Pregnant Men and Truth

OK, enough already with the “Pregnant Man.” Every time I turn on the TV or open my newest People magazine, I’m greeted by Thomas Beatie, a 34-year-old “transgendered man” (born female but now lives as a man, with the help of hormone injections) who recently delivered a baby girl. I have no stones to throw at this woman for the way she chooses to live. Sexual confusion is an understandable outcome to a tragic childhood—her mother committed suicide when she was 12. I feel bad for her and the struggles she’s surely had. I certainly understand her desire to live in a committed relationship and have children. And because her partner had a hysterectomy years ago, I suppose it was a logical next step for her to carry their baby.

What I don’t get is why anyone thinks this is a “pregnant man.” Has our society become so relativistic, has truth become so out of vogue, that something as obvious as the fact that men don’t have babies is now in question? Do we really live at a time in which you can ignore the “parts” you were born with and just decide to be something else and expect the world to accept that as truth? (At a time when “I reject your reality and create my own” has become a national mantra?) Call yourself whatever you want, but biology is stronger than words in this case. Men don’t have babies. That’s truth. Surely we can make room for truth as irrefutable as this.

And while I’m at it, I’ve got to wonder why our society is so desperate to blur gender lines that we’ll stop at nothing to sniff out anything that resembles a “pregnant man.” I enjoyed the old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie “Junior” as much as anyone else, but when it ceases to become a joke, I am concerned.

I finally broke down and sent an e-mail to People. Because I have a lousy track record of having my “letter to the editor” published, I include it here for my own small audience (and, let’s be honest, my own self-satisfaction):

Using the "equipment" I was given, like Thomas Beatie, I also gave birth to a beautiful baby. And another, and another, and another, and another. If America would like to see pictures of my babies, I'm happy to share them, although I'm curious to know why it's so newsworthy that a baby grew in a uterus and was pushed out of a vagina. It happens every day.

I almost added that I, too, have excess facial hair and a flat chest, but that doesn’t make me a man any more than it does Thomas Beatie.

And that’s the truth.