This transgender male wishes to inform medical staff that not everyone who gives birth is a “mother.”
Bennett Kaspar-Williams, 37, and his spouse Malik welcomed a healthy baby son via cesarean section in October 2020 in Los Angeles.
The Daily Mail reported that Kaspar-Williams was troubled by the hospital staff’s insistence on misgendering him as a “mother” while he was giving birth to Hudson.
“No one can ever truly know whether having children is possible until they try — being born with a uterus does not guarantee conceiving or carrying a child,” said the father, who began transitioning in 2014. “Therefore, it is crucial that we stop defining ‘womanhood’ in terms of’motherhood,’ as it is a fallacy 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, which included a $5,000 surgery on the upper half of his body but not the bottom.
The surgery to eliminate his breasts was “extremely liberating,” he declared. “I could never have imagined how relieving it would be to discover them gone. It was a tremendous burden lifted from my shoulders.”
According to him, the procedure of attempting to conceive, being successful, and being expectant did not challenge his gender identity. In actuality, the only true source of unease was the fact that medical personnel consistently assumed his gender.
“The only aspect of my pregnancy that made me unhappy was the misgendering that occurred while I was receiving prenatal care,” he said. “The business of pregnancy — and yes, I say business, as the entire institution of pregnancy care in the United States is centered on selling the concept of’motherhood’ — is so intertwined with gender that it was difficult to avoid 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, he is immensely proud of being both a father and the person who created his child.
“Nothing makes me feel more powerful than being able to say I’m a father who conceived my own child,” he said.
“There is nothing more normal and natural to my son than having a Dada and a Papa,” he said. “When he is old enough, he will also realize that his grandfather carried him and cared for him so that he could enter this world.”