Jezebel

My God, leave the pregnant man ALONE! Is there no raving psycho who will threaten violence to the bullies of the pregnant man?

OK. I will. I am little but mean, mean, mean.

Or the Bree Van de Kamp of transmales?

Sorry, not going to believe it until s/he gives birth. Too easy to fake.

If you want another link to the story - this is from the local news website, KATU.
[www.katu.com]

Oregon has some off-tilt news stories lately...

But will they name the baby Junior?

Is that facial hair in the wee little picture? I'm pretty sure a that a woman can't grow a fetus and stubble at the same time. Like Nicole Kidman and her Botox, Tom would have to give up the testosterone kickers.

This is going to make for the best Lifetime Original Movie ever.

@noseriously: We have a crazy lady neighbor who recently called our landlord to tell him that we needed our exhaust vent cleaned out. So it seems like she was UP ON OUR TOWNHOUSE ROOF acting all crazy, literally all up in our business.

I know, it's not related, but Crazytown is Everytown.

@andBegorrah: You are so right.

Who's going to play the pregnant man?

@MissHathaway: Right. I'm a perfectly healthy gal, but years of the pill left me hormonally imbalanced- I'm finally (sustainably) pregnant now, two years after going off the damn thing. No way a hormonal structure which allows one to have a beard also allows one to support a fetus.

@kansasgirl: Did you not see Junior?! It was an Arnie classic!

@kansasgirl: Adam Baldwin. Or maybe Tom Arnold.

Okay, I'm not up on my sexual reassignment surgery knowledge. But if was he artificially inseminated and his vagina's been reconstructed into a penis. How did they gain access? Isn't it kind of "closed off"?

Won't his boobies kind of start growing back too?

This is so very confusing for me, it kind of makes my head hurt.

@andBegorrah: I Was A Pregnant Man And Then I Wasn't But I Really Was: The Thomas Beatie Story

Speaking as someone who grew up in Oregon, it would not at all surprise me if someone in Bend had a shady agenda. It's not a bastion of tolerance or good cheer.

I guess I don't see why anyone would bother pulling off a hoax like this in the first place. This isn't Ahnold, for god's sake, it's someone who has an actual uterus & all the rest of the female equipment downstairs. The transguy part is an interesting angle, but it's not like this is something scientifically unique.

I will bet dollars to donuts that Ron Schlieper has given massive amounts of money to either The 700 Club or the GOP in recent years.

I wish people would get off this dude's ass. All they want is a family. I knew as soon as it hit the major national news outlets that this couple would be in for a shitstorm. And so it starts.

@ulookinatmyjunk: He did not get the sexual reassignment surgery -- he was on testosterone, but opted to keep his original junk intact.

@ulookinatmyjunk: Beatie never did the "bottom work". His genitals are still female. It's a common enough choice among transmen, because the surgery for female to male is still pretty primitive.

@Sukie in the Graveyard: You wouldn't happen to be referring to the idiots who "thought that because it appeared on the Internet it was true," and proceeded to ransack a house?

[blogs.pcworld.com]

@rocknrollunicorn: jinx!

@nerdsausage is in the tank for SATAN: Since I was first, you owe me the coke.

my dark heart felt for this guy and his wife's lack of medical/family/community support reading that article so i will be pissed if this is a hoax!

I had no idea that his neighbors were medical doctors...oh wait they aren't. Why tell the public this? It doesn't affect them and if this couple are making the story up it will come out with them running their mouths.I think the neighbors are looking for attention@MissHathaway: He's a transmale. You do realize that he still has a uterus?

@rocknrollunicorn: ...

If I was a pregnant transmale, I would not talk to the press about it. Obviously he and his wife are allowed to tell whoever they want and they shouldn't get shit for it, but I wouldn't want to deal with it... especially if I was pregnant! Stress.levels.rising just thinking about it!

This isn't all that uncommon. Patrick (formerly Pat) Califia and his ftm partner had a baby a few years ago, his partner went off hormones and had the baby.

And btw, every trans person I know, doesn't like being called 'transmale' or 'transfemale'. I think a straight up 'tranny' is preferable to that, but best of all would be if y'all just used 'he' or 'she', based on their gender of choice.

@MissHathaway: Couldn't the facial hair be left over from when he was on T? It's not like it's going to fall out when he stops the hormones, and I could see how maintaining a visible symbol of maleness would be reassuring for him.

Tranquil, I do know what a transmale is, thanks. I also know that the bulk of the alteration in a non-surgical reassignment is achieved with hormone therapy. I'm pretty sure he would have to stop taking testosterone--the thing that enables him to be hairy--in order to support the pregnancy.

comments on the ABC site are crazy...god, please protect me from your followers!

If I'm suspicious of anything, it's that the photo of him and his pregnant belly was allegedly taken a month ago, when he was 4 months pregnant. I'm 4 months pregnant right now and I'm nowhere near as big as that. And I'm HUGE for 4 months.

@gra: I'm with you, Gra. Talking about such a controversial event doesn't seem like the best policy. I won't be surprised if this is a hoax.

But not everyone believes Beatie's story. Some of his neighbors expressed indredulity.

Another Bend resident, Josh Love, said, "I couldn't say that he looks pregnant. I can stick my stomach out and almost make it look like that. I think it's kind of bizarre. I don't know if I believe it or not."

My favorite part of local news is the "man on the street" interview. It always brings so much insight to a story!

Also - I dated a guy who could stick out his stomach so far he looked pregnant. He used to do it once in a while to gross me out. He was (and is) a skinny dude.

He is not to be confused with a dude I dated who did look pregnant or at least like he was smuggling a six-pack (beer, not abs).

I like 'em all shapes and sizes, but I do prefer the not-pregnant ones.

I don't take testosterone and I have hair on my belly and a few places on my chest and face. And my choir teacher in high school had some serious stubble and she able to have children. I'm no doctor, but I don't think hairiness is an indicator of whether your reproductive organs are working.

@cate3710: I'm guessing you and tranquilmademoiselle either haven't tried to get pregnant or are young and unencumbered by PCOS and the like. You need more than a uterus to maintain a pregnancy- you need estrogen and progesterone- enough to at least temporarily resolve testosterone-caused hirsutism.

@dcdulce:I suspect God rolls his eyes when these folks start "quoting" him.

@shoebunny: No, I've never been/tried to get pregnant. And obviously he's chock full of estrogen and progesterone right now and not taking testosterone. But once the hair is there, I'm not sure that the change in hormones would make it go away. Maybe make it finer, but disappear altogether?

@HannahBethD: true. but as someone who struggled with PCOS and the resulting hairiness and fertility struggle, i think it might be safe to say that it's harder for a hairy lady to get pregnant.

as far as this transman goes, i don't see what's so remarkable. he has henparts still, henparts that work. so he's biologically female and his getting pregnant is hardly a miracle or whatever. i am happy to go along with his desire to be called a man, but i don't think it's AMAZING SUPER WOW that he's having a baby. i find it...odd that he considers himself a "surrogate", but you know, gender politics--they're whack-a-doo!

@tetragami: hahaha, no, I was referring to the craiglist posting that offered a baby for sale (under the name of a grandmother from Lebanon) for meth money.

At first, I was thinking, "okay, cool, challenge some stereotypes." After reading the Advocate article, though, I'm all about being skeptical. At one point, right after saying that they did a home insemination (so no eggs transfered or anything), he says, "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."

THAT's just too fucking unbelievable:
1) a man with women's reproductive organs--totally fine.
2) home insemination--also totally fine.
3) ectopic pregnancy--happens to the best of us.
4) with fucking TRIPLETS?--I don't even think so.

If these people are trying to "challenge some stereotypes" and he's NOT pregnant, they've given transgendered folks not only a bad name, but a flippin' crazy one, too. Great.

My dad had that size of gut, then he had his hernia operation and everything was fine, no babies in there.

I'm still trying to figure out why the male half of the couple is the one who is pregnant- isn't that generally the woman's job?

@mwynn13: According to Beatie, his wife had fertility problems and couldn't conceive.

i was a non-believer at 1st - the hormones, the body's inability to be pregnant unless healthy - but then i thought about all of those crack babies that are born to women who only consume drugs, semen and jack daniels, and about Nicole Richie's negative body fat body being able to have a baby, and i thought - eh, maybe. who knows? bizarreo tho.

I hope that this isn't a hoax. But as someone with PCOS and all the hairiness that goes along with it, the stubble in the photo did make me a little suspicious, since more testosterone=less chance for pregnancy.

@tasia:It may have nothing to do with him but the journalist doing the story.I don't know what proof he has to do to prove he is pregnant. I'll remain neutral because it could be false but it could also be true.@shoebunny:I know that. I was referring to people who thought he had all of that removed.

By the way his picture is on the advocate website

I just have to add that I love the name of the town: Bend, Oregon. Sounds like "bend o'er again." And I, for some reason, think that's hilarious.

Because being a pregnant trans-male is sooo glamorous and easy.

Dude, the media is bitchy to this guy. Why doubt their family? Do you really care? Leave him alone! This poor kid is gonna have teasing issues, to say the least.

@kansasgirl: the Governator, of course

@ceejeemcbeegee (just debatin' not hatin'): I was on the East German track and field team. They gave out steroids as you do Gatorade. But I assure you, I am all woman.

@cate3710: Dude, but that's not four months of beard growth (if he'd just retained the hair from pre-pregnancy). And yes, the hair would fall out and be replaced with finer, lighter hair (the peachfuzz ladies usually have on their faces), becoming patchy and then fading completely.

But since he had an ectopic pregnancy before, that means that he's been off male hormones for more than 4 months, probably closer to a year (since 1st pregnancy was far enough along to cause complications, revealing it to be ectopic, and then the surgical intervention -- which was severe enough to cause the loss of a fallopian tube -- probably took some time to recover from before pregnancy #2).

Hair is remarkably fast-growing and turnover is high (that's why chemo patients lose hair in addition to the fast-growing cancer cells). Even if my estimate of a year is off, in a more conservative 6 months, I would expect that nearly all the facial hair would have fallen out.

I am not so dubious of his claim of pregnancy, as it's entirely possible, but I am dubious of the picture. I think it's doctored for effect -- as others have said, I don't know anyone who showed that much at 4 months, and facial hair to the degree it appears in the picture (not just PCOS level) would be nigh on impossible.

@kimsama: I bow down to your superior hair/hormone/pregnancy knowledge. And yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the picture was doctored.