In 2008, Thomas Beatie created a scandal by going public with his pregnancy. SX News interviewed Peter Hyndal.

The original article is available here, at the SX Website:

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The story of Thomas Beatie, the ‘pregnant man’, caused a media storm recently, but what do trans men think about it?

After Thomas Beatie spoke out publicly recently about his decision as a trans man to become pregnant (SX#375), everybody had an opinion.

Conservative commentators were outraged, while Oprah Winfrey – on whose show Beatie and his wife Nancy appeared – called it “a new definition of what diversity means for everybody”.

But he’s not the first trans man to become pregnant: in 1999, Matt Rice – then the partner of trans male author Patrick (formerly Pat) Califia – gave birth to a daughter.

Califia spoke about the couple’s experiences in the Village Voice, describing how some female-to-male (FTM) trans people wished the baby dead and started to call Rice by his ‘girl’ name.

Nearly a decade has passed since then, so what do trans men think about those in their community such as Beatie, who, having kept their reproductive systems in tact, exercise their right to become a parent by conceiving a child?

“Bringing the child into the world in this way is not about reproductive rights,” asserts Craig Andrews, Coordinator of FTM Australia, a membership organisation that provides resources to trans men.

“After eight years on testosterone, every cell of this individual’s body has been affected by the drug, including the uterus and ovaries. We have no idea what effects this has on the development of a child growing in a womb affected in this way ... I have no idea why someone would want to put a vulnerable developing foetus in such a developmental environment. This is extremely selfish, thoughtless, short-sighted behaviour.”

Jamison Green, a renowned author, educator and campaigner on trans issues in the US, says there are two general strains of thought from the trans community on Beatie’s situation.

“[One is] he’s jeopardising all of us in our quests to be regarded as male and [two] it’s fine, it’s great that he does what he wants with his body, but he sure didn’t have to go public with it.”

And it’s the latter that Green himself finds bothersome. “I wish Thomas Beatie had not turned himself over to the media because it may end up being difficult for his child down the road,” he tells SX.

“I also wish he would not persist in holding himself out as a pioneering ‘lone ranger’, which looks like nothing more than a narcissistic bid for attention, and may create such resentment in the trans community that if [he and his family] ever do need community support they may not find it, and they might blame the community for that, not themselves. This prospect makes me very sad.”

In regards to whether it is acceptable for Beatie to become pregnant and give birth, Green believes “a little variety” in our definitions of ‘men’ and ‘women’ is a good thing. “We have these notions about what men do and what women do, and we’ve seen many of the limitations on each sex be broken down over the past century; why not this one?” he says.

“It does bring up notions about ‘real’ men, and ‘real’ women, but these concepts are often used to exclude and adversely discriminate against people who do not fit some prescribed mould, and don’t serve any constructive purpose. As far as I am concerned, [Beatie] has the right to do what he wants with his body and to define himself.”

Peter is a 35-year-old trans man living in Canberra. He is stepfather to his female partner’s 10-year-old child and father to a three-year-old conceived by his partner, using his eggs.

“What we loved about this option was that by separating out ‘biology’ from ‘pregnancy’ we ensured a critical role for both of us,” he tells SX.

Unlike some trans men who reject their female past and body parts, Peter says he doesn’t see himself solely as a man. “I am trans. I hold a history of 25 years of living as a woman and a dyke and I am a different kind of man to what I could ever have been if I had been born male. Although I do not identify as being female, and I don’t want other people to identify me as being female, the fact that I was for so long, the fact that I chose not to be forever, the fact that I transitioned and so on is all an integral part of who I am now, as a trans man.”

This history is one of the reasons Peter decided to not to undergo a hysterectomy, despite being urged to do so by friends and the medical community. “To hold on to my uterus and so on felt like one way that I could ‘claim’ and ‘own’ my history and hold that history – literally – within my very body,” he explains.

It’s also a “site for political rebellion” for Peter – a stance against the requirement by the ACT government (and according to lawyer Rachael Wallbank that of other Australian states) that in order to be recognised as legally male, a trans man must undergo sex reassignment surgery that includes removal of the reproductive system.

“I refuse to have a government insist that I undergo a completely medically unnecessary surgical procedure to sterilise myself simply in order to obtain a legal right that I am perfectly entitled to receive,” Peter says.

So is society ready for a ‘pregnant man’? If the hostile attitudes and overt discrimination experienced by both Beatie and Peter from medical professionals and fertility centre staff are anything to go by, it seems not.

“I don’t think it’s so much a question of whether society is ready for us as much as whether we are ready for society,” Peter argues. “I think the real issue is that society – and I mean here not only mainstream society, but also the so-called GLBTI community – is still not really ready for the existence of trans men at all.”