So unless you've been under a rock for the past two weeks, the story of Thomas Beatie, the "pregnant man" from Oregon who's story has been in numerous periodicals and even on Oprah. Thomas — born Tracy Langondino — is certainly not the first female-to-male transgender to carry a child (and certainly won't be the last), but the media and the blogosphere have been blowing this incident up to astronomical proportions. And every Tom, Dick and Vagina has an poorly-formed, hate-filled opinion on the matter, spouting Bible scriptures, homophobic remarks, and general small-minded ignorance laced with talk of damnation, sin, hell, and God. (And if you want to know what Sherri Shepherd thinks, she's already given her POV on transgendered people months ago.)

Never mind that biologically, Thomas is still a woman with a uterus and fallopian tubes (actually, just one fallopian tube since he lost one in an ectopic pregnancy years earlier), and him having the child technically wouldn't be different than a lesbian couple having a child. (Then again, if you have a problem with that, you probably aren't a regular reader here anyway.)

I had to say something about it, because all this hullabaloo only underscores two things about the American public:

1. We still don't know how in the hell to talk with/deal with/"handle" transgendered people.
2. We have a short ass memory.

Point 1: Jezebel hit the nail on the head. Gender in mainstream culture is becoming less conservative on the daily. Androgyny is the new black, metrosexuals are ever-present, and Andre J was on the cover of French Vogue. If anything, the notion of gender as a social construct is alive, well, and being practiced. Moreover, general physical transformation is becoming more accepted in our society. There's reality shows around the concept, Botox is as common a party starter as beer kegs, and plastic surgery isn't seen as a "radical procedure", for the most part. If you don't like something about yourself, then change it. "Be the change you wish to see in the world" and all that shit. And we're living it.

So with all that known, why is Beatie's pregnancy being treated as such an oddity?

Tracy, a happy lesbian, decided she wanted to physically change her appearance to resemble a man. She took hormones, underwent surgery, and — while in a relationship with her partner, Nancy — became Thomas. And since Nancy could not carry a child to full term and Thomas still had the reproductive organs of a female, they decided to have a child together through a sperm donor. And now Thomas is pregnant and people are freaking out over it. I just don't get it — biologically, this is normal. It's not like they're different species or something — they're both human. They just decided to go with a sperm bank instead of a surrogate, and the partner just happens to physically look like a man.

(Surprisingly, I haven't heard anything about Beatie being a person of color — I guess folks are too weirded out to even talk about race.)

Point 2: Our collective short memory. Have we forgotten the late 80s and most of the 90s already? We were damn near bombarded with images of pregnant men on both the small and silver screens.

Need a reminder? Suuuuuure ya do.

 
The Cosby Show – "The Day The Spores Landed" (1989)

Heathcliff, Theo, Martin and Elvin all become pregnant, but give birth to various oddities, such as a six-foot submarine sandwich and a toy sportscar. [IMDB]

 
Alien Nation – "Real Men" (1990)
 
George, the lead alien character, comes to term with both his and humanity's perceptions of parenthood while pregnant (actually, he becomes pregnant for about half the series). [IMDB]

 
Sliders – "The Prince of Slides" (1996)

Rembrandt and crew wind up in an alternate world where women transfer their pregnancies to artificial wombs within the father of the child. Rembrandt is the one who gets implanted. [IMDB]

 

There's also several other sitcoms which played upon this theme with their male characters wearing a sympathy belly to experience the physical symptoms of pregnancy (which mostly revolved around jokes about mismatched shoes). Mama's Family, The Drew Carey Show, Full House, etc. Many sitcoms fell back on it, if only for an episode.

There were even two movies devoted to male pregnancy — Junior and Rabbit Test (if you want a further stretch, check out Enemy Mine with Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett, Jr.; despite the human/alien thing, it's actually quite touching). Rabbit Test was particularly interesting, as a large part of the film revolved around people's reactions to the pregnancy, including being hunted down by people who want him to have an abortion, including the United States Army and the President of the United States. (I wonder what Bush thinks about all this…)

I'm giving these examples because the notion of a pregnant shouldn't be new to us. Hell, Rabbit Test came out in 1978. Twenty years later, and this story comes out (which like I said earlier, ain't the first female-to-male transgender to give birth, but perhaps the first to really come out to the media about it).

I think Beatie said it best in his Oprah interview: "Love makes a family, and that's all that matters." But they will have a tough, tough road ahead of them leading up until the child's birth in July. And I have no doubt that the child will be brought up in an environment of love and support, regardless of the criticisms his/her parents are receiving now. Maybe, if we're lucky, in the future something like this won't even be an issue.

We can only hope. Thomas and Nancy, should you by chance read this blog entry, good luck to you and your child.

 

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