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'Pregnant' man stuns medical profession
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2008-03-26 14:55
Article here. Excerpt:
"A man who used to be a woman is five months pregnant, according to an article he has written for an American magazine that features a picture of him at 22 weeks, with facial hair and a man’s flat chest above his swollen stomach.
Thomas Beatie, who was born a woman, describes himself as a “transgender male” in the piece which says his decision to have a child “has been met with discrimination and outright derision by health care professionals”.
...According to the piece, Mr Beatie went through a sex change but decided to have only chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy, stopping short of making any changes to the reproductive organs he was born with.
Mr Beatie is legally male and lives with his wife, Nancy, in Bend, Oregon.
...“How does it feel to be a pregnant man?” he writes in the article.
“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. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child. “I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family.”
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Comments
I'm not sure about this one.
Help me out guys. How is this relevant to anything?
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"The sunshine bores the daylights out of me.
Chasing shadows moonlight mystery."
[Rolling Stones]
It's the reaction
I think what is relevant is the clear, glaring 2x-standard this reveals. If a woman assumes the identity of a man, if not all the biology, and she (he?) manages to get pregnant (I am not sure I like what the production process would look like, but that's their business, not mine), look at how freaked everyone becomes. Yet when people discuss the idea of women having kids with women that are a true genetic cross between the two women's DNA, they get all fluttery and are very supportive. But again try mentioning the fusion of sperm cells from two different men and you will get disgusted looks from everyone but the gay guys.
Men assuming female identity but keeping their penises/gonads? Happens all the time. A woman assumes a male identity and not only does the same but uses it? Well then, holy $hit, stop the presses!
Good Point
"Yet when people discuss the idea of women having kids with women that are a true genetic cross between the two women's DNA, they get all fluttery and are very supportive." [mcc99]
..........................................................
"The sunshine bores the daylights out of me.
Chasing shadows moonlight mystery."
[Rolling Stones]
'Tis True
Men face a lot more scrutiny than women do. I.E. Being gay. Lesbianism is accepted by most people, hell it's even praised by some. Yet gay men are still frowned upon, as if they're lepers.
Men are not really "men" if we show emotion, either. That's what society tells us at least. Or if we have compassion for our fellow man. That's not masculine, we have to look out for just #1.
As far as I'm concerned society can take its definition of everything, as well as its double standards, and shove them so far up their a$$ they can taste 'em.
Evan AKA X-TRNL
Real Men Don't Take Abuse!
Is it lack of understanding, or just bad grammar?
You put the wrong word in quotes.
'Pregnant' man should instead be Pregnant 'man'.
(This comment is not intended to be a joke. In physical reality, what we have here is a pregnant woman, or maybe a pregnant "ersatz man")
-ax
Typical usage, perhaps.
axolotl:
I believe that's just typical usage of quotations in headlines. The BBC website is thick with them, usually in odd places.
Elephants sense 'danger' clothes
A journey into 'fab world'
Apology to 'ghost' scare patient
French 'serial killer' on trail
Anyway, they're not intended to be ironic; they really do denote a quotation or paraphrase.
I'm not they're all good analogies
Maybe a better analogy to this case would be,
A 'journey' into fab world (should have been) A journey into 'fab world'
What has occurred, is that this person has in fact become pregnant. Since this fact is not in doubt, I'm not sure why the headline has the word "pregnant" in quotes. I stated the word "man" should be in quotes, because the author of the article does not understand that the person is actually a woman (hopefully the doctors do understand this!). Even a woman with a penis attached is not a man, she is a woman with a penis attached (thus the term "ersatz". I don't think they can do "testes transplants" yet - so the woman must depend on her injections of testosterone.)
Although there is at least one known case where a zygote experimentally implanted in a male baboon, did grow to a surprisingly advanced stage (before "aborting").
-ax
You're certainly right.
I completely agree; your usage makes more sense, and causes less confusion. Unfortunately, neither of us get to make the rules on headline-writing.
Well
I take it you're not a fan of the transgendered population, then. Born a man inside, always a man inside? The question is: Is gender really socially constructed or are you born with it already preprogrammed? What if the programming got screwed up and you had the wrong body?
Gender ain't socially constructed
The debate between nature and nurture shows nature winning out. There's been a fair amount of research lately, showing this. It is mainly feminists, the occasional non-mainstream psychologist, and people that hate 'determinism', who hold on to the notion that gender is culturally determined.
One example is research showing that young boys and girls exclusively seek out same-sex playmates. Adults who believe the sexes are basically interchangeable, have gone out of their way to force boys and girls to be playmates with each other. But all that that has accomplished, is to cause the children to play "overtime" and make same-sex friends when not under adult observation.
Everything idiot sociologists do to try and prove the sexes are interchangeable, and that each and every difference is a social construct (besides physiology, obviously), has only served to highlight the innate differences between the sexes. It's almost like these sociologists set out to prove themselves wrong.
-ax
Different subject: the transgendered
"What if the programming got screwed up and you had the wrong body?"
That does happen. But as far as I know, there's only three scientifically valid, reputable sex reassignment centers in the U.S. All the other doctors doing these "conversions" are quacks who will do anything for money. And I suspect the "victims" of these unethical surgeons, in the long run, end up with bigger physiological and psychological problems than they started out with.
-ax