thanx for cluing me in!

love all-ways,
mem

Of course biologically speaking it is a non event. Its not about a male carrying a child and giving birth. He is doing just as other females have done for aeons. ;) The issues, such as they are, are all social and cultural.

The point more has to do with that being a man or a woman is not just a matter of being biologically male or female; it also has to do with social and cultural roles. Being a man or a woman is more than just being male or female. There are a whole lot of cultural and social meanings that get attached to biology. The conventional assumption of course is that the biological and social are aligned: being female aligns with the psychological, cultural and social identity of being a woman, and being male aligns with the identity of being a man. Yet for some folks, transgendered folks specifically, there are different alignments. One may be male biologically, for example, yet identify and seek to live socially as a woman.

Biologically, males are not able to give birth. Men, in so far as it is generally assumed that they are necessarily male, there by do not give birth. Hence it becomes not just a matter of biological fact, but also a matter of meaning and identity arising out of that fact. But transsexuals seem to undermine such assumptions. Since a female-to-male transsexual wants to in all repsects to be a man (socially, culturally, legally, etc, despite their biology), it is then expected he would not want to have anything to do with that birthing thing... after all, that's something women do, right? It'd undermine his identity as a man. But now here is a transsexual man who wants to bear a child, can do so since he retained his female reproductive capabilities, and doesn't think it alters his sense of himself being a man. And that flies right in the face of a fair number of folks expectations. Hence, all the brou-ha-ha.

Which in the end I also think is rather silly as well (not his desire to have a child but the hoopla over it). But there you have it.