Pregnant man sparks transgender discussions
http://www.kval.com/news/local/17036046.html (http://www.kval.com/news/local/17036046.html)
Story Published: Mar 26, 2008 at 6:43 PM PDT
By Elissa Harrington
BEND - It's not your typical pregnancy and its turning heads all over the nation.
An Oregon man says he's pregnant! According to the gay rights magazine "The Advocate" Thomas Beatie of Bend was born a woman but is now living as a transgendered man who is now supposedly five months expecting.
I think this is the most rediculous story ever. This was a female and transitioned into a male. It would be like any of us who were male to female, who have sired children. You might say that I was a female who sired two children.
Sheila
The interesting thing about this story for me (in a bleak, losing faith in human nature sense of the word "interesting") has been the response to this man's pregnancy from the media. The sheer ignorance has been disturbing. You have Faux News declaring it a hoax (why on Earth would it be a hoax?), the British press putting Beatie's pronoun in scare quotes, and lots of nonsense being talked about what is a fairly simple, if unusual, situation. It's been very disheartening to watch grown adults apparantly wrestling with the idea that having facial hair does not render one incapable of childbirth.
Then you have people like Margaret Somerville (noted for having got her knickers in a twist over gay marriage in the past) proclaiming this as a disaster for civilisation. Oh no a planned pregancy with two loving parents, what a social catastrophe.
"It's a very touchy thing, this deconstruction of our biological reality..." lol wut? "Deconstruction of our biological reality"? Oh no, our biological reality is deconstructing! Now there's going to be seven-headed calfs and rains of frogs! Rivers of tofu! Typhoons of badgers! Marsupials of suspicious demenour!
(On a personal note the picture made me very envious. Like one of my friends said, five months gone and he's *still* got a better physique than me...)
It is highly unusual and different to say the least. That is why people are disturbed. It's a news maker as well. You know we don't really have news much any more. It's entertainment. And if you can get a nasty controversial discussion on the air as well, you can sell that with advertising. The media loves us.
Some day, our stories will no longer be of interest to the public. They will have accepted the reality of GID (or whatever you want to call it) and realize that people are just living their lives the best they can. It will no longer have the impact that it does now.
The public will say "so what?"
Cindi
What horrified me was the struggle he faced getting prenatal care. This was a person who'd previously lost a pregnancy--and nearly his own life--and yet he was turned away by care providers on spurious grounds such as religion. (What about the unborn baby?) He deserves the same care as any other pregnant person.
I agree with Loka. If nothing else, and whatever we may think about the ethics or impact of this, it has exposed TERRIBLE bigotry in medicine. Of course, we knew it was there, for the most part, but perhaps this will force the public and the medical fraternity to consider our plight a bit more fairly.