Why I Hate Oprah

Well, I don't literally hate her, but despite the good she has admittedly done, I consider Oprah! to be a destructive cultural force. Case in point is her inviting the "pregnant man"--who is really a woman who has had his gender reassigned--on her show, further hyping what should be a non story into the sensationalist stratosphere.

As I wrote here, Thomas Beatie is a transsexual who has not had his female sexual organs removed. Wanting a child, he stopped taking the male hormones necessary to maintain the appearance of masculinity--at least he had better have stopped taking hormones--and was artificially inseminated. Now, Beatie has gone on Oprah worrying that people will want to kill his baby "as an abomination." From the story:

However, the 34-year-old transsexual also told chat show host Oprah Winfrey that he feared for his own safety and admitted doctors had warned him his baby could be killed because of the revulsion at her birth.

To quote Charlie Brown, I can't stand it. First, everybody knows that Beatie is not really a man, biologically, and so the baby would not be "an abomination," (as if any baby could be). So a woman is giving birth, as four million do in this country every year--big whup. Secondly, the only reason anyone even knows about this is because Beatie made his situation public--and Oprah decided to grant her blessing! And get this:

As well as the Oprah show, Beatie also gave a detailed interview to People magazine.

Did I tell you I hate People too?

This story encapsulates so much of what is going wrong with our contemporary popular culture: The me-me/I-I sense of entitlement that has become so pervasive (few thoughts of the impact on the child from all of this), the power of celebrity and the cult of personality, hyper sensationalism substituting for real news, the media's celebration of the bizarre, postmodernism where narrative rather than facts drive our discourse, a person who intentionally sought publicity complaining because people criticize him for making himself a spectacle.

Well, this is what the transhumanists want--radical individualistic self expression. But it strikes me as further proof that we have ceased to be a serious society.

"Pregnant Man" Isn't a Man

There has been some twitter about a "man" who has become pregnant. Assuming the story is genuine, and I have my doubts, the man isn't a man. Biologically, she's a transgendered woman who became a man under the law and is married as a man under the law. Because his wife has had a hysterectomy, he decided to become artificially inseminated, and the child will be biologically his because his female organs remain intact.

He claims to have been discriminated against by doctors. If true, that is wrong. His health and that of the baby depend on good prenatal care. Doctors should not deny necessary treatment based on their moral disdain of their patients' lifestyles.

The pregnant husband told his story to the gay newspaper, The Advocate, writing:

How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible. Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child--I am so lucky to have such a loving, supportive wife. I will be my daughter's father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family.

They will be a family, but he is not really a man. She is a woman, biologically. That's why she is capable of having a baby. So, the facts are that a woman, who identifies as a man, is having a baby. That's not the same thing at all as a man having a baby. We can redefine all we want, we can say that legally she is a he, but that doesn't change biology. A woman is having a baby and that is not remarkable at all.