To use your own emoticon:

"I am transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy."

Newsflash: You are still biologically a woman, no matter how much you think otherwise. Because men cannot become pregnant.

(sighs and walks away)

*nods* But is this really real; remember that other story about the pregnant man that had a site and everything, it was fake.

Assuming it's real, considering Rayzor's comment, I'd have to say my first reaction was something like "Huh.", followed by "Cool, the first human seahorse" and "Good show, kicking biology in the teeth!" - without the sarcasm I know that might seem to imply.

Well really, all I can say is if it's true, then great for them. Odd, perhaps, but if they're comfortable enough then good show, well done. Thumbs up.

Maybe it's because I once stumbled upon the Wiki entries about animal sexuality, but this suddenly doesn't really strike me as all that weird. Time has taught me that biology and order in nature isn't always quite what it's cracked up to be, and I've found that alot of what we consider odd behaviour novel to us actually predates us by quite a bit.

All in all, I'd think there's far more absurd situations for a child to grow up in than that.

I have to question how happy one is being a guy if they try to get pregnant...

if this is real, good for him and his family. i don't understand what's so upsetting about it.

Newsflash: You are still biologically a woman, no matter how much you think otherwise. Because men cannot become pregnant.

i really don't think he needs you to tell him that. just because he prefers to be known as a man and thinks of himself as one doesn't mean he is oblivious to the true nature of his reproductive system.

Wow. o.o Looks like Walt Disney had better cough up. 😛

What a cool story. The first(?) pregnant man* is big news. Congratulations to them.

It's a trap?! It's a pregnancy?! It's a mess!!

Newsflash: You are still biologically a woman, no matter how much you think otherwise. Because men cannot become pregnant.

Wow, you are quick to tell a person what to call themselves. I guess if a person used to be a siamese twin they are still biologically not a whole person? What do you call the intersexed? Do the mentally intersexed have less of a right to an identity than the physically intersexed?

(sighs and walks away)

LOLwut does this count as a negative to you? How is it bad for them to have kids?

I have to question how happy one is being a guy if they try to get pregnant...

Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire.

There is more in the article.

This whole process, from trying to get pregnant to being pregnant, has been a challenge for us. The first doctor we approached was a reproductive endocrinologist. He was shocked by our situation and told me to shave my facial hair. After a $300 consultation, he reluctantly performed my initial checkups. He then required us to see the clinic's psychologist to see if we were fit to bring a child into this world and consulted with the ethics board of his hospital. A few months and a couple thousand dollars later, he told us that he would no longer treat us, saying he and his staff felt uncomfortable working with "someone like me."

When I finally got pregnant for the first time, I ended up having an ectopic pregnancy with triplets. It was a life-threatening event that required surgical intervention, resulting in the loss of all embryos and my right fallopian tube. When my brother found out about my loss, he said, "It's a good thing that happened. Who knows what kind of monster it would have been."

They had to overcome a lot of opposition on the way.

It isn't a man though =... 'He' still has a vagina... 'His' DNA says 'he' is a she.

And Vec, your Siamese twin argument doesn't hold any water. Just because you have someone with the same DNA doesn't mean the are THE SAME PERSON. I'm guessing it is safe to say that each independent brain equals an independent person (who may be dependent on their twin's kidney, lungs, etc).

The intersexed are just that. Totally different subject.

You might be mentally confused about your gender, but physically you ARE that gender and nothing we have today can change that. You can hack stuff off and new things, but at the end of the day you are still the same gender.

I could go out and surgically attach a metal rod to a horse's skull... but would that make it a unicorn?

I agree with Hiro.

Regardless of what gender 'he' desires to be, 'he' still has and pair of X chromosomes. Until someone comes up with a way to replace one X with a Y, it doesn't matter what surgeries or hormone treatments 'he' gets, 'he' is still a she.

so what? like i said, i'm sure that he is perfectly aware that he possesses a vagina and a female reproductive system and could thus be considered biologically female. but if he doesn't want to fill the gender role of a female, so be it. who $%$*!#$ cares what he calls himself?

The human brain optimizes by grouping and defining. This becomes a fallacy when the human starts to belive that these are more than abstractions.

It isn't a man though =... 'He' still has a vagina... 'His' DNA says 'he' is a she.

Regardless of what gender 'he' desires to be, 'he' still has and pair of X chromosomes. Until someone comes up with a way to replace one X with a Y, it doesn't matter what surgeries or hormone treatments 'he' gets, 'he' is still a she.

Those are just your qualifications for a word. The intersexed example is important because they prove that those qualifiers are not binary.

The only objective factual statement about his gender is what he said. He is legally male. And more importantly (but subjective) that is what his identity is, which is a lot more important and meaningful than people who don't know him arguing what words to use.

And Vec, your Siamese twin argument doesn't hold any water. Just because you have someone with the same DNA doesn't mean the are THE SAME PERSON. I'm guessing it is safe to say that each independent brain equals an independent person (who may be dependent on their twin's kidney, lungs, etc).

The point is that if the twin gets a kidney transplant, calling them not a whole person is comparable to telling this person he is a woman while saying that the intersexed are a whole other subject. You are putting more priority on their birth than their identity.

Lots of wrong. Lots, lots of wrong. It almost makes me emo, that's how wrong it is.

Why do you keep bringing up the intersexed when they do not apply to this topic? This 'man' wasn't and still isn't an intersex person. 'He' may be suffering from identity crisis, but that doesn't lump him into the intersexed category.

'Legal' status doesn't mean squat. If law makers wanted to, they could pass a bill that legally declares that the color black is now the color white. They could pass a law that declares the Earth is the center of the solar system or, hell, there is a God. Making something legally binding doesn't make it an absolute.

The only objective factual statement about his gender is what he said.

Sorry Vec, but you couldn't be further from the truth.

Wikipedia says:

---

The term "objectivity" designates both a feature of scientific investigators and a feature of scientific inquiry itself.
To be objective is to adhere strictly to truth- conducive methods in one's thinking, particularly, to take into account all available information, and to avoid any form of prejudice, bias, or wishful thinking. The forms of observation and experimentation, and the canons of deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning employed by scientists practising the verification guide scientists to be objective.

... In philosophy, an objective fact means a truth that remains true everywhere, independently of human thought or feelings. For instance, it is true always and everywhere that '2 and 2 make 4'. A subjective fact is a truth that is only true in certain times, places or people.

XX == Female, XY == Male. Period. Go look at any Biology book or dictionary. 'His' subjective belief is that 'he' is male.

And yes, I do place more priority on a person's birth than their self identity. What you are born with is who you are. I never said the Siamese twins who become separated are less of a person, or are only half an individual.

I think it's pretty cool that he managed to get pregnant. Sounds like he's not taking the hormone treatment anymore so I don't think the baby would be in any trouble.

It might be a bit confusing for her when it grows up to learn that it was the dad and not the mum who carried her. But hey, she still has a mum and dad.

If he wanted to get pregnant then it's fine in my opinion.

I'm going to be rude and elbow myself into Vec's argument here because I kindof like it. Thusly:

And yes, I do place more priority on a person's birth than their self identity. What you are born with is who you are. I never said the Siamese twins who become separated are less of a person, or are only half an individual.

To this I'd say you're implying it, however, especially with your quotes about truth. For example, you conveniently bolded the part "In philosophy, an objective fact means a truth that remains true everywhere, independently of human thought or feelings.", which I'll add to by pointing out the following inconsistency: You say that we are what we are born as, and when our nether regions and our minds disagree, the nether regions come first but when we are born as a union between two individuals, you put the individuality of the mind before the united biology.

While you're welcome to point out otherwise, I'll go out on a limb and say this is a case of bias towards what we consider normal, which breaks the whole truth argument no matter what.

Furthermore! The Wikipedia entry of Gender Identity Disorder ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity_disorder ) states that "Although evidence suggests that transgender behaviour has a neurological basis, there is no scientific consensus on whether the etiology of transgenderism is mental or physical.[citation needed] Psychiatric diagnoses will continue to carry authority, and remain useful for medical billing purposes and potentially for the classification of research results, unless those diagnoses are changed. However, little research into transgenderism or transsexualism is actually being conducted.", which points out two significant things: First of all, that it might be very possible that you end up with the mind of one gender and the genes and reproductive system of the other. Secondly that it might very well be that our definition of the concept of gender actually might not be nearly as scientiffically grounded as we'd like to think it is and that we're happily ignoring a great deal of potential evidence because we're so comfortable with the set ideas of male and female.

And why shouldn't we be? These two concepts are very core in pretty much all societal structures and we're taught from the very start that things are either male or female. And defenately - these are things that are often right and it's really easy to take the statistical leap and say they always are, but - that doesn't make it one solid, absolute truth.

It's a controversial concept and I can see why little actual research has gone into it; scientists who want to be controversial tends to be seen as having ulterior motives and the rest - to my understanding - prefers to avoid controversy because of the perspective on the former.

On a final note, I'd say the legality part actually means quite a bit since of the extensive screening someone'd go through before they can be legally declared to be another gender than what the initial observation claimed. Basically, to take the example we have in this article, for our pregnant man to have been declared legally male he must've met a doctor at some point declared that his mind was right, his body was wrong and he should be declared a he and not a she.

To corelate this to your example about putting laws on the earth being in the center of the solar system (ignoring, for the moment, that people at one point could be punished for claiming that it wasn't..), it would require astronomers to make an observation that yes, indeed, the earth is in the center. And if the laws of the universe made the Milky Way treat our solar system differently depending on which celestial body it was legally centered, maybe there'd be a point in trying to pass such a law if that observation could be made. As far as I know though, astronomers pretty unanimously agree that the sun is in the center nowadays.

I are serious wall of text cat. This is seriously wall of text post.

Man, everything has to become a moral debate with some of you. XD

Why don't we let the couple, whom this all matters to, settle the details and we can just giggle, looking at the surface and saying "Wow, that's definitely a pregnant guy." And if they're proud to be so, then why do we have to give a flying fig and post epic debates amid sporadic "wtf" comments and lolcats?

My hat goes off to their courage to share their story with the world. 😀

~Shadowed Spirit Sage

Good for them, I say. If the couple wants to have a kid, and they're ready and capable of going through with it, who cares what one of them might biologically be.

I'm also wondering how this thread has gone so long without a single mention of the movie Junior.

I was leaning more toward a Narbonic reference myself...

Junior was pretty much the first thing I thought of when I read this.

It's an interesting story, and a happy one, too, IMO. They got their wish and can finally have a baby! Besides, I don't really see that big of a problem if he's the one carrying it... It was the couple's choice and everything is fine from a medical standpoint, so...

All I know is, I'm watching this thread like a hawk.

I'm honestly pleasantly surprised it's only gotten this far because of some certain people involved.

Oh yes, I'm implying things. *foldarms* You people know who you are. *glare*

In any case, I'm totally agreeing with SSS: just the courage to even announce it to the world has them receive major kudos from me. I mean, crap, take this debate here and multiply it by the world then by the power of internet. You get crazies!

lol, I think you guys think I'm attacking this person because of OMG SEX CHANGE == IMMORAL.

All I'm saying is it doesn't make sense to award them the title "First man to give birth" because they had a sex change.

By this token, I should be allowed to legally change my race from Caucasian to Black/African American/ what have you, and thusly be able to reap the benefits of, for example, the United Negro College Fund.

(S)he was on Opera Yesterday.

Opera? You mean Oprah? Or is there actually a show called "Opera" that I'm not aware of?

XD Sorry, I wrote that too quick, I meant Oprah.

HUMAN SEAHORSE!!!

~Tobe

Hiro, this is the first man to give birth. A legal man is a man. Just a vaguely stated man. Vaguely titeling a freak show is ok because a freakshow's point is to be seen. Fraudulent college fund gathering is not ok.

I am glad that I could step in and clear up this topic.