Freddy McConnell appeal today (Transman who wants to be registered as their child's father) *Title edited by MNHQ*

[MrsSnippyPants]

Haven't seen anything about this and it just popped up on Sky News. Hearing continues tomorrow

Newspaper report here
www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/transgender-man-who-gave-birth-21629478

[JillAmanda]

Ffs. Ridiculous.

[Vinosaurus]

Think you've got it the wrong way around - they DON'T what to be recognised as the mother.

Same old, same old though - me me me - the birth certificate is not owned by the parent, but if anybody it's the child's.

[OhHolyJesus]

It's interesting that this hasn't hit the mainstream media.

McConnell was (is still?) a Journalist for The Guardian and wasn't granted protection from media coverage in the original case due to the BBC Seahorse Documentary.

I really hope the judges hearing the appeal stick to biological facts and allow this little boy to have a legal mother, but I imagine that Freddy will be called Daddy anyway and the little boy will essentially grow up without a mother, regardless of what the birth certificate says.

[ThinEndoftheWedge]

So I could be sacked for misgendering Freddie as that is triggering but it’s ok for Freddie to be pregnant and give birth to a child - because that has nothing to do with being a woman and not a man.

How is this ‘living like a man’?

The Scottish GRA legislation would also retain the position that a false statutory declaration is a criminal offence and introduce a new offence of false application

Would Freddie be prosecuted for false statutory declaration that they would live as the acquired gender. Or is giving birth now a man thing?

Serious question.

After-all, historic and current female oppression/ sexism has nothing at all to do with the female only ability to conceive, carry and give birth??!! NOT!

[Languishingfemale]

Given the levels of regulatory capture amongst the judiciary as evidenced in the 'Bench book', I'll be watching this with interest. Will Freddie's wishes be prioritised over a child's rights to a scientific / biologically accurate birth certificate?

[Mummyoflittledragon]

He is the mother however he wishes to present. He can not identify out of his biology - for which women for millennia have been and still are oppressed.

Does anyone know if he would he be the mother if he had a grc?

[ThinEndoftheWedge]

Will Freddie's wishes be prioritised over a child's rights to a scientific / biologically accurate birth certificate? hmm

I thought birth certificates could already be altered so the birth certificate post truth world is already here!!

But granted - this is about the child’s identity, not Freddie’s

[Beamur]

It's on the BBC website too.

[Barracker]

GRA 2004, Section 12, Parenthood
"The fact that a person’s gender has become the acquired gender under this Act does not affect the status of the person as the father or mother of a child."

[Thisismytimetoshine]

Spending 9 months in a state of pregnancy negates the fiction that this person has been living as a man...

[Barracker]

What the government promised if the bill was passed:

[Barracker]

And a masterclass in avoiding the question from David Lammy, when asked in the debates "who is the legal mother of those children" when a woman changes gender to become a man.

Nevertheless, the GRA law is clear and explicit in section 12. We will create a legal fiction that a woman becomes a man, but we will not create the legal fiction that a child's mother evaporates. A woman can become a man, but if she is a mother, she remains the mother.

[R0wantrees]

extract from article in OP:

"A transgender man who has given birth but does not want to be described as "mother" on a birth certificate has begun the next round of a legal battle.

Freddy McConnell, a multimedia journalist who works for The Guardian, wants to be registered as father or parent.

A judge ruled against him after a High Court trial in London, but he has launched an appeal.

Three appeal judges, including the most senior judge in England and Wales, are considering the case.

Sir Andrew McFarlane, the president of the Family Division of the High Court and the most senior family court judge in England and Wales, ruled against Mr McConnell in September.

He concluded that people who had given birth were legally mothers, regardless of their gender." (continues)

Freddy McConnell wanted to be a man, then Freddy McConnell wanted to be pregnant and have a baby, now Freddy McConnell wants to change the UK's birth certificates because Freddy McConnell doesnt want the child FreddyMcConnell gave birth to to have its mother recognised on its birth certificate.

This would of course not just impact Freddy McConnell's child.

[MrsSnippyPants]

Thanks vino have asked the mods to edit the title. Brainfreeze!

[Thisismytimetoshine]

That poor child, being used as part of a test case to judge whether they should ever have someone they can call their mother.
It’s like a bizarre social experiment to no particular purpose, with no thought for the human child at the centre of it all.

[Barracker]

When the birth certificate relates to a GRC change of sex, TRAs argue that the BORN person has supreme rights, as the primary subject of the birth certificate.
The mother who gave birth gets subsequently listed however, without her consent, on the birth certificate of a child which states she gave birth to a baby of the opposite sex. So the mother has to deal with existing on a copy of someone else's certificate that states a lie about the offspring she gave birth to.
But, hey, the preference of the BORN person outranks the right of the person who gave birth to have an accurate record of who they gave birth to.

And yet, here we are, where a person who gave birth is arguing that THEIR right to have their identity preference recorded on someone else's birth certificate outranks the right of the BORN person to have an accurate record for themselves.

I think we'd better conclude that ultimate rights to determine legal record always reside with the person who opposes the recording of historical, material reality, whether it is on their own birth certificate or someone else's.

The rest of us are all just passive players in someone else's legally constructed narrative.

[Danceswithwarthogs]

The more you think about this beyond the immediate feelings and wishes of this person/family the more worrying it becomes...

Presumably the way birth certificates are issued via births registered by midwives and put through to the registrar means that atm the ‘mother’ box must be filled in... it’s via the birth mother that the registration process starts. You can have a blank father box but not mother. It’s weird to imagine children left with a blank space for the person who carried and birthed them. Presumably the birth certificate would be issued with a mother and the tummy-father would apply to have this deleted?

It also presumably makes definition of family relationships in society and in law ambiguous and the only way of accurately defining biological parentage reduced to ovulator, sperm producer, gestator?

So sad to imagine parenthood reduced to this, not even considering the wider potential for confusion and exploitation, tracing next of kin or birth parents post adoption/surrogacy, inheritance, custody etc...

All so the parent can feel the glow of validation every time they look at their copy of the child’s birth certificate...

[GeordieTerf]

I feel so sad for the innocent baby in all of this. Their entire life will be defined by this stupid case. It will haunt them.

Their parent spent the first few years of their life chasing a legal fiction. Whether the case wins or loses, precious, irreplaceable, time was lost. And for what?

[zen1]

So, if Freddy were to win their case and be recognised as ‘the father’, does that mean in theory that a tw already named on a birth certificate as a child’s father, could go to court to apply to have this changed retrospectively (if, e.g the child is still young)?

[TheShoesa]

Am I right in thinking that Freddy got a GRC before almost immediately stopping testosterone and resuming a menstrual cycle? (I think I read that somewhere)
If so, it seems to me that this was more about Freddy's wish to challenge the law as it stands and be the first person to give to a child while legally recognised as a male rather than Freddy's wish to have a child. Otherwise would it not have made more sense to have a child before starting testosterone and going through the legal GRC process?
I hope that the rights of the child in the centre of this are upheld.

[R0wantrees]

If successful, mothers & fathers who 'identify as non-binary' could presumably both register as 'parents'?

[marvellousnightforamooncup]

This enrages me. Fucking hell, so these people not own their fucking life choices? Tell the bloody truth to your kids. Live your life as a trans man by all means call yourself what you like but own it that you are a mother, you carried and gave birth to that child.

[Thinkingabout1t]

Freddy McConnell wanted to be a man, then Freddy McConnell wanted to be pregnant and have a baby, now Freddy McConnell wants to change the UK's birth certificates because Freddy McConnell doesnt want the child FreddyMcConnell gave birth to to have its mother recognised on its birth certificate.

But this isn't about narcissism or fantasy at all, of course not ...