Since penning the article “Labor of Love” in the Advocate, a popular gay magazine, Thomas Beatie has been a lightning rod for criticism as well as a poster child for discrimination against transsexual and transgender individuals in America. Whether Beatie deserves our respect, denigration or attention in the first place is up to each citizen to decide.

Beatie has been ridiculed on Saturday Night Live as well as in the blogosphere. Support has come from one of the highest media moguls in the land, Oprah Winfrey. Oprah brought Beatie on her show and aired Beatie getting a sonogram. Oprah may as well have put Beatie in a clear box with a small hole for air and charged two bits a gander. Beatie’s bewildering appearance, gender identity crisis and past glamour as a finalist for the title of Miss Teen Hawaii lead me to believe that there may be a guest appearance as a judge on America’s Next Top Model in the near future.

There are many people in this world who feel the way they are on the inside is not the way they should be on the outside. Modern medicine and surgical procedures have enabled people to make changes that were inconceivable centuries ago. Part of living in America is enjoying the personal liberties we are granted as citizens. With a few exceptions, people are allowed to live the life that makes them happy. A person should have the right to do whatever they want to their body. No one made millions of viewers tune into Oprah and hid the remote so they couldn’t change the channel. Beatie isn’t hurting anyone, so this should not even be an issue.

Beatie cannot accurately be described as a transsexual or transgender. A transsexual changes his or her gender medically and physically, while a transgender does not bring about physical changes to his or her body. Beatie has taken testosterone and it has manifested itself into an impressive little beard. If that previous sentence contains any hostility it is simply because Beatie’s facial hair is still more substantial than anything I can grow. Beatie’s breasts were removed but the reproductive organs were left female in hopes of having a child someday. “I feel it is not a male or female desire to have a child. It’s a human need. I am a person and I have a right to have a biological child,” Beatie told Oprah.

People in this country always throw the word ‘need’ around with a despicable frequency. The right to a biological child may be a universal ideal but the desire to have a child is more a want than a need. Oprah may hunger for ratings and Beatie may enjoy being noticed, but that is as far as it goes.

Beatie is not really a male. Therefore, this case is just a sideshow and nothing special. The state can recognize Beatie legally as a male, but logic and a basic anatomy textbook show the opposite point. Beatie is neither a seahorse nor Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Junior”, just a confused human being in desperate need of validation and attention.

Jordan Guinn can be reached at [email protected]