Raising — and Answering — the Question

There has been a lot of press recently about a pregnant man — or, to be more specific, a pregnant trans man. Thomas Beatie is a man. He’s happily married to a woman. But because he was born a woman and still has the internal reproductive organs of a woman, he can bear a child. And he is. All without ever questioning his gender identity as a man. It’s a really moving and beautiful story.

But, predictably, Thomas’s pregnancy has caused an uproar. It gets right to the heart of people’s discomfort with our new society, in which sex is fluid and genders impermanent.

Which is why it’ll be so interesting to see what happens when Oprah has Thomas on her show tomorrow. Of course the preview frames the segment in the most sensational way possible. But I’m hopeful that the show can present Thomas and his wife in an open and supportive way. Maybe that’s overly idealistic.