6 and Sittin' Pretty

From femme beauty to butch body builder to pregnant, female-to-male transgendered man, it's been a long, complex journey for Thomas Beatie. This past April, he and his wife Nancy shared their story with the world through a piece in The Advocate and in an interview on Oprah. Eager to produce a biological child of their own, and aware that Nancy was unable to conceive, the couple traveled a path foreign to most; although he now lives openly as a man, Beatie stopped his hormone treatments and returned to a normal menstrual cycle, which enabled him to become pregnant through artificial insemination. After enduring life-threatening complications with his first pregnancy, Beatie now carries a healthy baby girl, due in July. “In a technical sense,” he wrote in The Advocate, “I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her loving husband carrying our child....I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family.” Beatie’s controversial decision to go public with his pregnancy has opened a Pandora’s box of questions and concerns relating to gender and trans legitimacy.