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Transgender man who gave birth slams nurses, staff for ‘mom’ label

December 23, 2021 | | Print Article

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A biological woman who gave birth to a baby boy is mad because the hospital staff called him “mom” instead of “dad.” The woman, Bennett Kaspar-Williams, 37, purports to be a “transgender man.”

In an interview this week with the Daily Mail, he complained that the hospital staff kept “misgendering” him after he gave birth in October of 2020.

“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.”

It’s presumed he was referring to gender dysphoria, the condition that affects those who falsely believe themselves to be of the opposite gender.

“Even with a full beard, a flat chest, and a ‘male’ gender marker on all my identification, people could not help but default to calling me ‘mom,’ ‘mother,’ or ‘ma’am.’ ‘That was what made me dysphoric,” he claimed.

Studies have shown that transgender people face a higher risk of depression. What remains unclear is which comes first — depression or their foray into transgenderism.

Also, nurses were so overwhelmed with work last year because of the pandemic that it’s possible that it didn’t even occur to them that they were “misgendering” him.

“Nothing about being pregnant felt ‘feminine’ to me. In fact, I think carrying a child, isolated due to the pandemic, and facing all the hospitals and appointments alone was the absolute toughest, bravest thing I’ve ever done. Nothing feels stronger than being able to say I’m a dad who created my own child,” he added.

He’s a staunch advocate in the idea that men can give birth.

“Once I learned to think of my body as a tool and not a collection of gendered stereotypes, I realized that I could both be the person I wanted to and bring a child into the world. 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,” he said.

“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.”

While it’s true that being born with a uterus doesn’t mean giving birth is possible — a woman might suffer from infertility, for instance — it’s also true that without a uterus, which is a female body part, there cannot be the natural birth of anything.

And indeed, Kaspar-Williams still retains his uterus. All that’s really missing are his breasts. He’s “had surgery on the top half of his body but not on his genitalia,” according to the Daily Mail.

“Two years after beginning hormone treatment, in the summer of 2015, Bennett had surgery to remove his breasts – paying $5,000 for the procedure,” the outlet notes.

“It was really liberating. I had this feeling that it was something that I needed to do, but I never had a self-hatred of my breasts, like some trans people. I had no dysphoria about certain body parts and still don’t. But I never could have anticipated what a relief it would be to find them gone. It was a huge weight off my shoulders,” he said.

He appears to believe the lack of breasts makes him a man. Critics disagree.

In fairness to Kaspar-Williams, neither he nor his husband, Malik, have filed a lawsuit or anything of that nature. They have, however, chosen to speak out publicly, and that always comes with the risk of criticism and ridicule.

He last made headlines when he penned an op-ed for Insider last month. In the piece, he argued that the biological reality of females giving birth “oppresses” women.

“It oppresses women who can’t have children. It oppresses people who were assigned male at birth, whether they’re cisgender or not, who can’t have children. It oppresses gender-nonconforming cis women who just don’t buy into the overly feminized version of mothering that we show in our culture,” he wrote.

Vivek Saxena
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