A transgender man has complained that nurses insisted on calling him “mom” during his pregnancy despite being a man.
Bennett Kaspar-Williams, 37, from Los Angeles, was born biologically female. He first realised he was trans around ten years ago, in 2011, but didn’t begin his transition until three years later.
Then six years later, in 2017 he found Malik, his future husband, who he married in 2019.
When they decided to have kids, Bennett stopped the testosterone hormone therapy he’d been on for several years to enable his ovaries to function.
Bennett, who has had gender reassigning surgery on the top half of his body but not on his genitalia, eventually decided that he would be comfortable trying to conceive and carrying a child.
He fell pregnant naturally soon after they started trying. He found out he was pregnant in March 2020 and the couple welcomed their son Hudson, via Cesarean section, in October 2020.
But in the process of having little Hudson, Bennett Kaspar-Williams was troubled by the constant misgendering of him by hospital staff who insisted on calling him a “mom”.
Bennett said: “I always knew it was a possibility that my body might achieve pregnancy, but it wasn’t something I ever wanted to do until I learned how to separate the function of my body from any notions of gender.
“Once I learned to think of my body as a tool and not a collection of gendered stereotypes, I realized that I could both be the person I wanted to and bring a child into the world.