When Thomas Beatie’s wife Nancy was unable to conceive, the Bend, Oregon resident stepped up to the biological plate and the now five months pregnant man is due in July with the couple’s first child.

“Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire,” he wrote. “To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child. I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family.”

Beatie, a female-to-male transexual, decided to keep his/her female reproductive organs even though he was now considered legally male after his female-to-male gender switch ten years ago. He and his wife Nancy moved to the town of Bend, Oregon two years ago where he operated a screen printing business.

Neighbors were shocked and skeptical to discover he was not only a male transsexual but a pregnant male transsexual when reporters descended upon the town after Beatie announced his pregnancy last week in the publication The Advocate.

Beatie, now five months pregnant, made the decision to try for a baby after Nancy had a hysterectomy. Beatie stopped his testosterone treatments and then waited for his menstrual cycles to resume and then began artificial insemination. His first pregnancy was ended after triplets were conceived ectopically.

Beatie has had nine doctors so far, complaining that the physicians showed a lack of respect and discriminated against the couple due to the doctor’s religion.

“Doctors have discriminated against us, turning us away due to their religious beliefs,” he wrote.

“Health care professionals have refused to call me by a male pronoun or recognise Nancy as my wife. Receptionists have laughed at us. Friends and family have been unsupportive; most of Nancy’s family don’t even know I’m transgender.”

While Beatie’s baby is due in July he’s not the first transgendered female to male to have a baby.

Meet the New Odd Couple, Matt Rice and Patrick Califia.

Matt and I are doing something most people take for granted. We are two people in love who live together and raise a child. We plan to be together for the rest of our lives. But our family is not like other families, and so we are always afraid that some malicious person or powerful institution will take action against us and disrupt our lives. That’s because we are both transgendered men (female-to-male or FTM), and my boyfriend is the mother of my child.

Patrick and Matt with son, Blake

In 2000 the Village Voice ran a piece, Family Values, about Matt Rice and Patrick Califia, two girls who met when they were dykes (their wording, not ours) who wrote about raising their 8 month -old son. Even they had trouble sorting themselves out:

Our relationship was a scandal. We were generally perceived as a fag/dyke couple rather than two gay/bi men in a daddy/boy relationship, which was how we saw ourselves. When I had to go to Utah to care for my mother in the last month of her life, Matt came out for her funeral, and was promptly fired from his bartending job. That was when I started talking to Matt about maybe transitioning too.

Now the two are happily living together as a couple of trangendered men when they actually started out as lesbians. They’re raising their son as two Daddys even though Matt, as a transgendered man, had their son, Blake, by means of artificial insemination via a man they found who “loved us but didn’t love children”.

Patrick writes about he and Matt’s life in San Francisco and the acceptance from their community:

I don’t mistake the small island of acceptance that we enjoy in ultraliberal San Francisco for real freedom or tolerance. Our family configuration is bound to be controversial even among lesbians and gay men, especially those who believe mainstreaming is the best strategy for securing our civil rights. But at least among some queer activists, those who are prepared to live in a genuinely diverse society free from gender tyranny or proscribed pleasures, we can enjoy a place at the table. And we do.

Patrick, Matt, Thomas and his wife, Nancy are products of the new “diverse” society, their children, so to speak, byproducts, where gender lines are blurred and crossed then recrossed depending upon one’s wants and desires. A brave new world indeed.

By LBG

Image - Transgender Umbrella
Image - Village Voice
Source – Independent – “We just want to be a family”, says Oregon’s Pregnant Man
Source - The Village Voice -Family Values

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