No matter what surgery, hormones and dress you apply to a woman, she remains a woman. This is not a man having a baby. This is a woman with mental problems having a baby. If someone believes they are Napoleon, we dont' salute them. That doesn't mean we need to arrest them or deny them civil rights, but Joe from Accounting is not the LIttle Emperor, no matter what his brain tells him.

The fact that there is a cottage industry of people willing to humor such people does not change the fact - ovaries = female. Biological curiousities like XYY chromosome carriers and anatomical hermaphrodites don't blur the line either. This case is very simple - a woman who society is allowing to use a male pronoun on legal documants is pregnant. It takes Red Queen-thinking to believe anything else.

Biological curiousities like XYY chromosome carriers and anatomical hermaphrodites don't blur the line either.

Actually yes, they most certainly do. What a stupid statement.

If someone believes they are Napoleon, we dont' salute them.

I salute them.

One would presume JonFrum meant XXY as "XYY" doesn't really blur the lines. People have tried to link XYY to an increase in violent tendencies in the past but I'm not sure the current science on the topic.

On the other hand, ambiguous gentilia can easily "blur the line" as it can be impossible to accurately determine sex - sometimes they guess wrong. While the causes of ambiguous genitalia (or disorders of sexual development if you prefer) are many, suffice it to say that onemay have a Y chromosome that the body ignores for sexual development. Thus the mere presence of a Y chromosome does not a man make.

"No matter what surgery, hormones and dress you apply to a woman, she remains a woman."

So, supposing you were destined for an arranged marriage and Beatie was chosen to be your wife. No problem, he's really a woman right?

Cultures that enforce arranged marriages don't generally allow people to choose which gender they get to live with so your argument is absurd.

I agree with the original poster that we should respect this person's choice and call them by whatever name they would like but ultimately it simply isn't accurate to say a "man" is pregnant.

I have to agree with this. This is not the medical anomaly they would have us believe it is (the kind that gets you invited on Oprah.) This is simply a pre-operative transsexual male who has had his breasts removed and employed steroids to grow a beard. I have no problem calling this person a male if that is what he wishes but, really, it's not a stunning event that a uterus can bear a child, even if that uterus is the natural component of a pre-operative transsexual male.

I'm wondering why you believe that transexuals have a mental problem.

It's a medical condition, where changing the body to match the mental picture ends years of pain.

Fine, but just because a person feels uncomfortable as a female doesn't make them *not* a woman. It simply makes them a woman who identifies more with masculinity for some reason. But she's still a woman. (And yes, she does have mental issues, because the problem is with her brain/mind. Whether she has any sort of control or responsibility for her identity condition is a completely separate issue.) This person is still the genetic mother of the child, and the child's official birth records ought to reflect that. Otherwise, what's the point to recording the mother and father???

I'm curious, Mr Frum. If ovaries make a woman, wouldn't you say that testicles make a man? After all, biologically speaking, the movement in a fetus up or down of the proto-ovaries/testicles, a movement determined by the DNA sequence, (XY or XX), is what biologically makes a girl or boy.

Following this logic, if I might jump the belligerent gun, what exactly would you make of a man who was physically castrated? Society may jokingly refer to him as no longer a 'man', but he certainly isn't a woman.

Another curious curiosity: if ovaries make a woman, and testicles make a man what is someone who has both? (Other than sexually effficient) (yes, that was a joke).

My final point is both pompous and poignant: if the government, state or national, has decided that this person is a man in the same manner in which they decide that the speed limit is 65 and that theft is wrong and punishable, who are you to condemn those citizens acting and living in accordance with the law? Will you next decide that 78 is a better speed limit, and that taking things which are not yours is laudable?

So if someone has mental discomfort, and there is a way to end the discomfort, why not treat the discomfort with what is proven to work?

And why not respect the person's wishes and call them what they wish to be called if it's part of the treatment that works?

Hooray! A voice of compassion and reason.

People do NOT choose to be born transsexual, they just are. Transition (physically changing the body to match the mind) has proven to be the ONLY effective treatment.

Gender is determined by the brain, the seat of consciousness. Science has proven that genitals do not determine gender (google "intersex"). Neither do chromosomes. There are women who are XY (google "androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) and men who are XX (google "Male XX syndrome). And neither do hormones. A study at UCLA shows that the brain is already wired for gender early in gestation even BEFORE hormones get involved. A persons sense of self is the only 100% reliable measure of gender.

Anybody who argues to the contrary is being needlessly essentialist. Look at the news: We see people who have remnant of a twin inside them. Or in the case of a girl in India-she was born with 8 limbs. We see animals born with all kinds of deformities. We know that nature LOVES diversity and we accept all kinds of amazing things. But we can't accept people born transsexual. Why? I think the negative reactions here say more about our societies own hangups about gender/sex than it does about transsexualism.

HE is whatever HE says HE is.

Diversity happens. As Dr Milton Diamond, a world expert on gender, says:

"Nature loves diversity, society hates it."

It's time that we as a society evolve beyond the fear and hate, and learn to embrace our God given diversity.

Maybe this whole debate is part of why one of my Sociology professors, when discussing sexuality, felt it important to repeatedly point out that gender and sex are not the same thing: gender is the mental construct and self-concept of a person vis-a-vis how they relate to potential sexual partners; sex is the little naughty bits themselves.

Maybe the original poster came off as a bit harsh, but I basically agree. I support the rights of the transgendered, and I also support the rights of feminists. I support the right of gays to adopt, and on and on down the liberal checklist. However, I do draw a line, somewhere around undisputed reality.

To wit: nature is not a feminist. If you are a woman who wants a baby, you need to have it before you're 40. Period. Full stop. To have the baby any later greatly increases its chances of being born deformed, or not being born at all. I'm sorry if that puts a crimp in your joining the boys club, shattering the glass celieling, or turning single-womanhood into the new bachelorhood. Sorry. Just, sorry. If you want to live the life of a man, unencumbered by maternity leave, then you will have to not have kids just like a man. Of course, men should be allowed paternity leave, and society should be more flexible, and the fact that women need to respect a biological age limit doesn't mean they can't get creative with it. But the fact remains, women should aim to have children before 40.

And gays should aim to include opposite sex inflences in their children's lives.

And transgendered people should think about the rights of their child, and should FOLLOW the gender roles they expect EVERYONE ELSE to follow. If the transgendered expect us to treat them, not as their original gender with an asterisk next to it, but as their new gender completely, then at the very least I can understand the confusion and consternation at this pregnancy.

I don't think this "man" is doing something unexcusably wrong, but he is most certainly bringing hardship into the child's life. I would feel different if the child were adopted or something (as is often the case with gay couples), because an 'abnormal' family is still much better than no family at all.

Maybe I've wound up sounding awful conservative in this post, maybe more than I'd like to. But the fact remains, just because a group of people is oppressed by society and deserves special consideration, it doesn't automatically mean that members of that group can do no wrong, or that they can't take things too far. Witness gay "bug chasers."

I would imagine that JonFrum believes that transsexuals have a mental problem because anyone that doesn’t know who they are and would mutilate their body to fit what they think they should be would have to be insane. If you are born male then you are male and if you are born female then you are female. Hormone imbalances, poor environment, poor social development, and weak and insufficient role models are the contributing factors in any gender confusion. It is simply an extension of homosexuality and lesbians, which are also mental diseases.

Nobody in their right mind would disfigure their bodies. Having a disfigured mental picture of who and what you are is by definition a mental disease.

“Who you tryin' to get crazy with ese? Don't you know I'm loco?”

Insane in the membrane
Insane in the brain!
Insane in the membrane
Insane in the brain!

Insane in the membrane
Plenty insane
Got no brain!
Insane in the membrane
Insane in the brain!

~ Cypress Hill

"And transgendered people should think about the rights of their child, and should FOLLOW the gender roles they expect EVERYONE ELSE to follow."

I don't expect everyone else to follow gender rules, as I have rejected them for myself, so why would I think that anyone else should follow an arbitrary set of rules themselves?

I think that the rights of the child were violated when Beattie decided to put himself in the news, not when he decided to bear the child himself.

And, please don't claim to be for the rights of transgendered people and put "man" in quotes. It's disrespectful to the wishes of the person you are talking about.