Transgender Male Gives Birth

According to Medical News Today, Thomas Beatie, the trans gender man who made headlines in March as the "pregnant man," gave birth Sunday to a healthy baby girl. The news of the pregnancy was revealed in the Advocate, a guy rights publication. Beatie also appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show in April.

The birth, at St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, Oregon, was natural.

Beatie was born as Tracy Lagondin, a female, and grew up in Hawaii. He was a Girl Scout and a finalist in a teenage beauty pageant and a model. In his twenties he had gender reassignment and began taking testosterone. However, he never had his female organs removed and legally had his gender changed from female to male.

Beatie, now 34, stopped taking testosterone 2 years ago when he and his wife, Nancy who is 46, decided to have a baby. His wife couldn't have any more children because she has had a hysterectomy. She has two grown children from a previous marriage. Beatie and his wife were married five years ago.

ABC News reports that Beatie became pregnant by artificial insemination with the help of his wife, using donated sperm. They used a syringe-like instrument with the needle removed.

Prior to this pregnancy he had an ectopic pregnancy which resulted in the loss of triplets.

The couple state that they will maintain traditional parental roles.

There were several blog comments about this subject on ABCnews.go.com. Most were negative. The majority of bloggers commented that even though legally he is a man, but since he still has his female organs, then he must be female. One blogger wrote, "Please there is no such thing as a "man gave birth to a baby". He is still biologically a woman. Therefore, a woman giving birth to a baby is anything but abnormal." On the other hand another blogger wrote, "C'mon people. The guy is transgender....Legally, however, he is a man." Which raises the question, how exactly is transgender defined?"

Wikipedia defines the term as being the "state of one's gender identity not matching one's assigned sex." The definition goes on to say that "transgender does not imply any specific form of sexual orientation." Hence, "Mr. Beatie" as he calls himself, is neither a he nor a she. Maybe he is bi-gender. He is male when he takes testosterone and female when he stops taking the hormone. Does this mean that he is heterosexual when he is taking testosterone and a lesbian when he is not? Seems confusing.

Yourdictionary.com defines the term as: "of or being a person, as a transsexual or hermaphrodite, whose sexuality is not readily characterized as exclusively male or female." This definition seems to apply to Mr. Beatie.

According to The Advocate, in the 1980's transgender was coined as an umbrella term referring to all gender-variant people. Under the umbrella are persons referred to as drag queens and kings, cross-dressers, transsexuals, gender-queer, among others. The author of the article also states that transgender people can be straight, lesbian, gay or bi-sexual.

Transgenderism has also been classified in medical terms as "gender identify disorder."

There most definitely is no clear or exact definition of what transgender is. There may never be. Most likely different terms will be coined in the future for all the different "gender-variant" people, thereby clarifying a persons gender orientation.

Ref.,
'Pregnant Man' Gives Birth to Girl by Russel Goldman and Katie Thomson; www.abcnews.go.com
Gender Change Man Has Baby The Natural Way by Catherine Paddock, PhD: www.medicalnewstoday.com
What's In A Trans Name? by Joanne Herman: www.advocate.com