My Father is A Seahorse: Constructions, Deconstructions and Reconstructions of Gender and Reproduction among Transgender Men

• In Event: Beyond Queer: Intersex, Transgender and Non-Heteronormative Visions of Human Bodies and Relationships

Abstract

Thomas Beatie may be the most famous female-to-male (FTM) transsexual to give birth to a child after medically transitioning to maleness, but he is not the first. Yet his pregnancy, like all transgender male pregnancies, calls into question gender and sex binaries, which traditionally organized both heterosexual families (he is married to a biological woman who cannot bear children), and assigned pregnancy and giving birth exclusively to females. Gay FTMs, by the same token, can explore pregnancy via their biologically male gay partners, which pushes the limits of what gay identity and gay relationships, traditionally defined only by biologically gay men, can mean. This paper examines two mediated discourses about trans men who become pregnant and bear children as male-gendered people with intact female reproductive organs. The first is television coverage of Thomas Beatie’s pregnancy, where Beatie’s partner is a woman. The second is the pregnancy of the character Max on the TV show “The L Word.” Max is a gay trans man who becomes pregnant unexpectedly by his gay male lover, who subsequently leaves him because he cannot tolerate the feminizing pregnancy causes to Max’s body. Both situations challenge hegemonic ideas about sex, gender, reproduction, and sexual orientation, in ways that dramatically expand human possibility, and also engender negative reactions in those who believe, at some level, that one’s born-into body should constitute one’s biological destiny.

Author

• Mary Marcel, Bentley College