Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?

The headline was certainly arresting. “Pregnant Man Tells Oprah: It’s a miracle.” Yet the details of the story paint a slightly different picture:

A transgendered man who is six months pregnant said in an interview aired by Oprah Winfrey on Thursday that he always wanted to have a child and considers it a miracle.

“It’s not a male or female desire to have a child. It’s a human desire,” a thinly bearded Thomas Beatie said. “I have a very stable male identity,” he added, saying that pregnancy neither defines him nor makes him feel feminine.

Beatie, 34, who lives in Oregon, was born a woman but decided to become a man 10 years ago. He began taking testosterone treatments and had breast surgery to remove glands and flatten his chest.

“I opted not to do anything with my reproductive organs because I wanted to have a child one day,” he told the talk show host.

There’s nothing particularly miraculous about the story. Women get pregnant all the time, and despite any claims to the contrary Beatie is still a woman. She clearly does not like to think of herself that way, and has taken various steps to make herself appear that way (though from the story it does not appear that she has undergone sex-reassignment surgery), but neither thinking of oneself as male nor looking male is sufficient to actually be male.