The Latest in Transanity: More Male Mothers

These are the kinds of things you cannot make up. A report from the Daily Mail documents the "March of the Male Mums" while an article on Slate.com declares, "There is plainly no one type of body that we could accurately label a 'male body.'"

These are but the latest examples of the all-out war on gender distinctions, and one can only wonder what is coming next.

When it comes to male mothers, Thomas Beatie, better known as "the pregnant man," was the pioneer.

"Thomas" was a former beauty queen who had her breasts cut off but left her reproductive organs intact, then underwent hormonal treatment to grow facial hair, then, after changing her identity to that of a man, married a woman who was unable to have children, then got artificially inseminated and had a baby.

So, the "pregnant man" is actually a woman sans breasts, sporting a beard and female private parts, and for a time, married to another woman.

Of course, the media celebrated this incredible scientific and social breakthrough - after all, isn't it impossible for a man to be pregnant? - with very few asking, "What's the big deal about a biological woman being pregnant?" and even fewer asking, "What about the child born to a mother who claims to be a man while the child's other parent is a woman who functions as the wife of the male mother?"

Unfortunately, "Thomas" was only the first.

Recently, some Female-to-Male transgenders (who, like "Thomas," left their reproductive organs intact and were well into their hormone treatments), were shocked to find out they were pregnant, meaning that still other children will have to deal with the fact that their father is actually their mother. (In practical terms, this means telling the child, "Call me Daddy even though I'm your Mommy.")

In some of these cases, the pregnancies were unintentional, but according to the Daily Mail:

- Dozens of transgender men are having their eggs frozen at NHS [National Health Service] clinics

- Eggs are frozen before surgery or hormone therapy to switch sex

- Treatment means that a British trans man could soon become a parent

- In rare circumstances a man could become pregnant and give birth

The Mail reports that, "critics said cash-strapped health authorities should not be spending up to £34,000 per patient to help them change sex and have children when they are rationing basic services such as cataract operations, hip replacements and even hearing aids.

"Tory MP Peter Bone said: 'I am not sure why the taxpayer should be funding this. I just sometimes ask if the NHS is getting its priorities right.'"

That is quite an understatement. There's no money for hearing aids and hip replacement surgeries, but there's money to help a woman try to become a man and then have a child as a male mother.

As for the subject of male vs. female anatomy, that too is being turned on its head.

Writing for Slate.com, Chase Strangio claims that it is "Most insidious" that LGBT activists "use the same language that opponents of transgender people use, carelessly referring to women who are trans as having 'male genitals' or being 'born with a male body' or being 'anatomically male.' This language is both factually wrong and dangerous."

As I stated at the beginning of this article, you can't make up this kind of stuff.

Indeed, Strangio, who was born female, argues, "By embracing a narrative that one is born with a 'male body,' we reinforce the idea that only the bodies we assign male at birth-- bodies that have medically normative penises-- are male."

How foolish and shortsighted of us!

For Strangio, these "factually wrong and dangerous" distinctions are causing untold pain to the trans community, since they do not conform to these rules and thus are made social outcasts from birth. "And yet," Strangio bemoans, "we maintain our investment in the narrative that our bodies are male or female at birth. But it is simply untenable to retain these narratives when we know our bodies to be far more complex and beautiful."

What, then, is the solution? Strangio writes, "For me, the answer is clear: I want to advocate for a world where our bodies are not sexed by the presence or absence of a penis. I hope that our ideas of trans existence and bodily self-determination transcend the narrative that the world has already set for us."

With all respect to the suffering of transgender men and women, the fact remains that the vast majority of human beings are biologically and chromosomally male or female, as marked by the presence of male or female genitalia, and it is the females of the human species who have been created to be mothers.

The reality is that there is no such thing as a pregnant man while there is such a thing as a male body, and the sooner we abandon today's trans-social madness, the better.

Originally published at askdrbrown.org - reposted with permission.