Pregnant man is pregnant

Thomas Beatie, the anti-Christ and trans man who achieved notoriety earlier this year for daring to be both a trans man *and* pregnant – at the same time, mind you – has announced that he is expecting another baby next June.

According to ABC News:

Thomas Beatie, the controversial “pregnant man” who gave birth to a daughter earlier this year, reveals to Barbara Walters in an exclusive interview that he is pregnant again with his second child.

Thomas Beatie, a transgender, welcomed a baby girl, Susan, June 29. Since sharing the story of Susan’s birth with ABC News, he and his wife, Nancy Beatie, hadn’t spoken to the media until they sat down last month with Walters.

Thomas Beatie, who is in his first trimester, tells Walters he did not go back on the male hormone testosterone after Susan’s birth so he could have another baby.

“I feel good,” he said. “I had my checkups with my hormone level, as far as the HCG. And everything is right on track.” He says the baby is due June 12.

Thomas Beatie also spoke to Walters about Susan’s birth, which was not via Caesarean section. He was in labor for 40 hours; Nancy Beatie cut the umbilical cord.

Thomas Beatie is legally male. But as the parent who gave birth, he was listed by the state of Oregon on the birth certificate as the “mother.” His spouse was then listed as their baby’s “father.”

Later, those designations were scrapped by the state for the gender-neutral term “parent,” which is commonly used on the birth certificates of children of same-sex couples. For the Beaties, this was still upsetting.

“In essence, they are invalidating our marriage,” Thomas Beatie said. “It is very upsetting to me. I feel that it’s a flawed document.”

When asked whether he sees himself as Susan’s father or her mother, Thomas Beatie said, “I am my daughter’s father, and that’s all I’ll ever be to her. Nancy is Susan’s mother.

“It just goes to prove that mother and father are social terms,” he said. “You don’t have to be biologically related to your child to be a mother or a father.”

[…]

The potential trouble spot, according to legal experts, is not the wording on the birth certificate but the possibility that Nancy Beatie’s parental rights could be revoked.

As the biological parent, Thomas Beatie has legally secure rights. His wife, on the other hand, is not biologically related to their baby but is granted parental rights by virtue of her marriage to Thomas Beatie.

So if the validity of their marriage were challenged, experts say, Nancy Beatie’s parental rights could be in jeopardy.

“There is litigation in other states over whether their marriage would be recognized,” said Nancy Polikoff, a law professor at American University in Washington, D.C.

Polikoff envisioned a scenario in which the Beaties moved to a state that refuses to recognize Thomas Beatie’s legal sex change in Hawaii. If that happens, his marriage would be revoked as an illegal same-sex marriage and Nancy Beatie’s parental status could be questioned.

[…]

In order to secure Nancy Beatie’s parental rights, lawyers advise the Beaties to do what many same-sex couples with children do — have Nancy Beatie, as the nonbiological parent, adopt their baby.

[…]

The Beaties agree that adoption would protect them, but they don’t want to do that as a matter of principle. They see themselves as a legally married heterosexual couple. They note that they file taxes jointly as husband and wife.

“We shouldn’t have to adopt our own daughter,” Thomas Beatie said.

As always it’s “trans person: justify your existence to the almighty cis person”.

As always, trans people are second class citizens.

And, as always, cis people view the entire situation through the blinkered lens of cissexual supremacy.

But now – with added oppression! “We may not be able to stop him having children, but we can take away his wife’s parental rights. You want to mess with the gender binary? – Here, we’ll show you a thing or two about messing with our safe, comfortable norms”.

I mean, seriously – wtf? And *why*? Just what is the problem here? It surely can’t be that Nancy Beatie is a bad parent, otherwise this threat would have come up ages ago.

No, I think it’s more likely that the lovely lovely cis people, being oh-so-obviously threatened by this truly scary event are just having another little knee-jerk reaction; flailing about for reasons to smack the Beaties hard. For their own good, of course. And won’t somebody think of the children pleeeeeeease…

It’s rubbish, frankly. You cis people should be ashamed of yourselves.

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Also via Courier Mail, Australia.

As expected, each piece contains plenty of the usual stereotypical journalistic errors and barely concealed prejudices and scaremongering – but hey, why let the real person get in the way of that good old-fashioned, lazy, tabloid-style reporting…

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Previous, related posts about Thomas Beatie:

• The first rule of Book Club… (October 28, 2008)
• “Pregnant man” gives birth (July 4, 2008)
• A pregnant man? Ohz noes!!11!!! (June 12, 2008)
• That joke isn’t funny any more (May 5, 2008)