It would have been nice if someone who knew anything about gender theory in the past 20 years had been assigned to write this story. Instead, we got William Saletan. Way to stay on the cutting edge, Slate! Now anyone who clicks on the link to this story from Hotmail.com or MSN.com will get to have their views about this Improper Man happily confirmed, and everyone's traditional gender roles will be solidly reaffirmed. All in a day's work, eh?

I have to admit I was rather unpleasantly shocked to find something as utterly uninformed as this piece in Slate, of all places.

I realize that trans-people who are not drag queens, prostitutes or sex criminals are a radical new idea for Americans. However, to merely parrot back the already laughably simplified, misrepresented and outright wrong jibberings of MSM and the outraged fundies betrays either complete intellectual laziness or willful ignorance.

For the first time in my adult life, I guess I'm with the fundies, then. I'm fine with his insistence that he is a man. However, if he has ovaries, a uterus and a vagina then he is not a pregnant man. He is biologically a masculinized female. That means that calling him a "pregnant man" is utterly absurd. It only makes sense according to the narrow definitions of people in the transgender community. For the other 95% of us, "pregnant man" means something completely different.

Why is this such a struggle for everyone? It's as simple as separating Sex and Gender. Man refers to his Gender.

He lives like, looks like, and is treated as just any other man everywhere he goes. Or at least that was the case until he decided to place himself in the media spotlight for whatever reason.

Pregnancy is a consequence of female reproduction. Only Females (currently) become pregnant. But not every born female will grow up to be a woman.

99.9999% of the world may (currently) use Man and Male interchangeably, and Woman and Female interchangeably, but even near universal consensus cannot make the distinction invalid.

Actually, near-universal consensus is exactly where any particular word gets its definition. That's just how it works.

Then consider that we live in an age where consensus on sex and gender has begun to crumble. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Consensus, like the definition of words, changes over time.

"He lives like, looks like, and is treated as just any other man everywhere he goes. Or at least that was the case until he decided to place himself in the media spotlight for whatever reason. "

So would it be fair to call him a pregnant man once he placed himself in that spotlight? I don't care about how PC it is, once he got pregnant, he was visibly not a man, and as a pregnant person he could not be treated exactly like a man. There are physiological changes during pregnancy that have to be taken into account, and just as a pregnant woman can't act like a non-pregnant woman, a pregnant transgendered person can't act like a man (who by definition would not be pregnant).

During childbirth he was most definitely not living like, looking like, or being treated like a man.

Freki

During childbirth he was most definitely not living like, looking like, or being treated like a man.

If you insist on defining people's very identities by their reproductive processes, well then your'e right. And how we treat people is what they are. Period.

But what is your point? A woman in childbirth doesn't act the same as a merely pregnant woman either. And neither acts like a non-pregnant woman. There are physiological changes that have to be taken into account.

Are you saying he was being treated the exact same as a pregnant woman? For the purposes of childbirth, yes perhaps. But other than that? I would say he was being treated as a Pregnant Man, which is the whole reason he came to media attention. Or maybe he was just being treated as a pregnant transman. But at what point does his being different than most other men mean that he must be exactly like any other pregnant woman? If that were the simple truth, why are we even talking about him in the first place?

Why are we even talking about him in the first place? Oh, probably because he decided to leap into the spotlight like that. By publicly demonstrating his exclusively female behaviour (while not all women get pregnant, no men do) he damn well better realize he throws his public masculine identity into question.

We are not defined soley by our reproductive processes. How we are defined involves many things, how we behave, how we appear, how we feel, and how we are treated. If an MTF transsexual spent all her time talking about her testicles, it would make her appear ambiguous, because women don't have testicles. By choosing to exercise his exclusively female reproductive processes in such a public place, he threw his PUBLIC male identity into question. The way he thinks of himself, and the way his wife thinks of him undoubtedly did not change.

Also, no one is claiming he must be EXACTLY like any other pregnant woman. If nothing else, none of the pregnant women I know are on Oprah. However, since there is no such thing as a pregnant genetically male human, he isn't being treated like a pregnant man. He is being treated like a pregnant intersex celebrity.

Freki

By choosing to exercise his exclusively female reproductive processes in such a public place, he threw his PUBLIC male identity into question. The way he thinks of himself, and the way his wife thinks of him undoubtedly did not change.

Can't argue there. I don't begin to understand why he chose to advertise his pregnancy in this manner, when he is hardly the first pre-op FTM transman to become pregnant. Maybe he is ambivalent or feels ambiguously. But that's not something I need to know in order to respect how he clearly wishes to live in this society. I think the main detail that makes his case remarkable is that he has obtained a fully legal male identity without having had sterilizing surgery. This is pretty rare in transgender law, from what I understand. I may be wrong.

Also, no one is claiming he must be EXACTLY like any other pregnant woman.

That's just it, people ARE saying it's one or the other. he can't be a man because only women get pregnant. Therefore he must be a woman. It's this stubborn conflation of female with woman and man with male that supports this argument. Even yours.

Pregnancy happens to females, not males. Check. I think It is sensationalist and irresponsible to call this a "Male" pregnancy. But not every female is necessarily a woman. And not every male is a man. That is incredibly simple, but to society, it's an unyielding paradox. So when people like Beatie come along living this paradox, we flip out and make a talk show about it.

"That's just it, people ARE saying it's one or the other. he can't be a man because only women get pregnant. Therefore he must be a woman. It's this stubborn conflation of female with woman and man with male that supports this argument. Even yours. "

You are half right...I said he isn't a man if he is pregnant. I have no problem with his gender identity, as evidenced by my use of "his" and "him". Hell, if he wanted to be referred to as "shim" or "Bongo" I wouldn't care.

However, as you pointed out, there is sex and there is gender. Biologically, he is female, as evidenced by that infant he just popped out. Gender-wise, I would be more than happy to say he is a man, except that he is publicly displaying the ways in which his gender and sex differ.

I would be fine with saying he is currently ambiguous, or that he is still transitioning, or that he is happy in a third gender but prefers the gendered pronoun "he".

Freki

Freki we're just going round and round here. You're saying he can't be a man because men don't get pregnant. What you mean is he's not male because males don't get pregnant. I'm saying he is man who happens to be biologically female. You are saying he must belong to a separate category, because while you don't consider him to be a woman, he's doing something only females can do (get pregnant and give birth), and no man should be able to do that and still be considered a man.

Why can't he just be a man who happens to be biologically female? Why do we need to create a third sex just to preserve the boundaries of a false binary?

You misunderstand me (it is possible I was unclear, wouldn't be the first time!)

"male" is genetic. "Man" is a social and psychological construct, based on how someone behaves, appears and feels, right? It is often, but not always, based on one's genetic sex.

If someone wants to change from one social and psychological construct to another (woman to man) several things have to change, in order for someone to be percieved as the other gender. Beatie was pretty up front about that, he was a woman and now wishes to become a man. There is your preservation of the boundaries of a false binary.

Now, Beatie didn't need to change the way he felt; that was a given, and in fact drove his other changes. He did, however, change his appearance and mannerisms to more closely match what he felt was "manhood." He had a mastectomy, and took hormones to grow facial hair, enlarge his clitoris and deepen his voice. During that course of hormones, he looked, felt, and behaved as a man.

However, by choosing to get pregnant, he drastically changed his appearance so he no longer looked like a man as much. The physiological and psychological (I have been pregnant, and it is an estrogen roller coaster) changes of pregnancy would assure that he was not able to behave like a man all the time, and therefore would not APPEAR to be one.

Hence, ambiguous. If a short-haired, deep voiced woman in a pink polkadotted party dress and lipstick told you she was a man, you might well use her chosen form of address, but it would probably appear pretty confusing to you.

I am fine thinking about gender as a continuum, like sexual orientation, and referring to people by whichever pronoun they wish, but if they want to be considered part of one specific group or another, they should avoid behaviour that automatically puts them in the other group.

Men can be nurturing, men can crochet, men can make souffles, men can cry, men can drink fruit-flavoured malt liquor, all without casting any real doubt on their chosen gender. A man who gets pregnant, however, sure starts to seem more like a woman.

Freki