A pregnant man: What’s so wrong with that?

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This post is by Milou van der Hoek for the series Behind the Mask of Masculinity hosted by Gender Across Borders.

About the author
Milou van der Hoek is originally from the Netherlands, where she graduated in European Studies. Although the studies were very interesting, the program was blind to the gender, racial, class and postcolonial inequalities existing in Europe. For that reason she decided to move to Sweden and do a Master in Humanities in Gender Studies. In Sweden she is active in the LGBT-community and works with several Human Rights organisations. Milou hopes to graduate in two weeks.


In 2008, in an article in the online magazine The Advocate.com, Thomas Beatie announced to the world he was pregnant. Although not the first man to be pregnant, he was the first to receive an incredible amount of mainstream media attention both in and outside of the United States. If he was pregnant, he was not a man. While the penis remains the main signifier for what constitutes male, pregnancy remains for people the essence of what constitutes female.

Born with female reproductive organs, Beatie had transitioned to become a man. During
his hormonal treatment and surgeries, Beatie’s ovaries and uterus were left intact,
therefore allowing him physically to become pregnant. Medical practitioners refused or had been reluctant to help him, while the general public condemned him. He was labeled a ‘freak’, and his unborn child a ‘monster’. Thomas Beatie and his wife Nancy even received death threats. Although for me these reactions were outrageous, they were not surprising. In a world with widespread racism, homophobia and sexism, transphobia fits right in. Unfortunately, ignorance and fear of the unknown leads people to condemn what is different.

The reason why I want to discuss this topic is that I found out recently that not only people in general society condemn pregnancy in men, but also in the LGBT-community. Although pregnancy in men directly only concerns a few people on this earth, it raises big questions about both masculinity and femininity for societies at large.What is so horrible about pregnancy in men?

One argument against pregnancy in men is that it goes against the idea that giving birth is so primarily female that it directly opposes everything that is male. Historically, the reproductive organs decided someone’s sex and gender. Despite the separation between sex and gender, today it is generally still argued that there is nothing more essential about being a woman than being pregnant. Political Science Professor Paisley Currah expresses this well by explaining that some “felt that “she” [Beatie] was still a woman; others thought transitioning should mean Beatie had forfeited his right to give birth; and still others (usually women) expressed annoyance at all the attention the first “pregnant man” was getting”. These three reactions indicate different general assumptions about masculinity and femininity. Being pregnant is not only considered essentially feminine, but also inherently immasculine. Even if Beatie perfectly followed the hegemonic masculine ideal in looks, body strength, interests, hobbies, and in his relationships, being pregnant would not only reduce his masculinity, but completely nullify it. A further argument, often cited also within the LGBT-community is that by becoming a man, a person gives up his right to become pregnant. Transsexuality for some is then acceptable only if one is ‘willing to go all the way’ leaving as little traces of ambiguity behind as possible. If a transsexual does not go all the way, he is neither a true transsexual nor a real man, but rather a confused person. Being confused or ambiguous seems to be the biggest crime of all.

In the last decades, feminists have argued that gender is not the same as sex. Although feminism has had a certain success in separating the notions of sex and gender, this distinction only goes so far. Many women, including feminists, were indeed annoyed to find out that men can get pregnant too these days. I strongly agree with Currah when he states “we haven’t yet succeeded in disentangling gender identity from sex. In much of the legislation, case law, administrative rules [and public opinion] that discipline the identities of transgender people, it’s still the sexed characteristics of bodies that matter. And notions of sex are still governed by logics demanding coherence. Bodies that disrupt those expectations aren’t always welcome”.

Perusing the limited literature available on male pregnancy, it becomes clear that morality is at the heart of the debate on reassignment surgery. However, some of the articles went as far to discuss whether Beatie’s children would grow up as ‘monsters’ or if they could grow up to be healthy children in this ‘freak’ family. None of the literature I found dealt with what the consequences of a pregnant man were for the transsexual movement.

In discussing the issue with a friend of mine, transsexual himself, he argued that a pregnant transsexual man delegitimizes the transsexual movement. He also believed by becoming pregnant Beatie set back the transsexual movement because mainstream society would perceive that transsexuals would never really be the other gender. Transsexuals will just ‘switch sides’, whenever it is convenient. He argued that Beatie’s choice to become pregnant was a selfish act, since there are a lot of transsexuals who really are the opposite sex than the anatomy they were born with and who have been fighting all their lives to become who they really are and be accepted for it. A pregnant man would ridicule ‘the transsexual’ and make heterosexual society skeptical. The pregnant man would lead heterosexual society to not take any transsexuals serious, he argued.

Perhaps it is possible that a percentage of the heterosexual or non-transsexual society has come to terms with the idea that people might be born in the ‘wrong’ body, but only as far as they are really one hundred per cent the ‘opposite’ sex of what they were anatomically born in. It seems that Beatie foresaw this type of thinking when he wrote: “despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant.” Although I guess this is very nice for Beatie himself, I wonder why this is so important to the rest of the world? Is it so important to strictly be unambiguously one gender? What scares us so much about a pregnant man? What scares us so much about crossing borders of traditional gender roles? We dismiss the fact that gender can be a more continuous spectrum than two completely separated worlds. These reactions show that emancipation does not happen on the minority group’s terms. It happens on the majority group’s terms: our hetero-normative society.

It is probably true that because of Beatie some people have gotten a more negative view of transsexuals, no longer taking them seriously and seeing them as confused and ambiguous. Simultaneously, he has shown the world that gender is inherently more complex than we usually tend to think and he might have stimulated people to think further about issues related to transsexuality. Beatie himself has said he consciously decided to enter the media, hoping that it would help to make the situation easier for similar couples after him and Nancy. But even if Beatie was neither helpful nor harmful to the transsexual movement, should he be held accountable for it? Should he and his wife be denied the right to have a baby, because of their unconventional and unusual situation? Is it Beatie’s responsibility to be a passing role model for the transsexual community? I would answer ‘no’ to all these questions.

Gender is inherently complex. And unfortunately what seems to matter when discussing it in Beatie’s case is no whether or not he would be a good father. But whether or not he lived his gender role. What matters is not the discussion whether Thomas Beatie is a man with a uterus or a woman with a beard, what matters is that Thomas Beatie will be a loving father to his children. What matters for society is that it be less condemning people which it considers ‘unusual’.

In the end the question remains: What is so horrible about pregnancy among men?

Not much. As bio-ethicist Josephine Johnston “sometimes difference is damaging only because we insist on it”. So let’s stop insisting.

~ End Article and Begin Conversation ~

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