Not everyone who gives birth is a “mother,” this transgender man would like medical workers to know.
In Oct. 2020, Los Angeles resident Bennett Kaspar-Williams, 37, gave birth via caesarean to a healthy baby boy with his husband, Malik.
But in the process of having little Hudson, Kaspar-Williams was troubled by the constant misgendering of him by hospital staff who insisted on calling him a “mom,”*the Daily Mail reported.
“No one can ever really know whether having children is possible until you try — being born with a uterus doesn’t make conceiving or carrying a certainty,” the father — who began transitioning in 2014 — said of his parenthood journey. “That’s why it’s so important that we stop defining ‘womanhood’ in terms of ‘motherhood,’ because it’s a false equivalency that all women can become mothers, that all mothers carry their children, or that all people who carry children are mothers."
Kaspar-Williams realized he was trans in 2011 and began transitioning in 2014, a process which included getting a $5,000-surgery on the top but not the bottom half of his body.
“It was really liberating,” he said of the surgery to remove his brea*ts. “I never could have anticipated what a relief it would be to find them gone. It was a huge weight off my shoulders.”
The process of trying to conceive, being successful, and being pregnant were not challenging to his gender identity, he said. In fact the only real cause of unease regarding it was the way medical professionals continually a*sumed his gender.
"The only thing that made me dysphoric about my pregnancy was the misgendering that happened to me when I was getting medical care for my pregnancy,” he said. “The business of pregnancy — and yes, I say business, because the entire institution of pregnancy care in America is centered around selling this concept of ‘motherhood’ — is so intertwined with gender that it was hard to escape being misgendered."
Despite his full beard, flat chest and the “male” gender marker on his paperwork, “people could not help but default to calling me ‘mom,’ ‘mother,’ or ‘ma’am” he said.
Today, the fact that he is both a father and the person who made his baby are immense sources of pride.*
“Nothing feels stronger than being able to say I’m a dad who created my own child,” he said.
"To my son, there’s nothing more natural and normal than having a Dada and a Papa,” he said. “And when he’s old enough, he will also come to know that his Dada was the one who carried him and took care of him so he could come into this world."
