You can ascribe any existential attributes you want to this but for most people in the world, this is simply a 'man bites dog' story. Them's the breaks.

First off let me say I am in total agreement re: Fox News' anchors snickering like 12-year olds who still find words like 'poop' the height of hilarity. I'd have put money down in advance on it, if only someone had made the offer.

However, I don't see what it was that made this a news story in the first place. Ok, _now_ it's news, now that it's entered the zeitgeist and the pundits have had their say. But what's news about somebody who has a full set of female reproductive organs getting pregnant in the first place? Was there an attack or something on the guy and that's why it made the nets?

This person is not "transgender". This person is nothing more than a woman who has had plastic surgery and taken drugs to look more like a man. "He" is a she. Transgender people fight very hard for recognition that they are not just freaks who have had plastic surgery to look like something they aren't. This is making a joke of all that.

Here's a nice story highlighting the depths of the fear some people have of the trans-gendered - http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hRM8TuoUDOrMtqw1uM5VuMGqyNvwD8VSOJOG0

(clicky link in my sig below)

A Christian radio network has encouraged it listeners to hound a school where the students dressed as the opposite sex one day as part of a "Wacky Week" celebration.

Is it really that scary if students cross-dress? Are these same people afraid of comedy skits and movies where cross-dressing occurs.

We had these sorts of days in school when I was growing up, and I don't think that there we ended up with a particularly high number of "deviants" in any of my classes. These people really need to get a grip.

I don't get it. Why isn't Thomas Beatie a legitimate transgender person?

If I met this guy at a cocktail party I’d always think of him as a man. But the medical truth is this ‘man’ is genetically a woman. The news coverage that this is a pregnant man really bugs the hell out of me because it's just not true. Of course people are going to laugh at the story because it’s the equivalent of a Weekly World News’s headline.

It makes me think this ‘man’ is doing it for free baby stuff People Magazine is likely to throw at him (like the parent’s of really high multiple births do). Being trashy and looking for free stuff isn't just for the straights anymore.

is a fraud.

I bet if the person was a REAL genetic male and was able to get pregnant, all the good will would evaporate.

The reality is that many so called open minded libs are kind to this person because he was originally a 'she', meaning a woman got to be a man AND get pregnant.

A REAL man getting pregnant, uh no, you feminists would slap him down in a heartbeat.

That monopoly unfortunately has not yet been overcome. If men want to reproduce, they still have to be slaves to women and their demands while shit-faced-smile pretending not to be.

God forbid men one day might be able to make women irrelevant, make women WORK on their mind and their kindness towards men to generate interest in themselves. That day is coming, and not too soon either.

I'm an open minded, progressive thinking guy. I don't want to sound like a rube for saying this, but I still don't get what is going on with a trans gendered person. How is wanting to mutilate your body so that it appears more like the other gender any different from plastic surgery addiction, mutliating your body so as to approach some nonsensical ideal?

While I would never openly mock this person, I will admit that I respect him about as much as I respect others who have taken extreme measures to change their appearance. I feel bad I feel this way. I feel that I should respect and support them the same way I do the gay and lesbian community, but I don't.

Maybe we've evolved to the point that most mainstream news sources won't mock Beatie, but I don't think we've evolved enough that the majority of the public know and can sympathize with what is going on with him.

"Why is Thomas Beattie not a legitimate transgender person" was the question. I think it is because Beattie changed his outward appearance and his legal status, asking society to view him as a man -- and when we complied, he went and did the most absolutely and uniquely feminine thing it is possible to do (become pregnant). In doing so, he undid much of the hormonal treatment he had originally undergone to appear as a man.

I think this only buttresses my belief that transgender surgery is a kind of fakery, like claiming the Emperor is wearing a beautiful suit of clothing when in fact he is naked. Beattie is no more a man than I am -- "he" is a woman who has had his breasts cut off surgically and who has taken hormones to lower his voice and grow some facial hair.

I know several women who have had double masectomies -- not by choice but because of breast cancer -- and I have a couple of elderly aunts with bristley mustaches. Are they men? I think not.

In any way that matters, Beattie is a woman -- physically, genetically, and now (obviously) hormonally. One can only speculate as to the potential future damage to this unborn child who was gestated amidst large doses of male hormone given to satisfy his parent's whims.

Beattie's behavior seriously suggests that he/she will morph from woman to man and back to woman as situations (including money making opportunities) arise.

I also question why anyone serious about their transgendering would be so public, post such deliberately salacious photographs and allow the whole thing to be bandied about as "the pregnant man". It does indeed smack of opportunism and a chance to make money. It seems pretty obvious that a "tell all" book must be in the works.

Did Beattie really do this because of the desire for a child, when the couple could have adopted? Or was this a crass attempt to make money and get publicity by a neurotic individual who was obviously not serious about their transgendered status, especially given the circumstances and the fact that Beattie never went ahead with "bottom surgery".

It all seems planned, shoddy and very crass.