Thomas Beatie lives in a former logging city in Oregon with his wife, Nancy Roberts. He has a beard and he has a bulge in his stomach that isn't a beer belly. Beatie, it is claimed, is five months' pregnant and the story has caused a worldwide frenzy.
Beatie, 34, is a transgender man, or "trans man". Born in Hawaii as Tracy Lagondino, he was a prominent gay-rights activist who found he identified with being a man. He underwent a sex change, which involved regular injections of testosterone, and having his breasts surgically removed (but keeping his female reproductive organs) and legally became a man.
After marrying, Beatie and his wife moved to the US mainland. They wanted to start a family but health problems meant Roberts could not conceive. So, according to the account Beatie gave the Advocate, a US gay and lesbian magazine, he stopped his twice-weekly hormone injections, allowed his periods to return, and tried for a baby.
A first attempt ended in a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy. Now, following anonymous sperm donation and home insemination, Beatie says he is pregnant again and is due to give birth to a baby girl in July. "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," he writes. "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."
The dramatic picture of a bearded, apparently pregnant, Beatie has sparked horror in tabloid and conservative circles - and some are claiming it is a hoax. Fox News television channel has reported that Beatie won't be speaking to the media until his confidentiality clause ends on April 1 - April fool's day.
However, a "man" becoming pregnant is not new. Trans man Matt Rice gave birth to a baby boy in 1999, and his trans man partner, Patrick Califia, later told Village Voice magazine about his toddler son who "shrieks with delight at the sight of the tortoiseshell cat". Straight neighbours were "pretty sweet" about it, he wrote. "The only people who have gotten upset are a handful of straight-identified homophobic FTMs [female-to-male transgender people] online who started calling Matt by his girl name, because real men don't get pregnant."
The fact that even other transsexuals react with hostility reveals the levels of unease and prejudice a pregnant man can face. A common reaction is to wonder how someone can identify themselves as male and yet embrace pregnancy. "That's like saying you can't be a woman and have a career," says Christine Burns, a trans woman and equality and diversity specialist. "The irony is we've had a debate in feminism about the idea that if men were able to have children we would be in a very different position and yet when it happens there is enormous fear."
Lewis Turner, vice president of trans campaigning group Press for Change, says that having a male gender identity does not prevent you wanting to bear children. "As a trans man myself I wouldn't ever dream of getting pregnant. But I think Thomas Beatie identifies himself as male as much as I do and he just wants to reproduce."
Much concern has focused on the fate of the girl Beatie is said to be bearing. Doctors have expressed concern at the possible effect of testosterone on the unborn child. Beatie claims he halted his bi-weekly testosterone, did not take any extra oestrogen, progesterone or fertility drugs to aid his pregnancy and after four months his menstrual cycle began again. "It's really important that he doesn't take any testosterone early on in the pregnancy and later on," Lisa Masterson, a Los Angeles obstetrician, told ABC TV. "That can cause male-type characteristics in the female baby."
Elsewhere, there is professional concern about the confusion the child may later experience. "There is going to be an extra degree of complication or confusion about 'where am I from?'" says Robert Withers, a psychoanalyst who has treated transgender patients.
Kerrick Lucker, a gay activist at the University of California, Berkeley, has met two children with trans man birth mothers. "In my experience, they were extremely well-parented and well-adjusted. The only unusual challenges these kids face come from members of the public who see gender ambiguity as a great wrong," he says.
Turner says there is no reason why a child should be troubled by having been born from their father. "There are loads of trans people who have kids and I have not met one who is disturbed because of their parents." Turner does, however, acknowledge that such children may face bullying at school.
Beatie writes of the prejudice they have already experienced - from doctors telling him to shave off his beard and refusing to address him "by a male pronoun" to refusing to treat him. Lucker spots triumph in this adversity. "Generally speaking, a man whose desire for a child is strong enough to overcome the obstacles that transgender men must face in bearing one is likely to be an extremely caring father".
