These days, using someone’s preferred name and pronouns is the best way to demonstrate respect and acknowledgment of their identity, be they straight, gay, or transgender.

However, not everyone adheres to this practice, often clinging to outdated norms or disregarding individuals’ gender identities.

Bennett Kaspar-Williams, 37, from Los Angeles, welcomed their son Hudson into the world via cesarean in October 2020, with the support of their husband, Malik.

Despite Kaspar-Williams identifying as male and using he/him/his pronouns at the time (they now identify as non-binary and use both he/him/his and they/them pronouns) encountered challenges at the hospital when nurses repeatedly misgendered them, referring to them as a mother rather than a father, as per the Daily Mail.

Kaspar-Williams began his transition in 2014 after realizing he was transgender in 2011. The couple made the decision to start a family and carefully considered their options — knowing it would require Bennett to pause the testosterone therapy he had been on for years so his ovaries could resume functioning.

Although Bennett had undergone top surgery, he hadn’t had any procedures on his lower body. After thoughtful reflection, he felt at peace with the idea of carrying a child himself.

Once they began trying, Bennett became pregnant naturally not long after.

”We had only been trying a short while, so we expected the process to take longer than it did,” said Bennett.

Disheartened by medical staff

”This was just about a week before we went into lockdown here in March 2020, so my high spirits were pretty quickly replaced by anxiety around the pandemic and how I would keep myself and my baby safe.”

The journey of pregnancy and childbirth was simultaneously fulfilling and challenging for Kaspar-Williams, who found himself disheartened by medical staff assuming his gender and mislabeling him as a mother.

”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,” he said.

Although Kaspar-Williams specified their gender on medical forms, the nursing staff continued to misgender them during interactions. Following Hudson’s birth, Kaspar-Williams has actively advocated for the recognition that childbirth is no longer necessarily tied to gender identity.

Hard to escape

Expressing his distress over being consistently misgendered during childbirth, Kaspar-Williams highlighted the importance of disconnecting womanhood from motherhood. He shared his thoughts with the New York Post, commenting on the discomfort he felt when repeatedly addressed as “mom” despite marking “male” on medical paperwork.

”The business of pregnancy – and yes, I say business, because the entire institution of pregnancy care in America is centred around selling this concept of “motherhood” – is so intertwined with gender that it was hard to escape being misgendered,” Bennett says.

“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,” the father said of their parenthood journey.

“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.”

Choosing to begin their pregnancy journey after separating bodily functions from gender notions, Kaspar-Williams’ story highlights the complexities of identity and the importance of respecting individuals’ self-identification.