Thomas Beatie, the pregnant transman who has inspired commenters to alternately cry, rejoice and weave error-riddled rants to demonstrate their superior knowledge of gender and identity, will be holding a press conference tomorrow - which just happens to be April Fool’s Day:

Gender reassignment surgery has been around for decades, but what’s drawn international interest (and headlines like “He’s Having Their Baby”) is his claim, published in the gay rights magazine The Advocate, that he is five months pregnant. Beatie and his wife Nancy are expecting their first child on July 3, though they have given few other details.

The inescapable biological fact is that men cannot become pregnant. A few males in the animal kingdom do in a sense become pregnant (such as seahorses, which carry eggs in their pouch once they are deposited there by a female, then fertilize them and carry them to term).

Humans are another matter entirely; if Beatie has retained his babymaking equipment, then he is in fact still biologically a woman, not a man.

Now, we find this particular article infuriating for the following reasons:

1) Although The Advocate does deal with gay issues and while Thomas Beatie can, technically, fall under the umbrella of belonging to a comparatively marginalized spectrum of the gender range, the fact remains that, as a female-to-male transsexual who is in love with and married to a woman, Thomas Beatie is not a gay man. This doesn’t add or take away from his situation and, true, sexual orientation is very rarely as simple as “gay” and “straight,” but it’s misleading to categorize him as such.

2) Thomas Beatie, while not biologically male, is legally male and, furthermore, identifies as male. And while many commenters have offered their two cents on valid such claims can be the way we see it is: If he says he’s male, with or without the additional backing of a legal slip of paper also claiming him as such, that’s good enough for us.

If this does turn out to be an elaborate prank, we’d be disappointed - but not devastated. Depending on the ends this means is meant to justify, of course, we have to admit that the dialogue that has come out of these stories on Beatie have been eye-opening, both in their ability to show how supportive and accepting people can be to one another, and how cruel.

If this is some douchebag hipster with an “art project,” well. We’d be disappointed. Anything hipsters do is disappointing, frankly. But this story got people to evaluate their feelings and, if not to reflect on their prejudices and misgivings, then at least to express them in such a way as to hopefully highlight the fact that, where gender and sexuality are concerned, there’s still so much work to be done.

Pregnant man to tell all on April Fool’s Day [China View]
Earlier: Thomas Beatie’s Neighbors Say “Pregnant Man” Is Totally Punking Us