For the first time housewives across America are hearing about testosterone induced micro-penises. Nancy and Thomas Beatie, the soft-spoken couple from Bend awaiting their first child, are not just giving Middle America Trans 101, but must jump right into a highly personal story that goes way beyond pronoun explanations.
Beatie on OprahThe story began with the basics: Thomas’s birth name (Tracy), his early life as a tomboy and a beauty queen. Then he recounted his journey to manhood and touched, vaguely, on what made him feel like a man, and the differences between sexual orientation and gender identity.
Then Oprah got down to business. We learned about Thomas’s chest surgery. He had his breasts removed and his nipples reshaped and reattached. As with many transmen Thomas elected not to have bottom surgery and instead relied on his hormone therapy to enlarge his clitoris enough to be able to have intercourse with his wife. (Ready … shocked faces) It’s not as large as the genitalia of a bio male but Thomas asked quietly, “Does size really matter?”
Then we got to hear from his wife and her 2 daughters from a previous marriage. They worry for the safety of their mom and young step-dad, but love them and think they will make wonderful parents. Thomas recounts a scary moment when an intruder banged on their window at 2 in the morning and he rushed to defend his family before realizing that the pregnant spouse, even if he is the husband, should be protecting the baby inside first and foremost.
Interspersed we also got to see an ultrasound appointment and some sweet cradle-building home scenes, and hear from Thomas’s Ob-Gyn and the couple’s yuppie neighbors. One neighbor, the eyes behind hip academic glasses shining with cleverness, then coined a new phrase: “sexually dyslexic.” Oprah loved it.
But the real revelation of the show was the epic memoir. Thomas has been working on the tome of his life since the age of 17, but I don’t know that it would have been marketable until his pregnancy. In answer to Oprah’s question, Thomas most certainly believes that the world is ready to hear his story. And as shy as he may seem, he’s ready to tell it.
The couple will also appear in the next issue of People Magazine. And for an irreverent live blog recount I point you in the direction of VH1’s Best Week Ever post … with some serious reservations. Let the media frenzy continue.
I dream of the day when this isn’t an “Oprah story” but a normal, every day story. A day when a story like this isn’t in the spot light. When, we as a society, grow up and stop pointing fingers at the “different” and realize that we are all different.
That poor baby! I am stunned sometimes at how selfish people can be.
As a transman, I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the concept of a fellow transman wanting to get pregnant. I can only conclude that Beatie’s motives are questionable and that promoting his book or publicity to help flagging sales in his T-shirt business was the driving force here. There is no other rational explanation for all the publicity he purposely invited. That he would put these motives ahead of the safety of his wife and unborn child, I find deplorable.
I have to confess that the publicity idea did cross my mind. But what it comes down to is that Nancy had endometriosis and had to have a hysterectomy and they wanted a child. It was pretty selfless what Thomas has done for her when she could not.