On Thomas Beattie, being trans and daring to have children
Apr 5th, 2008 by Rebecca
I’m unsurprised in many ways at the media saga that has surrounded the pregnancy of Thomas Beattie. What’s really saddened me, though, is some of the pretty appalling comments I’ve seen made about him from within the trans community.
One of the awkward issues that many of us who are trans are going to face, whether we’re transwomen or transmen, is what to do about having children. The law in most jurisdictions in essence forestalls a choice on our part by requiring that we forego any reproductive capacity before being granted a legal change of sex, apart from the options of storing biological material for later conception. It’s certainly not something we’d all choose - as much as I would love to have children (I’ve always been really maternal), I could never in a million years father a child, because the cognitive dissonance would, well, break my brain. This doesn’t mean in the slightest that I’d begrudge anyone with the physical capacity to have children - and who doesn’t have the same objection - the right to do so.
With that in mind, I’ve got so much respect for Thomas Beattie. He’s come out and taken the media flak, and despite barrages of awful reporting, has taken the chance to make people think, and put a human face to others in his situation. It’ll be a thorny issue with the press and the essentialists for a long time to come, but I don’t think the concept of a pregnant man will ever carry quite the same shock value ever again. Furthermore, considering some of the things I’ve heard about his hometown of Bend, Oregon, I just think that he’s incredibly brave. And as such, I’m frustrated at some of the essentialist crap coming out of my own community.
I’ve seen a few really insensitive comments in LiveJournal communities and the like, but what really spurred me to comment on it was an awful email that went out on a national trans list yesterday from a relatively well-known figure in the Australian transmale community. It spouted a bunch of rotten half-truths about Beattie and pregnancy among transmen, calling him “unstable”, declaring that “all the children born to these folks, have developed autism spectrum disorders and/or severe adhd”, and flat-out arguing for the law to be changed so that Beattie would have to be legally considered a woman while he had any capacity to actually become pregnant. I was gobsmacked.
Thomas Beattie - and the numerous others who have preceded him - provide a fundamental challenge to essentialist notions of sex. However, I see no justifiable reason why a man shouldn’t be able to become pregnant if he has the physical capacity to do so - without threatening his legal status as a man. The sheer anger, even hatred, that I’ve seen from some corners of my own community because he dared challenge our notions really boggles the mind, especially against the backdrop of our own experiences with being seen to challenge sex and gender. It also strikes me in a sense as peculiarly self-eugenicist - as if many of us have internalised the notion that our bodies are so different that something as basic as having children should be beyond us. While I personally would never feel comfortable with biologically fathering a child as a transwoman, I see no good reason to begrudge anyone who lacks that same level of dissonance from doing so, and I’m pretty disappointed at many members of my community for doing otherwise.
As a final note, my friend Ryan has a great post up in response to the same incident, and while I couldn’t work it into the above post, I wanted to give it a plug.
Wow, that’s brilliant.
That’s all I can say, you’re absolutely right. If this were a bio man we were talking about (hypothetically), we wouldn’t see any of this sort of commentary. Clearly those negative commentators are either transphobic, or just moral cowards who fear their gender identity will be less excepted because of any transphobic reaction in the wider community.
the livejournal posts and comments have really, really pissed me off. there have been some pretty horrific things said, and really bigoted opinions have been supported by a lot of people. it makes me sad.
also, i think i know who you’re talking about wrt to the email, and i’m so *not* surprised.
I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with the trans communities reactions to this Beatie case too.
I wasn’t terribly surprised about the who the author of the email was, but I was surprised that he aired those opinions on ATSN, but has stayed clear of the discussion on OzGuys. I thought that was a particularly nasty brand of cowardice.
Wow, the Ozguys/ATSN stuff doesn’t surprise me either. That person has a long history of behaving with near pathological disgust towards anyone who doesn’t completely identify as a man. Although I’m surprised, reading RyanWren’s post, that apparently people pounce on him nowadays. So many posts have been censored on the ozguys list that a special journal exists to discuss them! If you ever want to have a beer sometime, I can tell you stories and stories….
OOH Az, I am totally up for that beer!
I have noticed that the person in question often adds his response to the emails sent out by other people that are pouncing on him (rather than emailing a separate response), and these days discussion has just about died on the list.
I can’t say I’m all that surprised, considering his actions and tone on ATSN. But censoring tons of posts? I’m all curious now….
Wow. I didn’t know there was a split in the trans community over this. That is so sad. I hope that Thomas Beattie has enough of a close personal friend/family support through all this. I can’t imagine what he’s going through.
The whole damn situation is so ironic. All the moral majority folks are foaming at the mouth about this and I just want to shake them all and be like, “Stop thinking you have the right to control who has children and when.”
Everyone seems to have their own opinion. It seems to me I hear more negative reactions from the men in our community. They tend to be along the lines of “This is messed up and it’s screwing up things for everyone.” The responses from women tend to be along the lines of “This is his right and reproductive freedoms” and some might add “…even if it’s a little weird.” Like I said, it’s not a rule.. I’ve heard both reactions from both, but I wonder why that is?
It’s frustrating, but I do see where it comes from.
As a transwoman, I get pretty frustrated with people who would paint me as something other than a woman; I can see how that would spout fears of “well, if a transman can be seen to do something reserved for women, what is that telling people about me?” There’s also the prospect of really negative consequences specifically for transmen if going to the media backfires, such as the possibility of requiring even more invasive surgeries (such as hysterectomy) for legal recognition of their maleness.
That just clashes with my anti-essentialist side, however - which says “why does pregnancy have to be coded as something intrinsically female? if the dissonance in carrying a child is low enough that a transman doesn’t mind doing so, good luck to him, and the essentialists can go fuck off”. Really, when it comes down to it, I’d rather stand and fight for all of our community rather than throwing people under the bus because it’s politically convenient.
The comments I’ve read in the ftm livejournal comm were mostly along the lines of “hey, if he wants to get pregnant that’s fine, but he’s an asshole for going public with it”, the very real fear being that legislators will notice the loophole that makes it possible for a legal male to get pregnant and start refusing to change the legal sex of anyone still in possession of a uterus.
And it is a real and justified fear, but I think the outrage is being targeted in the wrong direction. Beattie isn’t the one making stupid essentialist laws, but it’s easier to hold him responsible because the crazy-making ways of legislators is outside our control.
Yeah, I’ve seen plenty of comments to that effect, too. The particular ones that prompted this post were very much of the “men don’t get pregnant, so he’s a woman” variety (blech), but the concerns about going public are rather more understandable.
I guess, yeah, I’m not inclined to see hiding as a particularly effective political strategy, and saying “oh, don’t speak up, don’t tell them you exist” for me kind of reeks of the stance Barney Frank and HRC have taken towards our community generally a bit too much to be comfortable with it.
Anyway, thanks for dropping by, Nick! I’ve always liked your comments elsewhere.