Friday, April 04, 2008

Preggers

This "Man Getting Pregnant" story has some serious legs. We've been covering Thomas Beatie closely on Mahalo for at least a week now.

Here's the thing...I think a lot of well-meaning people who aren't typically intolerant of or freaked-out-by the trans-gendered don't really know how to process that story. You want to be open-minded, but I think we all have our limits. For many, the notion of a person that appears to be male, and has taken hormones to make himself appear so, getting pregnant just crosses some invisible "playing God" line. Ladies get preggers. Men don't. That's the way it works.

I'm really not having this problem, but then again, I'm pretty much always going to be on the side of more liberty and less restriction. If a guy can somehow manage to get himself pregnant, and isn't doing anything to put the baby's life in jeopardy by doing so...go for it. Doesn't affect me.

I think the interesting question is, what if you are one of those people who finds this inappropriate? Does that make you a bad person? Intolerant? Bigoted? I'm not sure...It strikes me as a reasonable-enough reaction to these videos:



yet it's pretty much always wrong, to my mind, to judge other people's choices if they don't significantly impact you. Really fascinating case...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just today a close friend of mine, who is usually very open-minded, told me she thought it was "screwed up" than a "dude was having a baby." I was pretty upset with her, but I tried not to jump down her throat about it.

Anonymous said...

My immediate reaction was shock, I have to admit. I appreciate that they really want a baby, but something about it just doesn't seem quite right. I certainly wouldn't interfere with their right to have the baby, but that doesn't mean I'd feel comfortable about it.