The story about Thomas Beatie, the pregnant transgender man, began with a self penned article in the Advocate in March and since then has gone around the world, including a twenty minute interview on Oprah. While that interview was reasonably sensitive, much of the coverage has been prurient, interested only in the shock value of the story.

For sexuality researchers it presents a number of real challenges to the theory we have been working with for many years. For anyone who has not read Thomas’ original article it is shocking—the stigma and discrimination that he and his wife encountered in trying to access medical care was appalling.

That Western culture is still deeply committed to a biological explanation of gender is not surprising. This story provides a stark example of some of the costs involved in this ideology. At the same time if we think about other instances in nature of male gestation (as in seahorses) or indeed asexual reproduction, perhaps Thomas Beatie in his gentle, modest way is actually reminding us of more radical and open ways of being human and sexual.