An Israeli man and his partner are celebrating the birth of their child after he delivered at Sheba Medical Center Thursday evening. Yuval Topper, 24, a transgender man, reportedly stunned medical personnel when he walked into the facility appearing in every way a man, ready to give birth, Israeli newspaper Y Net is reporting.
Topper is the first Israeli man to give birth to a child. His story is similar to an American family whose husband, Thomas Beatie, gave birth to the couple’s first child in 2008.
Topper delivered his baby at Sheba Medical Center. On delivering, the couple explained, “We preferred to go to Hadassah Mount Scopus, a hospital where we received excellent treatment in the past, but we were forced to head to Sheba as result of the birth’s quick progress. The staff at the hospital treated us with dignity and consideration.”
Topper had previously been admitted as an emergency patient at Sheba Medical Center.
“Everyone was in shock,” said another patient who was also at the hospital upon Topper’s arrival. “He looked like a man in every way and insisted that medical staff address him as a male.”
There is so much wrong here, I am not even sure where to begin. I’m sorry, but I simply do not accept that men get pregnant and have babies. And while I suppose it is possible that one might perceive a female who has taken testosterone and taken on a male appearance as simply being an overweight male, it would be more a matter of attempting to process conflicting signals. Being pregnant is really not looking like a man in every way. Oh well, this is another good example of why I will never accept the label of transgender.
You have no valid points except that you’re hating on the situation and uncomfortable with a label. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. Fluid sexuality is beautiful, birth is beautiful… your complaining about it is the only thing I see wrong here. This is not as uncommon as you might think.
This man got pregnant and had a baby, accept it or live in denial… I say congratulations to the father! <3
Denial? Hardly. I’m sorry, but men simply do not get pregnant. I realize that you are determined to subvert the gender binary, or whatever phrase you prefer, but yours is a very minority opinion. I find it mildly amusing that a few people who are transgender wish to claim to be male, but become pregnant. I am sure they enjoy the whole experience to messing with people’s minds, but it only make them look silly.
And you live under the assumption that this is done only to mess with your head? Thats the only goal and purpose in gender transitions? Not the persons identity but ‘what people would say’? really?
I agree with Chelsea. You are getting stuck on words and labels – try to see past that to the actuality of what is happening. Just because somebody LOOKS a certain way doesn’t mean they ARE that way. Why are you getting hung up on the self-identification of this person you don’t even know?
I am looking at exactly what is happening. A female (males cannot bear children at present) who has taken testosterone for a period in order to change certain characteristics and appear to be male has become pregnant. Now, I agree, just because a person looks a certain way does not mean they are that way. Thank you, you prove my point for me. This person is NOT acting in a male way. If a person identifies as something, but does not actually act that way, well that is a problem, isn’t it? This person looks like a male, but is functioning as a female. Now, clearly they are doing that in order to mess with gender. I decline to play along.
Men do not get pregnant. You see, I don’t share your love of fluid “sexuality” which is actually the wrong term here. This is more about fluid gender, and simply illustrates what “transgender” is all about. It is simply a rejection of gender norms. No, again, men do not get pregnant. Females, who wish to play games with gender might, but men don’t. To be honest, I really do pity the child, Of course, that person is just a pawn in their little game of gender, and no one really cares about him/her.
Yuval is a very brave man. He underwent this whole ordeal without caring what people might say – and they have. In Israel, everyone has an opinion about everything, and when this story was first public on a daily paper, there were many people like Jennifer, with the same opinions.
Knowing Yuval personally, I think that he is the best person, regardless of gender, to raise this child with his amazing partner. Ever since I’ve known him, his love of children (NOT IN THAT WAY, pervs) was apparent.
I don’t think it matters what your gender is when it comes to having babies. The most important thing is that you have the proper “piping”, and that you are willing to use them to conceive.
If you say only women should have babies, then, is an infertile woman NOT a woman?
To sum it all up, everyone needs to mind their own fucking business, pun intended.
I wish this family all the best, and Mazal Tov.
I disagree. This person choose to become a public spectacle, and for what purpose? Clearly to go against norms. I am sure there were a lot of people with the same opinion. You see, I am a woman with a transsexual history, not transgender. I like the binary gender paradigm. As to raising the child, the child with have to live with the child’s father being the child’s mother. That is going to very likely cause problems. But hey, who cares? Gender has been subverted!
Now, you are engaging in a classic logical fallacy. They way it is usually stated is something like “All X are liars, therefore all liars are X.” How completely silly. If I say ONLY females have babies, I am merely stating a fact. If a female has changed appearance and claims to be a male, and has a baby, then I am going to look at that person and say, “This person clearly is not acting as a man.” It is sort of like a male who claims to be a woman, but chooses to be a top in sexual relations. That person is acting like a man. Gender is not merely “identification.”
“It is simply a rejection of gender norms”. And wonderful for precisely that. I’m sorry you are trapped in such a narrow world of hating and feeling insecure. Given that heterosexual reproduction, because it is seen as the norm, often tends to be done in a “careless” way – taken for granted, the “normal” thing to do etc etc – this child has got the much better start to life of being conceived with the most care and thought and child-focused thinking.
ROTFL! No, I simply agree with the vast, overwhelming, majority of society. I do not choose to embrace certain views that I think are, at best, silly, and at worst, destructive. I disagree with your view. That does not, no matter how much you want to claim so, mean that I hate anyone.
Jennifer, you’re the only person here that’s sounding this ‘voice of the majority’ doing this by replying yourself to each comment saying the same things like that will make it sound louder. Or be true.
This is amazing news. I am so happy that the baby and family is safe and sound 🙂 Me and my partner, we are considering having our own baby too. I hope that when the time will come, we will be treated as people and family, We do not care whether people accept us or not. We just want equal treatment and feel safe. The weird thing is that we can have our own biological child that we both will be connected to as parents but according to the legal systems in our countries there exists no relationship between me and my partner and we will not be percieved as family.
What you’re not considering is that the desire to have children and start a family has nothing to do with gender. It’s found in both men and women.
When a transgender man gets pregnant, there was probably no other option available to him and his spouse (as in the case of Thomas Beatie whose wife could not conceive).
A father who puts himself through 9 months of pregnancy, faces the world as a pregnant man, endures all the criticism and harassment — in my eyes, that’s about as manly as it gets.
Biological sex and gender are not the same thing, Biological sex determins plumbing gender includes Hoow you identify and present to the world as well as many social rules, breaking a few rules doesn’t make your gender any less valid. It is insulting to be told that you are not the gender you claim to be because you biological sex doesn’t match or you break a few rules about what is normal for your gender.
I hate to break it to you but the readiness to have sex reassignment surgery performed on you says nothing about your brain being “more trans” than any other transgender person’s brain – nada.
The term “transgender” is often preferred by those who wish to emphasize that their identity is not a sexual orientation. It does NOT mean that transgender people believe their gender is a social construct.
And what about the trans women who fathered children prior to their transition?
And unfortunately you no nothing about adoption. In many countries it is basically impossible for a trans-gender/sexual person to adopt.
edit:
It does NOT mean that all transgender people believe their gender is a social construct only. It is also used as an umbrella term
Just Jennifer – why is it so inconceivable to you that a person may want to be identified as male and also have a biological child? By saying that only people who identify as females should act like females (and how sexist of you to say that only a female would want to have a baby), I’d say that you’re the one harming the transgender community. Not them.