What the Pregnant Man didn't deliver

By the time Thomas Beatie, "the Pregnant Man," strode across Oprah Winfrey's stage on April 3, his story had already become a worldwide phenomenon. Beatie -- a transgendered man who was born a woman and became pregnant through artificial insemination -- had captured headlines, and worldwide attention, in the preceding weeks. On the show, Oprah clutched Beatie's belly like a touchy aunt and asked him nosy questions about his family, his sex life and the appearance of his clitoris. ("It looks like a penis," he answered, uncomfortably.)

The episode -- which garnered a 45 percent audience increase compared to the same time slot in the previous week -- was actually one of the more nuanced moments in a bizarre uproar over a bizarre pregnancy that became fodder for news anchors and late-night comedians. The night before, David Letterman had aired a top 10 list of "messages left on the pregnant man's answering machine." No. 1 was, "Michael Jackson here -- just wanted to reach out to another androgynous freak show."

The transgender community has often been caught in the shadow of its gay and lesbian brethren, and Beatie's story offered an opportunity for some much-needed attention. But with the spotlight hopelessly focused on such salacious details as Beatie's genitalia, and the story becoming little more than a punch line, it has left many transgender activists wishing the Thomas Beatie media circus would simply go away. Unfortunately, that's unlikely to happen. Beatie is due to give birth Thursday, July 3, via Caesarean section, an event likely to ignite a new wave of media coverage and unfortunate puns, and once again raise some prickly questions: What does the media's treatment of Thomas Beatie tell us about the way America thinks about the transgender community? Why do we even care about him? And what, if anything, can the pregnant man teach us about the changing nature of gender in America?

The story of the pregnant man began, demurely enough, with an essay in the Advocate, a gay and lesbian magazine, describing Beatie's pregnancy and his trouble finding a doctor. It told the poignant tale of Beatie's transition, his wife Nancy's hysterectomy, and his decision to become pregnant with a child. There was little that was medically remarkable about Beatie's pregnancy -- facial hair excepted -- and, as a matter of fact, he is not the first transgendered man to carry a child. (The Village Voice published an article about a transgendered male pregnancy as far back as 2000.)

 

 What the Pregnant Man didn't deliver