Trans-identified biological female balks at being called ‘mother’ after giving birth

Bennett Kaspar-Williams was 37 at the time of birthing a baby boy. Kaspar-Williams was accompanied by husband Malik. Kaspar-Williams, who did literally mother a child per the dictionary definition, did not like being referred to by that action, of by the relationship created between Kaspar-Williams and the child.

Kaspar-Williams would prefer to be referred to as "father," despite not having fathered, and having mothered instead, according to the New York Post. Kaspar-Williams gave birth, which is something no biological male is capable of doing.

Kaspar-Williams began to transition gender from woman to man in 2014, but apparently retained the necessary female reproductive organs. The surgery was performed to remove Kaspar-Williams' breasts, but uterus and ovaries were left in tact.

The surgery was "really liberating," Kaspar-Williams said. "I never could have anticipated what a relief it would be to find them gone. It was a huge weight off my shoulders."

The pregnancy did not enhance Kaspar-Williams' dysphoria, but being pregnant and being identified as a pregnant woman, did. People kept calling Kaspar-Williams "mom," "mother," or "ma'am." This likely had to do with the fact that Kaspar-Williams was carrying a child inside his uterus.

"The only thing that made me dysphoric about my pregnancy was the misgendering that happened to me when I was getting medical care for my pregnancy," Kaspar-Williams said.

"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 gender that it was hard to escape being misgendered."

Kaspar-Williams' medical documents list his biological sex as male, even though there are no biological males who have uteruses or have given birth.

"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," Kaspar-Williams said, reducing women to their biological function.

"That's why it's so important that we stop defining 'womanhood' in terms of 'motherhood,'" Kaspar-Williams said, "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."

Kaspar-Williams' logic is wanting. Not all women become mothers, but all mothers are women. Yet for Bennett-Kaspar, there is pride in believing his body to be that of a male while having given birth, something only females can do.

"Nothing feels stronger than being able to say I'm a dad who created my own child," Kaspar-Williams said.

"To my son, there's nothing more natural and normal than having a Dada and a Papa," Kaspar-Williams said. "And when he's old enough, he will also come to know that his Dada was the one who carried him and took care of him so he could come into this world."

Kaspar-Williams is not the first biological female who identifies as transgender to give birth and upend the traditional designations of mother as female and father as male.

Another couple, featured on a television program produced by Courteney Cox, showed the female who identified as non-binary and had a full mastectomy giving birth in a tub of water. Partner Petrona, a biological male who identifies as a tw0-spirit trans woman, later tried to suckle the child, though Petrona lacked mammary glands or the ability to produce mother's milk.