Difference/tolerance

Unless you live in another planet, you might know that there is a pregnant man these days. He is from Oregon, and he was born as a woman. Some years ago he did a sex change operation but kept his reproductive organs "in case one day a miracle would happen and he could have a baby". He got married to a woman, who is unable to carry a baby and when they decided to have a baby of their own, and since he was able to, they decided that he would be the one carrying the child. Yesterday he gave an interview to Oprah that can be seen here.

I saw this interview just now and I am so amazed with this story. Two things made me more of an impression: firstly some of this guy's words, he said "I feel that the desire to reproduce is not a male or a female desire, it is a human desire. Wanting to carry my own baby, did not make me feel more 'female'." I find this quote very impressive, because it illustrates so clearly, the arbitrariness of categorization. People are people, they are all born the same, little lumps of life and depending on the hormones they have, they turn out as women or men. When they are born, enter society with its social stereotypes and da dah, here you go. The guy of this story was not like that however. Calliope/Cal in Middlesex is not like that, some people are not like that. Is that so bad, so difficult to accept (even if you cannot understand)?

The second thing that made an impression on me was the doctors' response. Apparently this guy and his wife, were turned down 5 times by various doctors who claimed that either they or their staff feel somehow uncomfortable with this situation. Because the baby will not be normal, they said. Their doctor who finally agreed to take them, is this plain American lady who, when asked about how she felt about the 'normalcy' of this pregnancy, she responded 'the baby is normal, therefore I treat this as a normal pregnancy'.

I think all this is very interesting. Difference, for me, is the most treasured ideal of our times. That's why I love people who obsess with it, like Tim Burton. A boy with scissor hands, a corpse bride, an avenging barber, a pregnant man. It's all the same. We're all different, but we all feel the same.