Transgender dad outraged after revealing word nurses used to refer to him while giving birth

Bennett Kaspar-Williams, 37, from Los Angeles, welcomed son Hudson into the world via cesarean in October 2020. But what should have been a joyful experience was marred by medical staff repeatedly misgendering them throughout the process.

**A Difficult Journey**

Despite Kaspar-Williams identifying as male and using he/him pronouns at the time (they now identify as non-binary and use both he/him and they/them pronouns), hospital nurses consistently referred to them as “mother” rather than “father.”

Kaspar-Williams began transitioning in 2014 after realizing he was transgender in 2011. When he and husband Malik decided to start a family, they knew it would require Bennett to pause testosterone therapy so his ovaries could resume functioning. Although he’d undergone top surgery, he hadn’t had lower body procedures and felt at peace carrying a child himself.

“We had only been trying a short while, so we expected the process to take longer,” Bennett shared. The pregnancy occurred just before the March 2020 lockdown, adding pandemic anxiety to an already complex journey.

**Fighting Misgendering**

“The only thing that made me dysphoric about my pregnancy was the misgendering that happened to me when I was getting medical care,” Kaspar-Williams explained. Despite specifying his gender on medical forms, nursing staff continued misgendering him during interactions.

“The business of pregnancy in America is so intertwined with gender that it was hard to escape being misgendered,” he told the New York Post. “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.”

**An Important Message**

Kaspar-Williams emphasizes disconnecting womanhood from motherhood: “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.”

Today, Bennett and Malik continue raising Hudson, advocating for recognition that childbirth is no longer necessarily tied to traditional gender identity.