Pregnant man

Like everyone else, I saw the newspaper headlines this week about the pregnant man, and, like many, I read no further and didn’t understand. But Stephanie also heard about last night’s Oprah special about the pregnant man (a former woman) and his wife and their family and neighbors. Stephanie stayed up late watching the special Oprah, which featured the happy couple in Oprah’s studio with a live audience plus lots of footage filmed in the days before and some live interviews with others. Tracy, born a biracial (white-Asian) woman, became a man Thomas), and then married Nancy. They decided they wanted to have a baby, and, even though Thomas’ transformation into a man had included chemical and surgical intervention, she would have trouble getting pregnant and they preferred him to be pregnant. And he underwent artificial insemination with sperm form a sperm bank and now they’re expecting a girl. Apparently, the story of Thomas and Nancy was the water-cooler talk at the faculty dining room at Stephanie’s school. One of Stephanie’s colleagues was particularly grossed out to hear the story of Thomas’ home, do-it-yourself artificial insemination. Although we heard very few of the technical details, the story reminded us just a little bit about the birth of our two women friends at church, who are a couple, and their son. Oprah was supportive of the couple and soon-to-be family with kids, seeing this as enriching U.S. family life by expanding options and even her viewers’ horizons. The live audience seemed OK with much of this, even though it’s pretty gender-bending, even though some audience members gasped at a few of the type of things that Stephanie’s colleague did. Stephanie said that, frankly, the pregnant Thomas reminded her a little of me (another biracial white-Asian person), particularly when I was a little heavier and my stomach protruded a little.