Today I want to talk about the pregnant man. Thomas Beattie was born a woman named Tracy but eventually decided that he was not a woman and therefore no longer comfortable in a woman's body. He had breast removal surgery and went on hormone therapy to begin the change, but he knew that he wanted children one day and kept his reproductive organs intact for this purpose. His wife of 10 years is unable to have children so it seemed perfectly naturally for the couple to inseminate Thomas.
I was reading about this on a news website the other day and began reading the comments posted beneath the article. I was outraged to read such things as "It's disgusting" and "What a fag." This is such unfair criticism! These comments don't even further the discourse but blunt the discussion by dismissing the whole situation. This is cruel and short-sighted. This is not the last time this will happen, people! I think that those of you are so narrow-minded as to be unable to accept a new "normal" are in for a real shock in the years to come.
As Thomas so eloquently put it, the desire to have children is not a female or male desire, it is a human desire. Many people of both (any) genders and many sexual orientations/identities hope to have children one day. I find it ironic that traditionally gendered heterosexuals with no moral compass whatsoever can have as many children as they like while people like the Beatties are subject to such criticism for this same desire when there is virtually no evidence that they will not be wonderful parents.
I would also like to address the less outrageous but still bothersome tendency of people to insist on referring to Thomas as "she" or "she-he" or some other pronoun than "he". Thomas chose to become a man and identifies as a man, even while pregnant. (This from the horse's mouth, see the Oprah show.) He and his wife say that he will be the child's father and his wife will be the child's mother, as with any other "normal" family. All of this indicates that we should be referring to Thomas as "he." Whatever he was in the past, he is now a man. Let's respect his decision and try to keep the pronouns consistent.
I am certain that if I ever reach a point where more people than I can count on one hand read this blog, this post will elicit comments. I ask not that you agree with me, but that you be respectful.
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1 comments:
Oh, I'll bite - but mostly because it relates to something that's been on my mind for a few weeks, but I'm not entirely sure what to say about it yet.
I think what we're seeing, with these reactions, is your basic yuck factor - or if you're feeling kind towards Leon Kass, the wisdom of repugnance. People are having an intuitive ICK reaction; they use this as the basis for moral rationalization, working backwards to find cause, rather than start from moral reasoning and see where they end up.
Why are they having that ICK? That's interesting - it gives insight into something, although I don't think it's the conclusion "men shouldn't bear children". But something is making people's intuitive or, if you want to go as far as the neuro/evobiologists, innate/genetic morality, set off an alarm bell.
To be honest, if I had to take a stab at what's bothering people, I think it's the same thing that bothers people about gay men - notions of purity. In Volatile Bodies, Liz Grosz talks about how women are considered vessels of impurity and contagion - women are guardians of the sexual fluids of both genders, and she is in fact seen as a sponge, absorbing the contagion, the dirt of men.
To directly quote Liz, “There remains a broadly common coding of the female body as a body which leaks, which bleeds, which is at the mercy of hormonal and reproductive functions” and “…the deep-seated fear of absorption, the association of femininity with contagion and disorder”.
Add to that her understanding of pregnancy, "Man sees that his ‘function’ is to create, and own, at a (temporal and special) distance, and thus to extend bodily interests beyond the male body’s skin through it’s proprietorial role, its ‘extended corporeality’ in the mother whom he has impregnated and the child thereby produced, making them his products, possessions, responsibilities.” and I think it becomes at least clearer where so many people's horror and yuck is coming from.
That said, I'd like to blame being a bioethicist on having lost my yuck factor - I'm sure I just misplaced it, it's around here somewhere... but I don't have it, and I haven't had it for a long time. Stories like this certainly bring about a raised eyebrow "huh... curious" - but that's about it. And I wonder if, in the long run, what that actually means is that I (and anyone else who doesn't reaction with the immediate yuck) have moved past moral rationalization and firmly into the camp of moral reason.
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