A woman who became pregnant while identifying as a man was profiled Saturday in publicly-funded NPR’s salute to Father’s Day.
Kayden Coleman, 37, reportedly stopped taking male hormones after a 2013 “top surgery.” She became impregnated by her husband while taking a break from transgender treatment.
NPR sandwiched her profile between a veteran father and an immigrant father.
Fox News further reported:
A transgender man received a Father’s Day spotlight on NPR for giving birth to two daughters in a piece on Saturday.
Alongside the story of a military father and an immigrant refugee parent, the publicly-funded news site described 37-year-old Kayden Coleman, who experienced a surprise pregnancy after temporarily stopping hormones for a top surgery.
“In 2013, he had just had top surgery — a double mastectomy — and had temporarily stopped taking hormones for the procedure. Coleman, who is transgender, said doctors had told him he couldn’t get pregnant. A few years later, assuming that he’d been taking hormones long enough to avoid another pregnancy, he found he was expecting again,” the article read. “Today, he is raising two young daughters.”
NPR’s piece also focused on issues Coleman faced as a pregnant man along with the “perceptions and expectations” of having children.
“I experienced a lot of pushback and discrimination within the medical system based on preconceived ideas of what a pregnant person is supposed to look like,” Coleman told NPR.
“I had to convince a lot of people that I was pregnant and that I wasn’t just a strange man trying to infiltrate the OB-GYN’s office,” Coleman added. “I got offered abortions an astronomical amount of times. I think that comes from the idea that people think that trans people either don’t want to have kids or shouldn’t have kids.”
The article also allowed Coleman to push back against alleged misconceptions about transgender parents.
“One of the biggest things that people get wrong is that we hate our bodies, and thus, anything remotely feminine would be something that we will reject — including pregnancy. For those of us who identify more on the masculine spectrum, just because we identify as such does not take away our desire to have kids. If we have the body parts to do so, why not?” Coleman said.
The concept of a “pregnant man” or a “birthing person” has been promoted in the wake of politicians and companies pushing transgender politics. Most recently, Glamour U.K.’s June issue featured a topless pregnant transgender man in honor of Pride Month. Both this cover and the terms “pregnant man” and “birthing person” have since received backlash.
Meanwhile, Coleman argued that being a trans dad has benefits, such as “insight” into the female experience.
“Being a trans dad means I was assigned female at birth and I was essentially raised to adhere to societal standards of what a girl is supposed to be, how a girl is supposed to act. I think that because of that upbringing, I inherently have a kind of nurturing side. I also have insight into how women are perceived by society,” Coleman said.
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