A transgender man who recently gave birth wants medical workers to understand that not everyone who gives birth is a “mother.”
The transgender man, 37-year-old Bennett Kaspar-Williams, gave birth via cesarean to a healthy baby boy with his husband, Malik, in October 2020.
Bennett claims that the birthing process was overshadowed by the medical staff’s constant misgendering of him by calling him “mom.”
“No one can ever really know whether having children is possible until you try — being born with a uterus doesn’t make conceiving or carrying a certainty,” Kaspar- Williams — who began transitioning in 2014 — said of his journey. “That’s why it’s so important that we stop defining ‘womanhood’ in terms of ‘motherhood,’ because it’s a false equivalency that all women can become mothers, that all mothers carry their children, or that all people who carry children are mothers.”
Kaspar-Williams realized he was trans in 2011 and began transitioning in 2014, which included getting a $5,000-surgery to remove his breasts.
The new father said the process of trying to conceive, being successful, and being pregnant never challenged his gender identity. But he did reveal the only real cause of unease regarding how medical professionals continually and incorrectly assumed his gender.
“The only thing that made me dysphoric about my pregnancy was the misgendering that happened to me when I was getting medical care for my pregnancy,” he said. “The business of pregnancy — and yes, I say business, because the entire institution of pregnancy care in America is centered around selling this concept of ‘motherhood’ — is so intertwined with gender that it was hard to escape being misgendered,” Kaspar-Williams explained.
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As a professional health care worker, criticizing a nurse is not right. This is new territory we’re in to, so you need to give her a break also try to educate others instead of judging or being offended. Everything gets better with empathy and care.
As a human who happened to have a uterus, perhaps the $5,000 should have been spent to remove his/her uterus. To have the audacity to be angry with someone who referred to him/her as the inherent being their were born as, is as beyond insanity. Keep on believing you are a man when clearly your body says otherwise. That is the definition of insanity. If it walks like a duck…!
Olivia,
Your ignorance is sad but your lack of education is depressing. That narrow minded thinking is why this is being written about, for ignorance like yours. Funny, people seem to think evolving as a human is an inherent step in life, well anyone reading this, it clearly is not. It is a choice, it takes effort to think beyond your small backyard. It takes intelligent thoughtfulness to think for yourself, not what has been falsely laid out for you to adhere to. This requires your mind to open wide enough to empathize with something that didn’t ask nor does it need your permission in order to be a truth that you need understand it. This you will see exists, as does love, whether you ‘believe’ in it or not. This is someone else’s truth, someone else’s reality, it didn’t ask for your belief. Who are you or anyone to require that if you are not God himself? This is now about a law that exists that talks about equal treatment as a human being, including the right to be addressed as they are requesting, again, your permission is not required nor is it requested, thank you for your concern though.
P.S just trying to help, but you sound unintelligent citing the presence of insanity for him to call himself a man when…pause…his body “clearly” says otherwise? Hmm how many women do you know with full beards? The hospital deserves understanding? Seems he is ‘clearly’ a man and they were consciously choosing to be oblivious and hateful.
No! Olivia is the one WHO IS SANE.
If “he” wants to be considered a MAN then don’t participate in a function that is the epitome of WOMANHOOD
All you have to rely on to justify disregard of respecting and being loving and not being judge is a concept of what womanhood is? You sound ignorant. This isn’t about sane that was her concept she brought up I was rebutting. You’ve all proven how far above your head this will always be. Sad really. No one can stop this car wreck of the display of why people call Americans’dumb’. You are followers of what people told you was the ‘epitome’ of everything I am sure. People like you will never evolve. And no, that type of evolution of thinking nothing to do with the religious context Pfff. No point I’m trying. ‘Normal’ helps you sleep at night.
Well, im sorry but only women can birth children.i get what you’re Identifying as, but men cant give birth. Im sure it was an honest mistake the nurse made, but you cant force your beliefs on everyone.
It’s not a belief. He made it clear what he wished to be addressed as clearly and they just blatantly disregarded that. Saying the right word that clearly should have been used required nothing of them to set aside their own beliefs and respect his pronoun and left religion and moral high ground at church. Instead they went out of their way to make a statement by saying mom and they know it. It was unkind and disrespectful to a fellow human. They had to be so stuck in their low level thinking that they couldn’t disagree in the confines of their own mind.
The nerve of some of you, only women/females birth children. Since when do men have uteruses and wombs?? God is sitting us with COVID and milking of black man, there plagues because Abbie men are trying to rewrite nature and go shading God. Only women can be mothers & birth children. Period, no matter how much you try to erase us.
Yes I am sure God wants your heart to be filled with this judgment of others. You will realize you had it all wrong….you just don’t get it. You are spending energy on ‘only woman can do this’? What does that gain you? You feel a moral elitist? That grace you could give if you were that nurse, would tell God you will live and let live with kindness and respect. Everything else about erase you bla bla, and but but that’s not supposed to be…. is not for you to decide. The point about judgment when he meets YOU? How did you treat those you decided wrong?