Pregnant Man: A Stillborn Chance to Educate The Public

It's a man-woman world," Oprah said to Thomas Beatie, the now renowned pregnant man, in her interview back in April. Beatie just smiled shyly and nodded in agreement.

The problem is that it is ONLY a man-woman world in our social construction of things, but not in their biological truth. There is, in fact, more diversity with regard to man and woman in the natural order of things than we humans have allowed expression for.

The couple, albeit brave, decided to go public with their story, but chose the wrong places to do so. Although the story first broke in The Advocate, where the article was written by Beatie himself, the couple then decided to grant interviews to Oprah and People Magazine at the exclusion of all other outlets. This choice baffles me. How do you expect to sway the public towards tolerance and acceptance when you talk to the tabloid outlets? Wouldn't you get a more intelligible understanding if you decided to interview with say, The New York Times? Even though the Times has not historically covered transgender issues with a full understanding of the issues at hand, they did run a fairly representational account of the Beatie story, but it hit the streets buried in the Fashion & Style section more than two months after the story first broke.

That's how we ended up with a "pregnant man" as the headlines showed. That's also how we ended up with a very confused public about how this could have happened, thinking that a biological male gave birth. In fact, Beatie is a female-born, transgender man. He was born with female reproductive organs but partially transitioned via hormones and top surgery keeping everything from the waist below in tact.

The public outcry and tabloid headlines that ensued as a result of the breaking story reflect both the ignorance we spread when we don't explain things in a contextual manner. What the couple did was risk moving even further away from educating people around the dynamics of sex and gender.

While I would respect to the fullest extent the couple's decision to keep this family matter private, their decision to come out with the information left them with a responsibility to touch on the right talking points and not reinforce the outmoded notions of "a man, woman world."

What we can glean from this story, more than gender as a social construct, is the extent to which we are ignorant about our own gender.