Radio host Baker referred to Thomas Beatie as a "mutilated lesbian"
On his Minneapolis radio show, Chris Baker repeatedly referred to Thomas Beatie, a pregnant transgender man, as a "mutilated lesbian" and called Beatie a "freak." Baker also stated: "If a lesbian gets pregnant, I'm fine with it. I'm OK. Just stop alternating reality and trying to force me to buy into your psychosis."
On the November 14 edition of his Minneapolis radio show, Chris Baker repeatedly referred to Thomas Beatie, a pregnant transgender man, as a "mutilated lesbian." He also referred to Beatie as a "freak." Baker also stated: "If a lesbian gets pregnant, I'm fine with it. I'm OK. Just stop alternating reality and trying to force me to buy into your psychosis." Baker made the comments while discussing Barbara Walters' interview of Beatie and his wife, Nancy Beatie.
Guest co-host Nicole Remini said of Walters' interview, "[S]o Barbara goes, 'Are you pregnant again?' Like, bluh. Sorry, I just threw up in my mouth on the radio." Remini added: "It's disgusting. I really have a problem with it."
Though Beatie identifies as a man, Remini, Baker, and KTLK guest host Todd Walker repeatedly referred to him as a female throughout the discussion. Baker stated Beatie is "not a guy," while Remini said, "You're a chick," and, "[S]top saying you're a man." Walker said, "She's a man," and said, "[D]id you see her as a woman when she was the beauty queen? She was pretty hot."
Baker also stated: "Excuse me, I don't believe you're a guy. Can you stand up to pee? OK? There you go. Scoreboard."
Baker later said of Beatie: "She had her hoots whittled off. And that's it. That's it. That's it; that's all. And when I think of all the women out there that have little hoots who would love to have those hoots, and this woman's throwing them away."
ABC News reported in a November 13 "Barbara Walters Exclusive" that the Beaties are expecting their second child. Their first baby was born in June.
As Media Matters for America documented, on the April 4 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, after playing a clip of Beatie's April 3 appearance on Oprah to discuss Beatie's first pregnancy, co-host Mika Brzezinski stated, "I'm going to be sick. I am going to be sick." During the same discussion, host Joe Scarborough stated: "I really do feel sick."
From the November 14 broadcast of KTLK's The Chris Baker Show:
BAKER: That mutilated lesbian's running around claiming to be a pregnant guy again.
REMINI: She's pregnant again. It --
WALKER: She is?
REMINI: Yes. You know? Ugh.
BAKER: And it's not a guy. Yet -- this freak is on with Barbara Walters.
REMINI: Yeah.
BAKER: "Oh, the man is pregnant again." And this mutilated lesbian is literally saying, "Well, you know, after the first baby, I didn't want to go back to my testosterone injections."
REMINI: Right. And so Barbara goes, "Are you pregnant again?" Like, bluh. Sorry, I just threw up in my mouth on the radio.
BAKER: How is that happening?
REMINI: It's disgusting. I really have a problem with it.
BAKER: Look, you know what? I don't mind if -- look, I have no problem with a lesbian being pregnant, OK?
REMINI: Right, but stop saying you're a man.
BAKER: If a lesbian gets pregnant --
WALKER: Yeah, but she's a man.
BAKER: -- I'm fine with it. I'm OK. Just stop alternating reality --
REMINI: Right.
BAKER: -- and trying to force me to buy into your psychosis.
REMINI: Right. You're a chick.
WALKER: But did you see her as a woman when she was the beauty queen? She was pretty hot.
REMINI: Was she?
BAKER: Right.
WALKER: Oh, she was smoking. I looked her up online.
BAKER: Right. She's a mental case.
WALKER: She was -- I mean, she was an attractive, attractive woman.
BAKER: In order to --
REMINI: Her wife is not pretty.
BAKER: -- in order to undergo the so-called gender reassignment surgery -- I'm telling you right now, I'm gonna throw this entire theory right out the window, all right? Here's the truth. In order to get this so-called gender reassignment surgery, a shrink has to diagnose you with a mental disorder known as gender -- what is it? -- gender --
REMINI: Is it a transgender --
BAKER: Yeah. Gender identification --
WALKER: Gender confusion.
BAKER: -- gender identification disorder or some kind of stuff. You're a nut, technically.
REMINI: Right. Right.
BAKER: You know, basically.
REMINI: Right.
BAKER: OK? Look, just -- we love you as you are as a human being; just stop trying to screw up reality. [unintelligible]
REMINI: Yeah, Todd, I don't need Botox.
BAKER: Excuse me, I don't believe you're a guy. Can you stand up to pee? OK? There you go. Scoreboard.
WALKER: So, is everything gone down there with her?
REMINI: I think so.
BAKER: Everything is the same.
REMINI: Oh, no. It's the same because --
BAKER: It's a woman.
REMINI: -- she had to be -- 'cause she had the baby.
BAKER: Right. She didn't even have a cesarean, OK? How can you say, "I'm a guy," and you had a baby and it wasn't even by cesarean?
WALKER: But didn't she have it rebuilt so there's an outie down there, though?
REMINI: Oh, gosh.
WALKER: I think she did.
BAKER: No. No. No, not at all. That's why the whole thing is stupid.
WALKER: So, it's just a woman having a baby. [unintelligible]
BAKER: It's a mutilated lesbian. She had --
REMINI: Who happens to have a beard.
WALKER: And who happens to have a moustache and beard, right.
BAKER: She had her hoots whittled off. And that's it. That's it. That's it; that's all. And when I think of all the women out there that have little hoots who would love to have those hoots --
WALKER: Yeah.
BAKER: -- and this woman's throwing them away.
REMINI: I'd like to fill my hoots. Now, that's something I'd like to do.
WALKER: Get rid of them?
REMINI: No, fill them.
WALKER: Fill -- really? Let's see them again.
[laughter]
BAKER: 651-989 --
REMINI: I have the best bra in the world on today, too. I would share it.
WALKER: I don't think you -- there's any reason to do anything with them.
BAKER: -- 5855.
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A guy who looks about 60 and says "hoots"? Am I expected to buy into his psychosis?
I guess in right wing christianity insulting and belittling someone for whatever reason is how you hate the sin but love the sinner. I'm quite sure these people would give Beatie a hug and tell him they love him... wouldn't they?
"Just stop alternating reality and trying to force me to buy into your psychosis."
Only those going through an episode of self-induced phychosis would believe that anyone is trying to force him to buy into another persons personal life...
This guy is not even funny! Is he even trying? Dude... get a damn life!
Spoken like a "man" who has an itty-bittie pee-pee and is self-conscious about it.....
-- The Beaties are already telling Susan about the unusual circumstances of her birth. Thomas Beatie reads his daughter, whom he calls "Sweetpea," the Eric Carle book "Mr. Seahorse," a children's picture book that shows how male sea horses carry their offspring. "And I point to the picture at the end of the book where Mr. Seahorse has his babies and say, 'this is what I did with you, Sweetpea, and you're just that one special sea horse.'"-- ABC news
Pretty strange behavior to validate your decisions by calling your daughter a sea horse...can you say slippery slope?
I've fallen, and I can't get up. Where am I?
But you're ignoring Wesley's slippery slope. Before we know it, the daughter will be called a sea urchin, sea hag or a sea cucumber.
I'm willing to accept Sea Bisket, but only between consenting water slides.
-- While Thomas Beatie's body went through changes, so did his wife's. She said, "My breasts started lactating." She has been breast-feeding Susan for four months.-- ABC news
Whoa nelson...and some people are worried about second hand smoke...
Har! That was pretty good, Wes. And sorry about the knobby knee thing. Hard deadlines at Troll HQ, you'll notice I completely left out your other leg.
And Nature left out his third one.
I do have issues with this, myself.
On the same note as Baker said, if lesbians want to get pregnant, by all means. And if someone feels like an alien in the body they were born in, get an operation. I have no problems with either of those things at all. If your child wants to know why they have two mommies or daddies, that's not too hard to explain. Since homosexuality is natural, it should be accepted, and so that's no reason to oppose a lesbian giving birth. If you used to be a different gender, the child doesn't even need to know that, at least until they're much older and able to understand the world better. But this is not merely "different", it's physiologically impossible. It's not like Susan can get older and tell other kids that her dad gave birth to her, and they'll just say "oh, OK". This is a very confusing and potentially damaging matter, and there's no motivation for this to be accepted as normal behavior. The very reason that it's a news story is because it's very strange, by any standard.
Am I out of line here?
My main issue with Baker here is the assertion that sexual identity confusion makes one technically "a nut". That in itself is not a "psychosis", because people can be perfectly rational and consistent while experiencing it. It doesn't fit any definition that I recall reading.
I believe the term for the identity is Intersexual. Feeling wholly, neither male nor female. A hard idea to get one's head arround, for most of the population.
Sometime after gay and transexuals attain full civilrights, perhaps they may be able to do the same.
In the meantime they'll make excellent scapegoats, being somehow very visible, socially outrageous, unagressive, and an extremely small population. It will remain legal to discriminate against them for quit a while.
I have no interest in discriminating against anyone. I think one needs to choose between being a lesbian mother or being a man, in the interest of a child's development.
Also, I think "intersexual" is a medical term referring to a physical condition at birth. Is that the case for Beatie?
You don't, fine there'll be plenty to take up the slack, lovely.
The sexual identity of who's nurturing you before you actually have one of your own is not very important at a personal level. If your going to catch heat from your peers about it, so what. Just another hazard in the adolescent jungle.
Sexual identity comes from within. Its always nice if it matches whats on the outside. If not its a challenge to correctly identify yourself personaly. A working social/intimate identity is much harder to do.
There were eight identified sexual identities for much of the middle ages in Europe. There had designated places in society. Often crude and abused positions, but at least their existence and right to live a life wasn't threatened or denied in their society. We've advanced socialy from those times?
Adolescence is hard enough as it is. I really don't think it's too much to ask to say that the woman who looks like a woman should pretend to be the mother for awhile.
There is a line between criticizing someone for who they are and criticizing someone for how they behave. It should be possible to say that this behavior is questionable without attacking his sexual identity itself.
Possible, I don't think Mr. Baker is the man for the job though.
He wants to make this a public issue. Does Beatie want to make it a public issue?
I'm not sure what Beatie wants. I certainly agree that Baker is not one for reasoned criticism.
Correct. An intersexual individual was born with a genetic/physical mixture of male and female, typically with gender-ambiguous genitals: genitals that are halfway in-between, both sets of genitals, a penis with ovaries instead of balls, et cetera.
This person, on the other hand, is female-to-male transsexual - someone born with a male brain and a female body, who has transformed his body as best he can to be in sync with his brain.
You're very bright and playful, Wesley. May I call you Sea Monkey?
Fine with me...as long as you lay of the knobby knees routine.
Exactly when did Beattie say he was going to abandon his children? I seem to have missed that. Or is Wesley pulling things from dark places again?
On my screen, the word hypothetical is brightly lit.
I just thought it was a strange tangent that had nothing to do with what was being dicussed.
Since when did the word 'hypothetical' mean that it was going to happen?
Unless you have a different dictionary than the rest of us?
-- A tentative theory about the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena --
-- a supposition made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. --
-- a tentative assumption made in order to draw out and test its logical or empirical consequences --
That's where the word hypothetical comes from...that should help you get on track.
Or, in your case, pulled directly out of your ass.
Wesley....
You would be fun to debate with, if you were not so clueless,
The definition of hypothetical has not one thing to do with my reply to you...
I asked how does 'hypothetical' now somehow mean 'going to happen'...
You offered three definitions of the word which all strengthen my argument that 'hypothetical' means 'posible' not 'it has happened' ...
Nothing about the man/woman/transgendered person is going to somehow destroy the fabric of society... but dirtbags like this Rush wannabe Chris Baker spewing this crap on the radio could!
It encourages his listeners to believe that hate is ok and to be wary of those that are 'different'... that is much more damaging to society than a transgendered person having a baby!
mean 'going to happen'... meant to change this too "mean 'has already happened'... which you, like Baker seem to be doing.
-- I asked how does 'hypothetical' now somehow mean 'going to happen' -- Capn
It was your attempt to deflect by turning my hypothetical...nicely defined for you...into a strawman.
-- hypothetical' means 'posible' not 'it has happened -- capn
Correctamundo...you can come out of the corner when the paint is dry.
Is the concept that men can have children foreign to wesley? That is some extreme sexism! Last time I checked, all my friends who are fathers have children. So do I. But let's not have that getting in the way of a hypothetical fantasy with which wesley can construct someone else's supposed "bizarro world."
To me what's bizarre is for these nutcases to feel like a story appearing on ONE TV station is some kind of attempt to invade the ordered world of faux normalcy they would like to force everyone to live in (except for themselves; naturally they have their own closeted perversions like most right-wingers).
Maybe the Real Americans® should just build a fence around themselves.
I still get an actual dead-tree newspaper on Sunday, it comes with Parade magazine tucked inside, and that's where I get my updates on middle-of-the-road mass appeal Real America. Howard Huge cartoons, recipes for macaroni & cheese, interviews with old people who used to be celebrities.
This weekend I skimmed through an article on America's eating habits, and a question about the most adventurous food ever sampled by the subjects. I think the numbers were 20% for sushi and another 19% "Chinese or other ethnic food".
The Incredible Man-Mother might be a bit much for those groups.
-- To me what's bizarre is...some kind of attempt to invade the ordered world of faux normalcy -- mrhebert
Here's some of that normalcy from the Beattie family:
-- However, the testosterone, he tells a curious Oprah, had over the years enlarged his clitoris into a small penis, enabling him to have intercourse with his wife. -- Huffpo
If that's normal...then we can all welcome Dick Morris back into the mainstream.
So Baettie will be showing up on cable as often as Morris is. Yup there goes western civ down the slippery slope.
There really is no such thing as "normal". There are "cultural norms", but these have a tendency to change over time, which is ignored by the right. What the right wing claims is"normal" is just a way to try to dictate to others what they can and can't do. Its a power play. The right wings fable of a "normal family" is so skewed from reality I'm amazed they still try to foist it on anybody. Even in the golden age they wistfully pine for,there was teen sex, homosexual sex, adultry, etc.etc. It just wasn't talked about like it is now. Evrything thats happening now has always happened. the fact that we treat the subjects more humanely drives the right wing nuts.
Here's a tip for mmfa on their reporting of the slurs aimed at Beattie.
David Letterman compared Michael Jackson and Thomas Beattie to an "androgynous freak show".
Nice guy...that Letterman fella...
And how does this affect the fact that Chris Bakers statement is reprehensible? What does that have to do with this thread? I'll tell you nothing. You're just trying to derail it. Yeah, if Letterman said it how you are implying (which I don't know, I didn't hear him say it) then yeah, bad on him. That doesn't change what baker said one iota, and is irrelevent.
-- And how does this affect the fact that Chris Bakers statement is reprehensible? -- peebs
It doesn't.
It does point out that others have echoed the Baker sentiment that mmfa failed to report. You condemn Letterman and so should mmfa if they are serious about the issue...and not just partisan politics.
Here's the link to Letterman's Top 10 messages on Beattie's answering machine...written by Letterman or his writers...laughingly spouted by Letterman.
http://www.afterelton.com/taxonomy/term/847
Just because MMFA "failed" to report Letterman, doesn't mean their original point is any less correct. Maybe they should've. but that doesn't change what Baker said, or MMFA's point. What Letterman said was pretty bad, and I for one will write to tell him.
Thank you for admitting that you don't understand it. That, at least, is a start. Why do you have to be scared of something that you don't understand, though?
Transsexuality is really fairly simple. Let me describe it as simply as I can.
Every human being has two base identifiers: the physical sex of their body, which determines what they look like, and the psychological sex of their brain, which determines how they feel and think. A transsexual person is someone who is born with their sex on one side of the spectrum and their gender on the other side of the spectrum - that is to say, their body is one way and their brain is the other way.
This creates a condition called Gender Dysphoria - that is, their body doesn't match their brain, and perhaps just as importantly, how they are treated by society doesn't match their brain. So they transform their body to match their brain.
There are also people whose physical sex is in the middle, called intersexuals, and people whose psychological gender is in the middle, known as genderqueers. And yes, I've met a couple intersexual genderqueers. All I can say is that life must not be terribly simple for them.
Whatever the case may be, the hateful idiocy of these radio hosts is no kind of gift to America's understanding of gender.
The root of the problem that enables haters like Baker is the disingenousness of the "pregnant man" headline.
Mr. Beattie is a self-identified man, not a biological man, that is the essence of the story and infotainment being what it is obscures that and spins it to get more coverage.
Don't be too upset with Baker, he is doing just what the Beatties and Corporations want, his outrage gives the story legs which drives up the price for the Beattie's inevitable book deal.
This country needs to have a conversation on gender identity, but when people feel that dialog is a) forced on them by lazy media b) based on an obvious mercenary lie, IMHO the Beatties will only polarize the issue more.
I value that the Beatties want to publicize their condition to help people who are exploring new definitions of family, but if Mr. Beattie wants to educate people he should do that by being honest, he is a self-identified man, not a biological miracle.
I don't think Mr. Beattie is being dishonest. He identifies as a man, presents as a man and lives as a man; ergo, he is a man. Since he is pregnant, that makes the "preganant man" descriptor a correct one. He says quite clearly in the interviews that he is transgender; there's no effort that I can see to hide it. And yes, the story tends to be spun in a freak/miracle/WTF??!?!?! direction, but I can't think of any mainstream commercial American media outlet that wouldn't do that. The best we can hope for is that more people are exposed to this. Remember that it wasn't too long ago that homosexuality was as closeted as transgenderism is now.