A transgender man who gave birth has criticised nurses for calling him a “mother.” The bearded Los Angeles resident claimed he was misgendered during his pregnancy, demanding that he be called a father.
In a recent interview with The Daily Mail, Bennett Kaspar-Williams, 37, from Los Angeles, described the traumatic experience of being labeled as a “mother” having given birth to a healthy baby boy named Hudson in October 2020.
Kaspar-Williams, who began transitioning in 2014 and had his breasts removed in 2015, became pregnant naturally in 2020 after coming off hormone treatment. Hudson, a child conceived with husband Malik, was born by cesarean section.
Despite the pregnancy going smoothly, Kaspar-Williams has since complained that he was frequently misgendered while in hospital.
“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,” he told The Daily Mail.
The bearded man, who birthed Hudson, described the events as “dysphoric.” “Even with a full beard, a flat chest, and a ‘male’ gender marker on all my identification, people could not help but default to calling me “mom,” “mother” or “ma’am,” he added.
Kaspar-Williams contended that nothing about the pregnancy made him feel more feminine, noting that carrying the baby during the pandemic was the bravest thing he had done.
“Nothing feels stronger than being able to say I’m a dad who created my own child,” he claimed. The father told the Mail that his son will have a Dada and a Papa, which is both “natural” and “normal.”
The interview comes after the heavily criticized replacement of the word “mothers” with “birthing people” in maternal health guidance documents was included in the Biden administration’s budget proposal this summer.
