If you’re a transgender man, which bathroom should you use to “chestfeed” your child?
I know. It sounds like a riddle, doesn’t it?
That’s just the beginning. Brace yourselves. There are so many layers of crazy to this story.
Meet Trevor MacDonald, 31. She’s (yes, I’m referring to her as “she,” as that’s her biological gender) a transgender man who transitioned in her early 20s, taking testosterone, changing her legal name and having chest surgery. It was awesome. Her body finally matched her identity. All was well, until she realized she and her gay partner wanted to have kids. They thought about adoption, but determined that the odds would be stacked against because of their very, um, *unique* situation. And then a lightbulb went off.
MacDonald never had a hysterectomy. She’s actually a woman. And her gay partner is a dude. So they could actually have kids like a normal straight couple, because the biology works.
Don’t ask me how long it took them to look down and figure that one out.
So MacDonald stopped taking testosterone so she could conceive, and she did. They timed the pregnancy during the winter, so she could wear big jackets and not look like a totally pregnant dude. It was delightful, because her facial hair and deep voice didn’t fade away.
“Throughout the pregnancy, I was able to continue presenting as male,” she said.
But as people around them realized she was pregnant with a child, they started calling her a “mother,” which is a HUGE no.
“There were people who immediately began calling me ‘mom’ and ‘she,” MacDonald said. “One person told him simply: ‘If you’re giving birth, you’re a mother.’”
That’s so inconsiderate and offensive, calling a pregnant woman a mother. The nerve of some people, I’m telling ya. Being pregnant shouldn’t be a gendered thing! Neither should breastfeeding chestfeeding– which she did, by the way. The surgery didn’t affect her ability to do that.