Can Thomas really be considered the first pregnant man?

No

6 of 11

by Amanda Le Bas De Plumetot

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I thought this was a joke when I first read about it. Then I saw an interview with Thomas and yes. He looks like a man. He sounds like a man. He dressed like a man. He is married to a woman. He's obviously got some hormones to make him grow a beard.

Now it's no secret that Thomas started off life as a baby girl. He was obviously born with a fully functional set of ovaries and when puberty came around, he decided he liked looking at the pictures of girls better than he liked looking at the pictures of boys, and at some stage in his life he decided he wanted to be one of the blokes.

Sort of.

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that gender reassignment is a fraught area of psychological quicksand that I cannot even begin to navigate, and brave are those who decide to take the big steps. It almost frightens me to think of the surgery Thomas went through so that he could have a "male" chest.

But then he stopped.

He argues that he opted to keep his reproductive organs because he might want to have a baby some day. Now there's a blokey attitude. He insists that being sterilised is not an essential part of gender reassignment. Um, no, but surely that whole "I want to get pregnant and have a baby" thing is something that women want. Men with male reproductive equipment who want to have children get married to women with female reproductive equipment who also want to have children. The men themselves do not get pregnant. I'm pretty sure I'm not just parroting a social nicety here. Being pregnant is just not something men do or want to do.

The very fact that Thomas did not opt to continue surgery below the belt and adopt a male-looking set of equipment shows that there was something else about his life he didn't want. There was something about being a woman that he couldn't live with, but it wasn't the annoying monthly cycles that drive most of us crazy.

How does he cope with that when he's out with the boys? Does he have a bunch of male friends who don't mind chatting about his choice of sanitary needs? In the middle of a blokey bonding session, does he invite his buddies to put their hands on his tummy and feel the baby kicking? I'm guessing NOT because that's really, really not a place I can see your average bloke going. Sure, they like to feel the kick of their wife's baby, or maybe their sister's or a colleague, but some other bloke? No. I don't think so.

I am delighted for Thomas that he has what he wants in life, that he has a wife who loves him and I hope his baby is healthy and better adjusted than its mother. Um, father. Um birth-parent. No, our ability to sexually reproduce is not all about who we are, but it is an important distinction between the genders, and anyone with a fully functioning set of ovaries and a uterus that's had a baby in it has got to be described as "female."

Thomas is a homosexual woman with a beard and no breasts, and that she was ever legally declared "male" is an indictment to the legal system.

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