On July 3, 2008 ABC News reported on their website; “Pregnant ‘Man’ Gives Birth to Girl.” At first I thought it was funny then I remembered that I wrote an April Fool's day article in 2007—“Man Gives Birth to Twins”!" It was an April Fool's day joke. However, I was thinking about suing ABC for plagiarism until I realized that I wouldn’t stand a chance in court against their hotshot New York lawyers.  Besides, their story was the real deal, sort of, kinda...well, not really.

When I was a small child, three or four-years-old I once tried to convince my folks that I was a monkey and to humor me they went along with it, up to a point of course. I couldn't be a monkey at the grocery store, or at church, or most other public venues but at home, I could be a monkey to my heart’s content. My mother even made it a point to pick up a large bunch of bananas at the store just for me, her monkey boy. Well, I soon learned that monkeys not only didn’t have to take a bath and got to climb trees but they also didn't eat ice cream or drink root beer and that monkeys didn't get Christmas or birthday presents. My monkey phase lasted about a week but that was okay, I liked being a cowboy better anyway.

Fast forward fifty years to the present and we find that we have a thirty-four-year-old woman who is basically pulling the old "I'm a monkey" act in trying to convince the world that she is really a man—she even went as far as appearing on Oprah in April of this year to announce her pregnancy, and possibly gain a measure of publicity, not to mention money for her, her wife and future baby. That's okay, this is still somewhat of a free country and if Oregonian Thomas Beatie, sometimes known as the “pregnant man” wants to pretend to be a man, even going as far as surgically altering her body and taking male hormones in order to look like a man, that should be her right. What I don't understand is how or why the news media is playing along, just like my folks did when I was a small child and wanted them to believe me to be a monkey.

Remember, there is more to being a human than just having opposable thumbs but nothing says woman like having your very own uterus.