2008-04-09
http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=18008Thomas Beatie, a transgender man who has retained his female reproductive organs and is six months pregnant, recently appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Let me be clear at the outset: I support Beatie's decision. I also think it's remarkably brave of him to be public about his decision. It takes a lot to be out as a transgender person, even in famously liberal Oregon, but to be a pregnant man in public goes beyond the pale. Sure, I could have done without all the gendered rhetoric, as when his wife said, "He's going to be the father; I'm going to be the mother. It doesn't change how I feel about him as the husband." This will be a family with a father who gives birth to his child. But this will not, apparently, be a feminist family.