Trans Positions  | Analysis | Advocate.com

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Trans Positions
As the media world buzzed about the “pregnant man,” trans activists stayed relatively mum. Now we’re asking: Has Thomas Beatie’s public exposure hurt the transgender movement?
From The Advocate May 3, 2008
Trans Positions

“I’m going to be sick. I am upset…. That was not only stupid and useless but, quite frankly, disgusting.” —Mika Brzezinski, cohost, Morning Joe, MSNBC

“There is no way this child will be able to lead a normal life. Oregon is a strange state, but they cannot seriously allow this to happen. It is unethical, immoral, and disturbing.” —a comment posted on a Washington Post blog

 

When Oregon trans man Thomas Beatie first told the world that he was pregnant in The Advocate in March, readers learned that he transitioned about 10 years ago, underwent a double mastectomy, and began testosterone injections. He and his wife, Nancy, decided to have a child, but because of a hysterectomy years ago, Nancy couldn’t carry the baby. So Beatie stopped his hormone injections, underwent artificial insemination, and, after several doctors refused to treat him, finally found an obstetrician who would. His pregnancy, he wrote, was “free of complications.” Health complications, maybe, but it would not be without other difficulties.

For all the personal trials Thomas Beatie has endured, his decision to go public may cause even broader political and cultural implications for the transgender population as a whole. And some trans people worry that the sensational—and occasionally nasty—media coverage that’s appeared since the article was published is only the beginning.

Good Morning America, the Associated Press, Fox News, and the BBC picked up the story. Overnight, readers from China to Chico, p

Calif., were digesting what one blogger called this “real Mr. Mom’s” incredible journey. Headlines screamed, “This Is No Belly Gaffe—Pregnant Pop Aims to Deliver,” (New York Post), “Pregnant Dad Was a Pin-Up Girl,” (South Africa’s Sunday Tribune), and “Case of Bearded Mummy” (the U.K. Sunday Mirror). Some media organizations wondered if the story was an elaborate April Fool’s joke timed to Beatie’s upcoming appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Some of Beatie’s neighbors in Bend, Ore., went on the record saying the story wasn’t true. One speculated he just had a large beer belly.

But after an exclusive agreement to pose for a People magazine photo shoot and appear on Oprah, which showed video of him getting an ultrasound, everyone had to believe it. During the hour-long program Winfrey gently teased the story out of a shy Beatie. His stepdaughters, neighbors, and ob-gyn also weighed in, confirming how happy they are about the pregnancy and stressing how normal the Beaties are.

Beatie, however, did have one complaint that might have been lost in all the baby news. He said he reached out to transgender organizations before he went public. Half never called back; most of the others discouraged him from the exposure. Ultimately, they said, they were worried.

The worry seems to stem from a couple of different issues. First, some people are concerned specifically for Beatie’s family. Transgender activist Jamison Green admits he was in this camp. He says he’s thrilled Beatie’s pregnancy is healthy and that he knows other transgender people who have had children, but none have been so vocal about it. “I wish he didn’t turn himself over to the media,” says Green, author of Becoming a Visible Man. “It makes me wonder, Down the line will all this publicity hurt them or hurt their child? Will the media ever leave them alone?”  

Illustration by Mario Wagner/agoodson.com
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Reader Comments

These comments are reproduced as written by visitors to this Web site. They have not been edited for content, grammar, or spelling. The viewpoints appearing here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of advocate.com, The Advocate, or its affiliates.

  • Name: M M
    Date posted: 2008-06-17 3:12 AM
    Hometown: Dallas, Texas

    Comment:

    @ Angry Dyke, and all the others who keep referring to Mr. Beatie as "she": This just underscores the sheer amount of transphobia that exists in the GLB community, and it disgusts me. It's not him that's "hurting the movement", what *will* hurt the movement in the long run are all of these accusations of him not being "really trans" and "a woman with amputated breasts". I wouldn't want anyone questioning my identity, and I can't imagine how anyone can think it's okay to do this to him.


  • Name: bigfattfag
    Date posted: 2008-05-12 7:56 PM
    Hometown: Oakland

    Comment:

    "Angry Dyke" seems to live up to her name: Seems to me that the ones always pissing and moaning and won't leave trannies alone are the angry dykes who continue to deny transmen and transwomen their identities. Well, sorry Angry Dyke, but all of your trans hate sure sounds like sour grapes. We transmen are butcher than you and don't get the kind of b.s. looks that you get when you're with your girlfriend. Waaaaah, I"ll call you a waaaaahmbulance.


  • Name: alex
    Date posted: 2008-05-12 12:25 PM
    Hometown: madison

    Comment:

    I think this is wonderful and it is excactly wat the us needs to wake them up


  • Name: Miki Mays
    Date posted: 2008-05-11 11:39 PM
    Hometown: Hickory

    Comment:

    I think it's really sad...... both that so much anger can be displayed towards such a wonderful event as the birth of a much-wanted child; and that anyone considers it anybody's business besides the parents and the doctor. People, get over your self-righteousness and let people live their own lives!!! Don't you have enough of your own drama and crap to deal without preaching and ranting about someone deciding to have a baby? Yes, it may have been a questionable decision to do the media and/or publicity thing, but better that way than the Enquirer and paparazzi circus that would have ensued by NOT having shared the story. Tend your own business, and love your own loves: it's NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS who is in anyone else's bed, or who should or should not be...... Hasn't the LGBT struggle taught you ANYTHING ?????????? Rosemaker


  • Name: David Bowerton
    Date posted: 2008-05-09 7:35 PM
    Hometown: Houston Texas

    Comment:

    Why all the ugliness people? Doesn't it piss you off when straight folks say it's a choice you make or you can change if you wanted to...then why are you doing the same thing to the transsexual population? Ya bunch of hypocrites! Transgender folks aren't a threat to me and my boyfriend and while I don't understand it fully I embrace them because they are human beings...and aren't we always frothing at the mouth about how everyone should be equal?? Put your judgment away and just live and let live. Ya'll sound like a bunch of religious right Christians!


  • Name: Philip Calderon
    Date posted: 2008-05-07 9:57 PM
    Hometown: Phoenix, AZ

    Comment:

    I am so surprised that so many folks on this message board are dismissive or diminish what transgender folks feel. Only a woman born woman can be a woman is just wrong. All you have to do is get to know a few mtf transsexuals to know that aint true. Real men don't want to get pregnant is false, too. I spoken to more than one man that has been envious of a woman's ability to have a child and they didn't feel any less manly for feeling that way. Are you folks incapable of putting yourself in someone else's place; are you lacking the empathy gene? Aren't these comments a lot like the comments straight folks make that are dismissive or diminish what glb folks feel?


  • Name: Tom
    Date posted: 2008-05-07
    Hometown: Seattle

    Comment:

    I'm surprised at the amount of anger here. Are people really feeling that threatened by this? This frontier seems to be as frightening to queers as the thought of gay marriage is to right wingers. And, probably for the same reason: there are deep questions about identity and how we navigate the world that are being raised. Women have babies. Men marry women. If we can expand our sense of identity to allow for all kinds of intimate relationships, all kinds of identity, then why is a man having a baby such a stretch? Thomas Beattie's decision to give birth is no betrayal to anyone. It is an honest movement in his life. Can anyone appreciate how difficult this decision must have been for him? I imagine there are *very few* people who can. Deciding to come out to one's parents may be a close analog. Remember how hard that was?


  • Name: Jay
    Date posted: 2008-05-07
    Hometown: Burbank

    Comment:

    Although, I can understand why some feel this would have been better left a private matter, I am more distressed by the comments here than by any "negative publicity" this story may have brought. Clearly, the community has a LONG way to go. If you don't get where the struggles of TG people and the struggle of homosexuals parallel, then you just don't get it - much like those who would deny the parallels of gay rights the African-American civil rights movement. For any lesbian or gay person to call someone who is brave enough to confront their inner self and do what they feel is right by changing their outer self to match "mutilated" is disgusting. As a group who have been labeled such things "abomination" we should know much, much better than this. This is a sad day we're at indeed.


  • Name: Tom
    Date posted: 2008-05-07
    Hometown: Norfolk

    Comment:

    I don't know where to begin. I feel for transgendered people but I have never felt their fight was the same as ours, after all, they can make the change completely and wed the man or woman of their choice legally. When you legally change your sex you aquire those rights that are inherent to your legal gender. This "Man" had no intentions of fully being a male or the surgery would have been done long ago. I do think that this has hurt us a bit. It just ads the "freak" fuel to the fire. While I am trying to show my life as just as normal as my neighbors along comes someone attached to the movement who takes it away. Heck it takes away from the tran rights movement as well. I hope the baby is fine, and that this dies down, but I think it is appalling, and even degrading to call this person transgendered.


  • Name: Angry Dyke
    Date posted: 2008-05-07
    Hometown: San Francisco

    Comment:

    As a queer woman-born-woman feminist, I am deeply offended by the idea that "if someone says they're a woman, they're a woman" (or the converse, for men.) Someone born male, socialized male, with a male body and male hormones coursing through that male body can never be female - least of all taking some hormones and cutting up his genitalia. Such people are mutilated men, NOT women - and it is misogynistic when they claim that they can be women simply because they "feel" like us. Now the "pregnant man," a woman wanting to have her cake and eat it too - to receive male privilege but to retain the convenience of biiological childbirth. How absurd. By going public, Thomas Beattie has done the world a favor - showcased the absurdity of a born woman deluding herself into thinking that she could "become" a male by temporarily taking testosterone and chopping off her breasts. I feel so sorry for her child, to have a biological mother who will mindf*** her by claiming to be her father.


  • Name: Susan
    Date posted: 2008-05-06
    Hometown: Dallas

    Comment:

    For the maladjusted activist posting before and after photos on their web site as if to say, "Hey! Look what I've done."as they do their best to destroy the gender binary along with their own legitimacy...and the idiot transgender who will support ANYthing ANYone does as long as it's under the LGBT flag, perhaps the Beattie debacle could take a positive spin. But to those of us who have transitioned to male or female because we ARE male or female...the Beattie issue is just another freak show.


  • Name: Jay
    Date posted: 2008-05-06
    Hometown: Burbank, CA

    Comment:

    It's sad that such ignorance is found here, where the content is directed at the LGBT community. Trans people have a long road ahead and the queer community at large should really be more understanding and helpful. We can't honestly ask for acceptanace if we aren't extending it to others. Who are we to decide who is "really" trans any more than anybody else can decide if being gay is a "choice"? Solidarity, people. If we fall, they fall and vice versa. Erase the borderlines.


  • Name: Dr. Mekah Gordon, Ph.D., T. E., L. E.
    Date posted: 2008-05-06
    Hometown: Santa Fe, NM

    Comment:

    Thomas Beaties' decision to go public with his pregnancy as a "Transman" didn't quite degrade the Trans Community as some have voiced. I'd say the strength and legitimacy of the Transgender Community was slightly inconvenienced, as if removing a splinter. Would "Common Sense" have been a better choice for going public, I'd say Yes. Trying to gain headlines that have about as much credibility as those reported in the Enquirer, as such, is decision making gone bad. I'm very happy for Beatie and his partner, but to try and initiate self-centered deceptive sensationalism in a public forum while many of us are trying to obtain Unequivocal Equality legitimately and professionally, was simply, just stupid. Love, Peace, Unequivocal Equality & Solidarity ~ Dr. Mekah Gordon, Ph.D., T. E., L. E. President/CEO S. U. R. E. Foundation Santa Fe, NM


  • Name: Adam T
    Date posted: 2008-05-06
    Hometown: Richmond, VA

    Comment:

    I fully support trans people and intesexed people (which is what I would consider Beatie). Sorry, but if you have a functioning uterus and ovaries, you are NOT a "man", you're intersexed. That doesn't mean you deserve any fewer rights than anyone else, but still, you're not a man.


  • Name: B.J. Caldwell
    Date posted: 2008-05-06
    Hometown: Guelph, ON

    Comment:

    Margaret Sommerville is known to be very homophobic. Her title sounds impressive, but she is not a friend to the queer community


  • Name: Philip Calderon
    Date posted: 2008-05-06
    Hometown: Phoenix, AZ

    Comment:

    I don't see this as a big deal but I do understand how this story could easily be manipulated for headlines and political mischief. As far as I am concerned, this is just a couple wanting a child just like lots of other couples and that child will have a loving father and mother and isn't being wanted and loved the main thing that a child needs. There is nothing wrong with a trans man wanting a child. There is nothing weird about a trans man being will to get pregnant and having that child. Hell if I could do it I would.


  • Name: FTMHUMAN
    Date posted: 2008-05-06
    Hometown: The Deep South

    Comment:

    FTM-Human, Husband, Father, Son , Brother. let me be the first to tell the uneducated here that injecting testosterone doesn't just change your outside appearance. It also changes how you look at things, how you process information, how you react to those around you, how you cope with life, how you listen, how you learn, what you value, how you are able to multitask. The list goes on and on. Testosterone helps change you deep on the inside and nobody really talks about that part of it because everyone is so focused on the outside appearance. Perhaps the freedom to transition, to live an authentic life and to take T are factors but it's most definitely a much bigger change than merely physical.


  • Name: Tina
    Date posted: 2008-05-05
    Hometown: Fairfield, CT

    Comment:

    I don't know that I would've been so public about it... but who am I to judge? Isn't that the LGBT's BIGGEST argument to the world? Live and let live and stop judging us? Remarkable though, how fast the commenters here jumped on the judging bandwagon. I don't necessarily like the free-swinging-t!ts that the lesbians show off at the Pride parade, but I most certainly wouldn't throw my lesbian sisters who show them to the wolves just because I disagree with their choices. I guess the way I see it is if you are yearning to have a baby and option a) is gonna cost you 10x's as much to do just because you don't have a uterus readily available then you realize you do -- wtf -- why not? Who are we to say a word about it? It's amazing how ignorant our community can be.


  • Name: Gay Transman2
    Date posted: 2008-05-05
    Hometown: Minneapolis MN

    Comment:

    man, there really are a lot of you who keep saying really transphobic things, and then saying... 'as much as I support my trans friends...' as a matter of fact you dont support your transfriends and in fact seem to know absolutely nothing about what it means to be trans. Its like saying 'yeah black people are lazy and should get jobs, thats the only racism still around' and then justifying it with 'my ONE black friend agrees'. You are really being silly and I am disappointed that so many transphobic things are being said by gay people, though not at all surprised, unfortunately. I dont agree with the publicity that Beatie is doing, but that does not mean I dont agree with his decision to be pregnant. If you give birth to a child, laws are much less likely to take this child away from you. Really, it is hard to be a transman and have a child.


  • Name: Gay Transman
    Date posted: 2008-05-05
    Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA

    Comment:

    On the idea that transmen find it repugnant to have a child. I think this is the case for a lot of people, but you have to remember that as transmen we did grow up with a female body, and were raised with ideas about it very different from a regular man. I dont ever want to be pregant, but I dont find the idea repulsive. A transman does not have to dispise every single female part of his body in order to be male. People who think like this are really stuck in a gender binary. If you think in order to be male you have to have completely and totally male characteristics then all you fem gay men apparently want to be girls with the way you flick around your wrists and squeal (I do these things too, this is not meant as homophobic) Gay Transman


  • Name: Brian
    Date posted: 2008-05-05
    Hometown: Cincinnati

    Comment:

    Gender is so much more than physiology. Gender construction exists primarily in the psyche. This is why people can be considered transgendered prior to (or even without ever experiencing) gender reassignment surgery. Just as sexuality is about the whole person, not just the sexual organs, so is gender. If Beatty identifies as male, he is male. End of story.


  • Name: Jero
    Date posted: 2008-05-05
    Hometown: Fairfield, CT

    Comment:

    Sometimes it takes one person to stand up and tell their story in order for the eyes of the world to be opened. I think that Thomas is a brave guy who put himself out there in order to protect his family from tabloids ripping them apart (which would have happened). I also think that it ws probably in order to raise awareness because there are so many people who are ignorant when it comes to trans issues, especially in the health care field. Hats off to Thomas and his whole family and the best of luck to them and their coming child. Some folks who have commented should be ashamed of their closed-mindedness. I wasn't aware of any laws regarding what transsexuals can and cannot do with their own bodies in order to conceive. Let's hear some more support!


  • Name: LuLu Manus
    Date posted: 2008-05-05
    Hometown: Aptos, CA

    Comment:

    n my opinion, his exposure has neither helped or hurt as it is a zero sum game. While some people are shocked and outraged others don't care and just give it a passing glance and become more aware that trans people do indeed exist and live among us. It is beyond me why someone in that situation would want the publicity at all. It is my understanding that most trans men would find the whole experience of pregnancy to be totally repugnant. So while it has increased trans awareness, it also illustrates the unusual nature of life as a transsexual. As such, it is neutral .


  • Name: Rob Novelli
    Date posted: 2008-05-05
    Hometown: Pottstown, PA

    Comment:

    If I dye my hair blond, that does not make me "legally" a blond. If I have plastic surgery to take ten years off my appearance, that does not change the date on my birth certificate. The point is, changing external features does not change the gender one was born. I was born a gay man, and Beatie was born a lesbian woman. Much as I support my trans friends, I do not support the "legal" elements of gender change. How can Beatie have it both ways: to be male enough to marry a woman yet female enough to give birth?


  • Name: Greg
    Date posted: 2008-05-05
    Hometown: Harrisburg

    Comment:

    Yes she has hurt the movement.. She just wanted attention. If a person says she is a he and still has her working organs,to have a baby. Then she is a she. I don't give a damn what anyone says. I have trans friends who agree with me. She is a female having a baby nothing more nothing less. That's it...


  • Name: Mark
    Date posted: 2008-05-05
    Hometown: New York

    Comment:

    "Mr" Thomas Beatie is obviously not a transsexual, she was a woman all along and just changed her outside appearance, essentially an advanced form of drag. If she had been a real female to male transsexual she would have said to her partner, "please get a surrogate, I am now a man and men don't get pregnant". That's what gay men who want a child do, they buy an egg and hire a surrogate to carry the pregnancy, because they are men and men don't get pregnant. To top it off she is an attention whore and an opportunist who is trying to milk her notoriety at the expense of her child 's privacy and emotional well-being in the future. She should just have kept her mouth shut and stayed away from the media spotlight. As for Nancy, she knew she wasn't married to a man or even a transsexual, just to a butch lesbian in drag. When that became inconvenient the hormone treatments stopped and she was a fem again, this time around with amputated breasts.


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