This is an emotionally charged issue, one that will have a great many individuals foaming at the mouth from all sides.

I had a conversation with my 84 year old Father this morning and even after well in excess of at least 50 years of knowing about my HBS he confessed he still saw me as his eldest (fortunately he did not complete the statement; we both knew what the missing word was) He will never fully accept that I am indeed his eldest daughter.

So, what was my point in raising that ugly subject in the context of Thomas Beattie. Well, it is a matter of definitions and establishing what has become fact. Thomas has given birth, quite naturally we are told and without the need for caesarean section. So that we are clear about this, the birth was via a fully functioning birth canal and vagina from a fully functioning uterus. I think that makes Thomas a Mother. Of course it raises the question what does Thomas do now An encore perhaps? Try for twins this time maybe? I?m sorry, do I sound just a tad jealous? Certainly not! Me, a tad jealous? No! I am so pea green with envy of Thomas I am in severe pain. I want to give my husband a child so desperately only a woman would understand fully the pain I feel at that fact.

My vagina is a dead end, it goes nowhere. I cannot conceive but I cannot penetrate either. So does that make me and those like me, female or male or a Eunuch? What of women who have had hysterectomies, are they too some special kind of eunuch?

So many claim that we have to accept, that Thomas Beattie and the male transgendered like her are what they themselves identify as. We HAVE to respect that. OK Why? On what basis? Perhaps on the basis that they allow us to retain our belief in the existence of HBS as a legitimate medical condition. I don?t actually see much real evidence of that do you?
Thomas Beattie made a choice when she gave birth, an act of Lesbian love for sure but not the choice any man would make. I agree with you Lisa.

All that to one side I wish the new Mother future happiness and congratulate the lucky girl.

Evangelina

In the end, HBS and the Thomas Beattie affair all boils down to how far you want to dissect things, or how willing you are to accept the fact that there is or isn't a well-defined sex binary.

Once, the world was flat; now it is round(-ish). Once, a 'little man' - a homunculus - occupied every sperm cell; now we laugh at the thought. Once, intersex individuals - fka hermaphrodites - were freaks; now they are in-the-flesh manifestations of human diversity.

In life there are seldom well defined boundaries in most anything. The nature and complexity of the world around us is astounding, our understanding of it, ourselves and our place in it reshapes itself constantly to new insights and discoveries. Our beliefs and attitudes adjust to our changing knowledge. If we define men as only those humans who have penises, and women as those with vagina's, then what of intersex individuals? Where do they fall in the sex binary? And how far do we dissect that binary law to include them, and where?

No less questionable is the HBS individual...how do those outside of HBS discern the nature of it? HBS is not well defined, being a wholly internalized and indistinguishable condition of personal identity. By what rules, tests, or criteria is HBS even understood? There are so many shades of gray in the world, encompassing virtually any and every thing, that discussions of binaries must impose certain agreed-upon criteria or risk unraveling in some gray area. Perhaps it is to such a criteria-laden realm to which discussions of HBS must be held, but what agreed-upon criteria exists for HBS, and who defines the criteria?

All very complex and confusing.

Or is it? Having said all that, I do have a point that I'm working towards, and basically it's about flaunting disparity in the presence of accepted norms. I should clarify straight away that I'm a card-carrying member of the sex binary club. I cannot comprehend someone identifying as one sex conforming to the norms of the other. I for one do not understand the Thomas Beattie's of the world. Like contemplating the universe, whenever I try to understand them I'm overwhelmed with uncertainty and the unknowable nature of it all until finally it all gathers into a mind-numbing, chaotic maelstrom of brain-cramping absurdity and I cannot go further with it. To me, Thomas Beattie is, and has always been, a female, a woman. She may dress and act like a man, but carrying a baby to full term and delivering it is an act fully constrained within the realm of womanhood, regardless of shades of gray. I will respect Thomas Beattie's individualism and right to do as she pleases, but I will never consider her a man. Ever. Men simply do not act or think like that.

I acknowledge and accept the gray shades of life, I'm often surprised or delighted or shocked by the gray. But like most other people I have a really hard time with some of it. And Thomas Beattie is sooooooooo gray that I find myself preferring to contemplate the universe...at least it makes more sense.

I am proud that you used a quote from my words Lisa; I do like your statements and arguments about Ms Beatie and truthfully, I do find it a bit sad that Oregon apparently will grant gender changes based on the removal of breast tissue and nothing else. I wonder if they do the reverse for MtF's who have Breast augmentation and nothing else. Under those criteria, a confirmed "she-male" could get a license or birth certificate as a "female".

In regard to Kelly's wondering abut Inter-sexed individuals; they, in my opinion, are a unique case and generally do develop a sense of which gender they should be just as HBS people do and given the funds would/do take the steps to become body congruent with that innate gender.

Sadly there are those "TS" people out there that are Koolaid drinkers that take issue when you say that Beatie is NOT a male, but they are a bunch that want to argue that black is white and vice versa.

Pamela

Like Evangaline I too feel an ache that is beyond description. An ache for the child my non-existent womb can never give birth to just as my breasts ache at the though of the child that will never nurse from them. I find myself at my dark moments morning for my loss. A loss that comes with being a woman, who as Evangaline said, is a blind alley, a dead end. Any place where any man?s seed that falls upon me will hit nothing but the most barren soils. So yes, I can fully understand the why that would cause one to seek having children if one can.

Yet as both Lisa and Evangaline, and now Kelly so succinctly pointed out. That begs the question?

Would a man bear a child? Yes, or no?

I do not at all fault Mr?, Mrs? Beattie (this linguistically defies all pronouns and honorifics) for bearing this child, but I do question what it says for this person because it was done AFTER we assume by his (or her?) statement that gender correction had taken place. As painful as it may be it is one thing to have born a child or to have sow the seed when one is still in the tortured state of denial with a body in conflict with their being, and quite another to knowingly do so after correction.

Yet I cannot be too quick to condemn here, for unlike the woman with HBS. The man with HBS suffers in a way that can never be rectified and which I cannot begin to imagine! Truly, what options are there for the FtM? Surgery upon surgery, upon surgery? All with terrible costs and risks and with little if any reward/

Top surgery, usually a given as breasts remain the one very visible external symbol that offends the man in this in the same manner a penis offends the woman so in this case they are both the quintessential personification of Matthew 18:9

?If they eye offend thee??

And that is the requirement in most states to be recognized as male and Thomas Beattie made it past that mark, as do most who would call themselves a FtM but for him (her?) and all others with that curse, what comes after gets murkier.

What really is the right course of action because no matter which path is chosen, none of them lead to a successful ending After Top surgery does one move on with pelvic surgery? If so, how far are you willing to take it? Do you just remove the ovaries and the risk of cancer that comes with cross hormonal use and live with atrophied organs, or do you also take the uterus and fallopian tubes also? That of course leads to the bigger question, what of the vagina?! Each item that has to be removed going down this path is in turn more complicated than the last and with each comes a higher and higher risk of death or disability with their removal and no one, and I mean no one, but the person upon who?s body these surgeries are performed will ever know they were done?

I can imagine the pressure on the man, seen or not to wanting them removed. Hidden or not they must be constant reminders of that which is so terribly wrong, but with their removal, that which is wrong is not righted? So you have them removed? Really has much changed for this man?

No matter what is removed, that which makes a man, a man is still and forever beyond his reach!

Testosterone may grow the clitoris into a semblance of a tiny penis of sorts but it is hardly the phallus of a man or even a boy for that matter

Certainly a fake scrotum can be created and artificial testicles can be inserted but they are dead and insensate orbs which at a glance mimic what they will never be

Taking it further, if one is willing to go for broke (figuratively and literally) and willing to risk surgery on top of surgery, on top of surgery, and one can deal with the massive scarring and deformities they bring? And, if they are very very fortunate. Then a penis of sorts might also be fashioned . Provided they also have a nearly bottomless pocket, access to the best surgeons in the world, of which there is few and none terribly skilled, and they also have more than their fair share of just plain dumb luck?

Assuming this stacking of the deck works, there is always a risk of failure with the next surgery that makes it all a colossal craps shoot because that next surgery may be the one that fails for any of a multitude of reasons and all that was created will have to be removed leaving the poor man with less than nothing?

But lets go for broke. Lets say that the man in question has managed to wade though this nightmare to end all nightmares and becomes one of those very very VERY few who are least at a glance appear as normal men.

That which was created between his legs is insensate and dead and will never be anything but a genital effigy of sorts, To be a man with HBS, this primitive level of surgical remedy means they will always be making concessions to a physical reality that is not true to their being and means having to accept the fact that even in the best of circumstances true stealth will never be theirs unless they are willing to pay the price of celibacy because the moment their pants come down the story is told.

So there you have it? the woman with HBS can at least function as a woman even if she cannot give birth. She can still freely slip into woman?s space, she can marry and she has the option the Man does not of having her past a total mystery and if she is careful and clever the man will never be the wiser. She has the power to insure that she and she alone carries the burden of her past.

Not so the man with HBS. It is almost a certainty that he is going to have to settle for at best a slim slice of cake if not the crumbs and he will have to give up that oh so precious control over his life that the Woman with HBS has

And though testosterone may lower the voice and cause a beard to grow, neither it nor any surgery we currently have will ever allow the man with HBS to be free from a constant reminder that he is not and never will be fully male?

And that is my point here and the one thing that I have never seen addressed? What odd twist does it create in the mind of one who is so afflicted that they can never lay that burden aside? Does it cause the temptation to exploit the few cards one is dealt? Or? was Ms Beattie just the counter point to a flesh transvestite carried away with a fetish

Personally, if I take a stand I must side with everyone else here to date and say that the proof is in the pudding and that Beattie is bottom line a woman but I have to temper my judgment with a touch of empathy.

Beattie whether man or woman has found love and has a family and no matter how odd the circumstances they are still things of value?

BeccaG