I almost don’t want to post this after the debacle in the comments on the last cartoon I posted, but I’m looking at this thinking to myself that this cartoon cannot possibly provoke any over-analyzing, surely? However, if you find this offensive then may I suggest that you book a vacation, somewhere warm and relaxing, a place where you can spend a little ‘you time‘ to chill the f**k out!
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Thomas Beatie (34) lives in Bend, Oregon, with his wife, Nancy (45). The couple run a small screen printing business called Define Normal which is perhaps a hint to the story that is rumbling beneath the outward appearance of their ‘normal’ life, because Thomas is pregnant!
The story sounds like it has been lifted from the fantastical pages of the National Enquirer, but instead it appeared in a recent issue of The Advocate. Alongside a picture of himself looking somewhat pregnant, Beatie announces that after quite some effort the couple are expecting their first child, a daughter, on July 3rd.
If the story were to end there then it would likely be dismissed, but the hook element that captured the attention of the mainstream media is the fact that Thomas Beatie from Bend, Oregon, used to be Tracy LaGondino from Honolulu, Hawaii, before she had sex reassignment to become a he‘
“Sterilization is not a requirement for sex reassignment [surgery], so I decided to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy but kept my reproductive rights.” Writes Beatie for The Advocate. “Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire.”
The couple claim to have decided that Thomas would carry their child because Nancy is unable to have children after having surgery for severe endometriosis. Beatie stopped taking testosterone injections and his “body regulated itself,” he wrote. This is apparently Beatie’s second pregnancy after a first was aborted due to complications.
The article which has drawn worldwide attention ends with Beatie asking everyone to “embrace the gamut of human possibility and to define for themselves what is normal.”
My immediate suspicions were that this was simply an elaborate publicity stunt not unlike similar hoaxes in the past (notably the God Hates a Fag song by Donnie Davies), and that after a while the story would simply run out of steam by itself.
However, it would appear that the story is indeed real and that Thomas Beatie, once known as prominent gay rights activist Tracy LaGondino, the one time chairwoman for the Civil Unions-Civil Rights group in Hawaii, is indeed having a baby.
Yesterday Oprah Winfrey announced that Beatie and his wife will be appearing in an interview on her show tomorrow (Thursday 3rd April) along with their obstetrician and friends and footage of the father having an Ultrasound. (See that here.)
Amazing as it might sound though, Beatie won’t be the first ‘man’ to give birth. Back in 1999 a transgendered gay couple from New York (both formerly females) announced they were having a baby. Writing for The Village Voice Patrick Califia, a transgendered pornographer and therapist, wrote about some of the issues of parenthood he and his partner, Matt Rice, who bore the child, were now facing.
“Matt and I are doing something most people take for granted. We are two people in love who live together and raise a child. We plan to be together for the rest of our lives. But our family is not like other families, and so we are always afraid that some malicious person or powerful institution will take action against us and disrupt our lives. That’s because we are both transgendered men (female-to-male or FTM), and my boyfriend is the mother of my child.” Wrote Califia. The couple have since split up.
At this stage I am curious as to what motivated Beatie and his wife to make their pregnancy public. In his article in The Advocate Beatie writes of discrimination toward the couple as they tried to get pregnant. “Our situation sparks legal, political, and social unknowns.” He writes. “Doctors have discriminated against us, turning us away due to their religious beliefs.”
However, with Oprah Winfrey and People Magazine being granted exclusive rights to the first interview with the couple, I find myself wondering if behind all the righteous talk about rights and discriminations perhaps there could be another powerful incentive at work, that incentive being money.
One would imagine that the deal with the Oprah Show and People Magazine will have paid handsomely for those exclusive rights, and given the worldwide interest in the story it’s not unfair to suggest that other similar deals will follow. Indeed, from this angle it would seem as if the whole affair has been carefully stage managed to create maximum media interest.
So among all the other questions that this story raises, I find myself wondering if the decision to go public with their story was right or not. Some might say that they’re simply taking a rare opportunity to generate the funds to raise their child and give her the best start they can in life. Others might scorn what could be seen as a cynical manipulation of a morally murky subject. In the end only time will tell, though I rather think that unless the story has continued tabloid value, we’re unlikely to see how this all unfolds over the course of years ahead.
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Labor of Love
In Response to “Labor of Love”
Pregnant man stuns medical profession
Man who used to be a woman claims to be five months pregnant
A pregnant man?
Family Values : Two Dads with a difference
God hates a fag?
Let’s get this straight
What makes me a woman?
[Video] Man from Oregon to give birth in July
Additional link : [Video] Pregnant Thomas Beatie gets an ultrsound
I would like to congratulate the person who sent me what was an amusing April fools gag.
Just before lunch I got a text message, apparently from my mobile phone service provider, Orange. It read; “Your Orange account has been suspended as you have accrued over £500 of data charges in the last 24 hours. Please call the account abuse team on 150.”
This might have been a great gag if only for the fact that I was well aware of the fact that today is April Fools Day. It did cause me to ring Orange because I assumed that perhaps this was a April fools gag on a grand scale and I was interested in hearing if they were dealing with a deluge of angry customers. But no, it seems not, it looks like I was a very specific target for this gag so I tip my hat to whichever trickster this stunt is down to.
Even if this text message had been genuine though (and heck, it came from ‘Orange’ so it looked the part) I wasn’t concerned as I had the data service removed from my account nearly a year ago. So if I had accrued over £500 worth of data charges then that would be Orange’s problem, not mine.
It’s not the first time a friend has played a phone trick on me. A while back someone sent me a self destructing text message, a message that automatically deletes itself moments after you open it to read. The problem was that I never actually got to see the message because it self destructed as I was laughing at the name of the apparent sender while I walked down to my kitchen to show the message to a friend. By the time I got to the kitchen it was gone! Still, it was a clever trick, available for a premium price online I later learned.
I’ll confess though, I have no idea who to pin this April fools gag on. The list of jokers who might do this is long. So come forward joker. Claim your prize, you did after all get me to call Orange so you can at least claim some success. :-)
I’ve been invited to a pillow fight. It’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon and I’m not in bed but a friend is formally inviting me to join them in a pillow fight. Isn’t that the kind of thing that is supposed to happen on the spur of the moment? Evidently not in the world of facebook, in this world a formal invitation to a pillow fight is no more or less out of the ordinary than being gifted a beer that you can never actually drink, or being given a kiss that has more air in it than a dinner party no-contact mwahh. Welcome to the world of social networking.
Like millions of people I have a facebook account. I signed up back in early 2007 so I could look at friends pictures posted on her facebook page. She seemed keen that I view pictures of her being gloriously drunk and apparently pole dancing around a street lamp. The pictures were amusing enough and now I too had a facebook, so what could I do with this I wondered?
Not having an abundance of drunken pole dancing pictures of my own to post I decided to just search for friends and see what they had on their facebook pages. Pretty quickly I was sucked into making ‘friend requests’ and squinting at tiny pictures of ex girlfriends*.
The ‘friend confirmations’ came in thick and fast allowing me the ability to voyeuristically peer into the lives of those people who I was now forever digitally connected with. Each confirmation seemed to fuel my desire for more friends and I spent increasing amounts of time on the site searching for people, with the qualification for ‘friend’ status becoming ever more relaxed.
After acquiring a respectable number of ‘friends’ I found myself looking at my facebook page and thinking, now what? Pretty soon my ‘news feed’ was filling up with all kinds of stuff that I would simply delete without a second glance if it had arrived by email.
“Mark was challenged to a movie quiz.” “Sommer has added a new bumper sticker.” “Anthony just received a new comment.” “Jen wants to go out tonight.” “Someone is checking out Carly on Zoosk.” - This is junk, and I’m logging in to read this crap? What the heck? There must be more to facebook than this?
While I appreciate the opportunity to catch up with friends, once I’m up to date I’m not really interested in knowing that “David is looking for a new cell phone” or that “Paula is fed up of marking homework.” I find myself getting numerous requests to join groups or install “exciting apps” like ‘beer’ or ‘easter eggs,’ but I don’t get anything from a digital beer or easter egg, and while that’s a nice gesture it loses what little value it had when I see that the sender has merely carpet bombed the very same thing to the 641 people they have in their friends list.
But wait a second, they have 641 friends? Who the heck has 641 friends in the real world? Now all of a sudden my status as friend feels more like a number. Damn it, they’re a ‘friend whore,’ a person whose friendship with me has more to do with showing the world how popular they are rather than being interested in anything I’m doing.
But no sooner do I realise this than I awaken to the fact that I too added them to increase my own number of friends. “Look at how popular I am!” And with that I take a step back to consider what exactly it is that I’m actually getting from facebook?
Maybe there’s a side to super popular social networking site that I’m just not switched on to, but if so then it has thus far eluded me. Perhaps I’ve just been plugged into the web for too long to appreciate the value of a digital beer over a real one? Or could it be that I’m just missing the point entirely? I don’t suppose it really matters anyway, facebook feels like fashion to me. It’s todays equivalent ‘moon boots,’ ‘leg warmers’, or ‘Space Invaders’, and tomorrow we’ll be talking about something else. All that to say I just don’t get facebook, but I’m pleased for you if you’re one of the millions who enjoying the site.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go update my twitter.
*I most certainly dodged a bullet in one case for sure!
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How Facebook Is Like Ikea
Too Old for Facebook?
Am I too old for facebook?
I Still Think I’m Too Old For Facebook
Facebook users beware
Evolution of the social network
Man taken to court over ‘friend request’ to an ex
Twitter.com
What the heck is Twitter?
