The world is a constantly changing place but sometimes, it doesn’t change fast enough for some of the people in it. This seems to be true recently for many who are transgender, and they may have to argue their point again and again.
Not everybody has adapted to the practice of considering the other person when they are using pronouns. Gender identity is a hot-button topic, and there are times when it can bubble to the surface.
This was seen recently when 37-year-old Bennett Kaspar-Williams welcomed Hudson into the world via a cesarean section. They were there with the help of their husband, Malik and the birth went smoothly.
Despite the fact that Kaspar-Williams identifies as a male and was using he/him/his pronouns, there are some challenges that he must face from time to time. At this point, they have changed to non-binary so they are using the they/them pronouns as well.
The problem was, that after he had a child, the nurses were referring to him as a mother instead of a father. Kaspar-Williams took offense at this issue.
When Kaspar-Williams realized that he was transgender in 2011, he underwent surgery by 2014. Even though the surgery took place on the upper part of his body, the lower part of his body was left untouched.
Kaspar-Williams found the process of pregnancy and childbirth to be fulfilling but he was disheartened because the medical staff was unsympathetic to him and labeling him as the proper gender.
Despite the fact that they used their preferred gender in the medical forms, this nursing staff continued to misgender them when they were in the room. This happened after Hudson’s birth, and now they are actively advocating for the recognition that childbirth is no longer gender specific.
Kaspar-Williams went on to talk about the importance of disconnecting womanhood from motherhood. He reached out to a large news outlet, saying that he was uncomfortable with being repeatedly called mom, even though he had marked mail on the form.
“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. 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.”
This will be something that is argued for many years to come.