If you can be whatever gender you want, whenever you want, is it really fair that you should have to be a woman in order to get pregnant?

I mean, isn't that unfair and unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of sex?

I realize that this might sound a bit convoluted, but please bear with me. I'm not on drugs or anything; I'm just trying to analyze this news item:

His appearance on US TV was part of a media blitz to knock down suggestions the pregnancy was a hoax.

As well as the Oprah show, Beatie also gave a detailed interview to People magazine.

The former beauty pageant queen, who conceived through artificial insemination, confessed many people saw him as a "freak".

He said some of his own family members had referred to the baby as "monster".

He accepts that not everyone will understand why he and his 45-year-old wife decided to have a child, which is due in July.

The couple, from Bend, Oregon, said they had already thought about the task of telling their child how she came into the world.

"When she's old enough, we'll sit her down and tell her everything," Beatie said.

"We will tell her how her parents love each other and love her very much.

"Our daughter is beating these incredible odds to get here - physical obstacles, social obstacles, everything.

"And in my dreams I dream the world will see her the way we do,as this amazing gift to us. As a miracle."

Beatie,who was born Tracy LaGondino in Hawaii, caused a worldwide sensation last week when he revealed the pregnancy in the gay magazine The Advocate.

But after neighbours in Oregon poured scorn on the pregnancy it was thought to be an elaborate hoax.

Beatie legally became a man after undergoing a sex change operation - but kept her female reproductive organs.

He told People magazine he decided to get pregnant after wife of five years Nancy had a hysterectomy.

"If Nancy could get pregnant, I wouldn't be doing this," he said.

"But who hires a surrogate if they are perfectly capable of carrying their own child?

"Why would I trust someone else when I know I'll do a better job of taking care of my body than anyone?

"And I'll be the father and Nancy will be the mother.

"Having this baby doesn't make me any less of a man."

Here's why. Having kept the internal genitals of a woman, this person never actually became a man. Therefore, the fact that the female genitalia are in working order cannot possibly make "him" any "less" of a "man" than "he" already "is."

(Sorry to use so many quotes, but every one of those words is dubious under the circumstances. How can any man be any less of a man when he's a woman? And why should a little thing like that only matter to a "real" man?)

What's happening here is nothing new. It's simply the deconstruction of sex in favor of the artificial construct called "gender." It's just words, and since "words are not truth," then there is no obligation to agree with whatever construct has allegedly occurred. This woman can call herself a man, but saying so does not make it so.

I realize that according to post modernist theory, my saying so does not make it so either, so rather than lamely insist what common sense suggests (that this "man" is still a biological woman), I'll just repeat what I've been saying for some time:

...what I'm wondering right now is why I can't be a pre-post-operative female-to-male transsexual trapped in the body of a man, but who, because of pure luck, has no need to go through with the surgery, because I already have male anatomical features (i.e., a woman who wants to become a man but who is by accident of birth already trapped in the body of a man). It would be a terrible hardship (a cruel travesty, even) to make me surgically become a man trapped in the body of a woman who wants to become a man because the man is trapped in her body, if I can shortcircuit the entire process and merely accept the fact that I am already where I would be after surgery back and forth.

I mean, if there can be such a thing as a "male lesbian," why stop there? If a woman can go from female to male (and can be called a man before the surgery) then why require the male lesbian (once s/he really reaches a deeper understanding of him/herself) to go through one surgery to become female and another to become male? Can't the process be an internal one?

So if I can change my sex any time I want, I can be pregnant any time I want.

It's all a construct.

Logically, of course, it also follows that if I don't want to be pregnant, I ought to be able to have an abortion any time I want.

Right?

Actually, that's not a new construct either.

Just look!

Real men can have abortions.

I realize that some would call the man in the picture a virtual murderer, but that's off topic. Besides, I take a more liberal view of these things. I realize it's a complex legal question, but I think it depends on whether an actual, virtual or constructive life begins at the time of actual, virtual, or constructive conception.

MORE: According to Ann Althouse, Amanda Marcotte thinks that "it makes a lot more sense to wear an 'I had an abortion' T-shirt than to wear an 'I was raped' T-shirt."

Hmmm.....

(This is what's called the pregnant pause.....)

As Jack Benny would say, "I'm thinking it over!"