From what I understand, lots of FTM people have had healthy babies. I'm not sure why this particular case is getting so much coverage, but I agree with you that it's really interesting. It really makes me uncomfortable, though, how some people talk about him. On the radio the other day, the people kept calling him an "it," and saying that he had a mental disorder. TECHNICALLY (according to the DSM-IV, transgender people are considered to have a mental disorder, but this doesn't mean that they're actually sick. Homosexuality used to be in the DSM too.
You should really look into queer theory if this is interesting to you. The whole concept of fluid gender identity is really awesome.
i think this case is getting so much attention because the couple pursued the attention. i havent found any of the other stories yet in my bout of research this evening. did you see transamerica when it came out? after i saw that i became mildly obsessed with the concept of transgender and sex reassignment surgeries and just did a mad search for like a week about it, trying to find everything i could about it - its just so interesting to me and for some reason i just makes sense to me. i watched the whole oprah episode and read about an episode she had about transgendered people. its just so fascinating and i dont understand why people are so closed minded about it!
I have a feeling that the reason Beatie came out in The Advocate was not (originally) to get major media attention. I think he did it to combat the ideas of binary gender pervasive even in transgender communities. For example, when I searched for stories about pregnant FTMs (or FTMs who wanted to be pregnant), I found that most of them had problems with other transgender people calling them "she" once they found out. Their paradigm allows for people to "switch" between one gender and the other, but there is no room for people who want to have characteristics of both genders. So he comes out in a gay magazine first and the bigger news outlets pick it up and turn it into "ZOMG pregnant man, how sick!"
oh and i found out why this case is getting more publicity - its because he's the first "legal" male to be pregnant. others, were not considered legally male by their states when they got pregnant.
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You should really look into queer theory if this is interesting to you. The whole concept of fluid gender identity is really awesome.
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on a slight side note, in my search for information tonight, i found this article which is also very interesting: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2346476
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