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Issue 1008
May 20, 2008
Transpositions

Thank you for your article "Trans Positions" about the trans activist response to the Beatie pregnancy. I was surprised and relatively disappointed at the silence from trans leaders on Beatie's pregnancy. Reactions to Beatie's pregnancy really centralized to me how much others try to define trans people and what a threat this is to us. Any movement advocating rights for a group pf people needs to have the right to self-determination at its core. Beatie, in exercising self-determination and refusing to accept others' definitions of what is and isn't OK for a man to do, advances the cause of all trans people. Haters will always be haters. We would be stronger as a movement if all the energy that went into questioning Beatie's masculinity, or his choice to go public, was instead used to educate others. I applaud trans leaders such as Donna Rose and Dean Spade for keeping an eye on the bigger picture.

Kevin Jefferson
San Francisco, Calif.
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