Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

Transman Thomas Beatie gives The Advocate a first-person account of how it feels to be pregnant and carrying a child for his wife and himself. Thomas Beatie: To our neighbors, my wife, Nancy, and I don’t appear in the least unusual. To those in the quiet Oregon community where we live, we are viewed just as we are -- a happy couple deeply in love. Our desire to work hard, buy our first home, and start a family was nothing out of the ordinary. That is, until we decided that I would carry our child. I am transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy. Unlike those in same-sex marriages, domestic partnerships, or civil unions, Nancy and I are afforded the more than 1,100 federal rights of marriage. Sterilization is not a requirement for sex reassignment, so I decide...

Hermaphrodites, commonly known as eunuchs, can now choose a gender of their liking and some can even give birth to babies — thanks to a special procedure developed at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here. After proper diagnosis, some 1,100 patients have already given proper gender identities as males or females and all of them are leading a normal life, doctors at the premier research and referral institute said. “Treatment is available in select centres. At least 18 of the treated patients have also given birth to babies,” said Dr D.K. Gupta, head of the department of paediatric surgeries.“After diagnosing physical attributes present inside the body and demands of the family, we conduct surgeries to reconstruct the vagina, uterus and even the male genitals,” Gupta said. He said some time he and his team had to conduct as many as six-seven operations on one patient to put everything in order and said early diagnosis was the best way to treat such complications.“The ...