A few days ago, the worlds 'first pregnant man' gave birth to a healthy little baby. Of course, this wasn't a marvel of modern times and medicine, but bcause the man in question was a female-male transexual. Whilst he has been living as a man for a long period of time, when they operated on him, he opted to keep his female reproductive organs. Now with the help of a sperm donor he became pregnant.
This raises some strange issues. As I was going round Tesco's earlier, buying chicken (if you must know) I overheard two women talking about this - and whether he was a woman or a man. They came to the conclusion that female reproductive organs = female.
I'm not sure its quite as simple as that - eg for intersex people, but if you have a baby, and you are genertically a female, in my mind you ARE female. Now I don't mind calling Thomas Beatie a man, if it makes him feel more in touch with himself, but its very much in the same way as when you say to a fat person that they are not fat. You're not speaking the truth, but you are speaking to reduce distress.
Most transexuals I don't have a problem with labelling them with thier post operative gender, by Thomas Beatie seems to be taking the best from both genders. He wants to be a 'man' yet does something so intrinsically female.
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