She has had her breasts removed and is taking hormone injections. Big deal. That doesn't make her a man, any more than riveting some antlers to her skull would make her a moose.

But the media have their product to peddle, and they know that "Man gets pregnant" is a better attention-grabber than "Butch lesbian gets pregnant."

I mean, he's just a boring old married guy who used to be a woman, so he can carry a kid.

Big. Fat. Hairy. Deal.

pronouns? we already have one - "it".

It only takes a transgender story to bring out the troglodytes. It draws them momentarily from their trollery over at Broadsheet. It is so disheartening to see the incredible closed-mindedness and outright hatred of trans people in a supposedly progressive atmosphere. If it's someone who's gay, or black, or Muslim, hey they deserve to live their lives and be happy, but the minute trans issues come up, it's about "sick" people with "mental problems". Nice people. No worries about running out of prejudices to fight, even after a black president.

Gender politics aside, pregnancy is a biological phenomenon. Uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, vaginal canal...those are female reproductive organs. Socially and politically, Thomas Beattie is a man. And more power to him. But biologically speaking, there is no such thing as a pregnant man.

'The transgender community has often been caught in the shadow of its gay and lesbian brethren'

Gays and lesbians are no more or less brethren than straights. Transgender people may have found a home and an alliance with gay and lesbian people because we understand that, fundamentally, gender is a performance and we allow the fluidity of identification that gender representation needs.

BUT the gay and lesbian fight is not the trans fight. This case highlights that gender is different to sexuality - trans people would shown themselves more respect disentangling themselves from the sexuality fight because, once the gay and lesbian community has won the fight to be mainstream, I can't see many continuing the fight for trans rights.

This person is not male. This is a mutilated woman who has had some artificial changes applied to her body. If I tattoo some stripes on myself, that doesn't make me a zebra.

Phrases like "his clitoris" would be laughably absurd if they weren't so disturbing. This type of thinking is truly Orwellian: it warps our language and cripples our ability to think rationally, by denying us the right to trust the evidence of our own senses and call a thing what it truly is.

The far Left hates categories and labels of any kind. They want us to believe that there is NO difference between male and female, child and adult, criminal and victim, citizen and noncitizen, enemy and friend. This is the triumph of illogic and a total denial of reality.

By the way...there's nothing inherently male about body-hair. Women have leg hair and armpit hair, too. (gasp!)

Men do not get pregnant. A man does not have a clitoris, or a uterus. Putting on a baseball cap and growing your armpit hair does not make a woman male. Injecting hormones does not make a woman male. Not even the most gruesomely invasive surgeries can make a woman male. To claim otherwise is an irrational fantasy.

Up is down, day is night, man is pregnant. Yup, Orwell...

(Oops. Did I commit bigotry and homophobia by stating the simple truth of what I see in front of me?)

I think Thomas Beatie has done a brave, risky, and loving thing, and I hope he and his wife have a healthy baby.

Mireille C (above) has it right. Just watch and count how many angry and abusive letters this article draws. There is plenty to be said about the import of the Beatie phenomenon -- things about our emerging new understanding of gender, and how social construction of it is constricting even to straight-ahead men and women. But no -- the Haters will chime in, with a certainty that clearly is not derived from actual experience. Let me try it: "These so-called self-styled transsexuals are just mentally-disturbed men and women who MUTILATE THEIR BODIES in order to better pretend that they are something they are not. Being gay is something you're born with, but transsexualism is a choice. These people deserve no sympathy and certainly no insurance money for their surgeries. I don't mind when trannies are hookers, but when they attempt to be normal citizens, they are being sick and disgusting. Why, I oughta just haul off and . . ." Okay, you've seen it before. I suggest to all the Haters that they learn something about the subject - anything - before spewing what is not an opinion, but a blind prejudice. And let's the rest of us talk about gender in an intelligent way, as this article does. [And yes, I am a transsexual - or, as I like to say, a Former transsexual.]

And what about the vast majority of languages with male and female adjectives? I would imagine that except for sea horses, pregnant is solely a female adjective...

Then you had best be an atheist because I'm pretty sure you've never seen "God". Just because you haven't seen it in your limited life doesn't mean it isn't true. Nice try. Go back and chill with your Freeper friends.

What does it tell you about the way America views transgendered people? Not nearly as much as the hatemongering in this feedback does or Salon's willingness to host it without moderation.

Random nonsense and irrelevant personal attacks, instead of any attempt at a clear and cogent argument.

The saddest fallacy of all, in this type of debate, is when people insist that merely disagreeing equals HATE.

So, if I dare to even question any leftist viewpoints, if I dare to deviate one iota from these new orthodoxies, then I don't have the right to speak, and I'm automatically NAZI-FASCIST-BIGOT-HATEMONGER-HYSTERIA!!! There's a spirit of censorship in that type of thinking.

I don't attempt to silence other people's opinions, and I explained my ideas instead of making a nonsensical reference to God and then essentially saying "f*ck off..."

I am not surprised by the level of debate, here. Why use logic when you can just scream Hater/Bigot/Bush-lover/OMG!!!!

Don't bother replying. I'm not impressed.