Bennett Kaspar-Williams, 37, from Los Angeles, originally realized he was trans in 2011, but didn’t start transitioning for another three years. He met Malik, his future spouse, six years later in 2017, and they married in 2019.
The couple longed for a child, so they quickly decided they wanted to and considered the options available, with Bennett deciding that he would comfortably conceive and carry a child. They found out they had a baby in March 2020, just before the first US strike began. Breaking happiness has come to them
Bennett gave birth to a lovely baby boy called Hudson through the cesarean section in October 2020, but he claims that while in the hospital, he was continuously misgendered by the staff.
‘The business of pregnancy – and yes, I say business, because the entire institution of pregnancy care in America is centered around selling this concept of “motherhood” – is so intertwined with the gender that it was hard to escape being misgendered.
‘Even with a full beard, a flat chest, and a ‘male’ gender marker on all my identification, people could not help but default to calling me “mom”, “mother”, or “ma’am”.’
Bennett calls carrying a kid during the pandemic “the single toughest, bravest thing I’ve ever done,” and adds the finest part of becoming a father is when Hudson acquires a new skill and comes up to me.
‘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,’ said Bennett.
‘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.
He said, ‘Children see love, they see patients, and they see commitment.
‘Having a Dada and a Papa is natural and normal to my son, and when he’s old enough, he’ll also learn that his Dada was the one who carried him and cared for him so he could enter this world.’
‘Children see love, they see patients, and they see commitment.’
‘My son will no doubt accept that he came from me, just as he accepts all the other love and beauty around him – with open arms. ”Children see love, they see patients, and they see commitment.’
