Your Basic Coming Out Story
I’m sure you’ve all seen the picture.
It’s a photograph that was featured in
newsmagazines and supermarket tabloids alike, you know the one I mean. The
picture of the pregnant guy.
Many find the picture disgusting. Some,
I’m sure, think it’s beautiful. Others are simply intrigued. I suppose
I’m in that final category, as I’m neither repulsed nor drawn to the
photo, and yet, like many others, I did a double-take when I first
realized what I was seeing in that photo—I’ll admit that at first, I
thought it was perhaps the “before” picture in a story about how
someone lost a bunch of weight. Then of course, I realized that that
man’s belly and mine were very, very different.
Just in case you haven’t seen the
picture, you can find it easily enough by doing a Google search for
“Thomas Beattie.” Mr. Beattie, a transgender man (which means that he
transitioned from a female identity to a male one), decided to carry a
child using his still-functioning ovaries and uterus, when it was
discovered that his wife was infertile. He wrote an article about his
pregnancy in The Advocate, and talked about it on The Oprah Winfrey Show
and—surprise, surprise—he garnered a lot of attention. He is often
called the “first pregnant man,” which isn’t exactly true. Matt
Rice, another transgender man, was artificially inseminated in 1999 and
gave birth to a child—however, since Rice was never “legally”
declared male, he was just a freaky pregnant dyke as far as the state of
California was concerned.
And, of course, there are many who would
apply the word “freak” to Mr. Beattie as well. Others are more tactful
in their vocabulary, and yet the feeling is still there. There are even
some within the GLBT community who disapprove of Mr. Beattie, or at the
very least wish he’d just quietly go away.
Recently, a friend of mine expressed her
opinion that he’s doing a disservice to the transgender community, most
of whom want to transition completely to the opposite gender and not
remind the world that their gender identity is a little more complicated.
I don’t think my friend is alone in this belief; I imagine that many
people would agree with her. But I do wonder if the transgender community
of yesteryear is the same transgender community of today.
A few decades ago, most transgender people
were counseled by professional psychoanalysts to prepare for their future
lives in the following way: Quit your job. Divorce your spouse. Say
goodbye to your friends. Disappear. Have whatever procedures, surgical or
cosmetic, you plan to have. Learn to live in your new body. Change your
name. Find a new home, preferably far away from the old one. Make new
friends. Be prepared to sever all ties. Find a new job, and not a very
good one (since you won’t really be able to list any references who knew
you “before”). Divorce yourself from your old life. Pretend it never
happened. Keep your secret. Tell no one.
And if you’re a woman transitioning to a
male identity, under no circumstances should you get pregnant and talk
about it on The Oprah Winfrey Show. (Okay, that last one probably goes
without saying…but I’m making a point.)
In other words, find a nice safe closet and
stay there. I suppose that before anyone really understood the transgender
experience, this technique might have been the safest, most reasonable
route to take. Of course, nowadays, transgender people are transitioning
with the support of their families. Many are staying in their marriages.
They’re staying in touch with their kids. If they work for a progressive
corporation, quite a few transition on the job. More and more transgender
men and women are coming out of that closet, and I’d wager to say that
the majority find life on the outside just as uplifting and enriching as
most out GLB people do.
Thomas Beattie is an out transgender man.
Clearly, trying to fool anyone into believing that he’s just like every
other man isn’t very high on his priority list. Just as out gay people
have taught the world that not all love stories begin with “boy meets
girl,” out transgender people are beginning to teach the rest of us that
there’s something between “boy” and “girl”—in fact, a whole
range of possibilities exist there, up to and including a guy with
whiskers, a deep voice, and hairy armpits who will give birth to a child
later this year.
And you know what? After writing all that
down, I’m beginning to think that the infamous photograph is beautiful,
after all.
Eric C Peterson is a diversity
practitioner living in Washington
DC and a frequent visitor to Rehoboth Beach. Email him at red7eric@aol.com.
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