Germaine Greer doesn't agree with David Furnish being named as 'mother' on birth certificate

I don't see why we can't just have spaces for Parent 1, Parent 2 (and 3 if applicable) without regard to gender specific labels at all.

"If it's not okay to say that a child needs a mother and a father (i.e. a male parent and a female parent), why is it okay to say that they need two parents? As opposed to one, or three?"

Er, it isn't.

Children don't need two parents. They never have done.

Mother isn't linked to gender roles, it's linked to sex. Mother = female parent. It's a title, not a role. Mothers can be nurturing, tough, whatever, their biology makes them mothers. Suggesting that men can't fulfill the gender based idea of "mothering" is while still calling themselves the sex based title of Father is what's wrong here. The difference in the way society regards mothers and fathers and their roles in the lives of children is the problem, destroying gender roles like this is part of the struggle.

Furnish cannot be a mother, because he's not female, nor, at a push, does he 'identify' as female, however he can be a father who fulfills the traditionally 'maternal' role within his children's lives. Like SAHDs. Not sure how many SAHDs call themselves Mother, or would want that on their child's official paperwork. It is regressive for Furnish if true to wish to continue the lie that people who behave 'X' way are mothers. Mothers come in all shapes and variants, but share the common experience of having that role viewed as being all consuming by society, whereas fathers are seen to be able to slip their role on and off like a coat. NAFALT

I suspect that David and Elton would describe themselves as parents or / and fathers.

I also suspect their children would call them Dad (or variation thereof). Kids refer to a male parent as Dad. People do get protective over these terms when a step parent arrives on the scene. If the new man in your mum's life expects to be called Dad (or if the new woman wants to be called mum), that can cause an issue both for the children and also for the "real" mum or Dad. (watching vocabulary here).

Why do two fathers have to be pigeon-holed into the traditional categories, it makes no sense. Why would David Furnish be a mother if he's not female, he should be father as should Elton. It's not reflective of the parental role they've been assigned to surely? What's wrong with Parent 1, Parent 2; gets round all the constraints of making modern families fit around traditional labels.

athena

Regarding language. I probably put more weight into how the words come across than the actual word.

For example a (female) friend does often greet me by saying "hiya chick"
Another (male) friend typical says hello by calling me "sweets"
I don't take any offence at this as they are just being friendly and affectionate and I don't feel belittled by it.

However on another occasion a client started referring to me as "mrs" This was sort of meant to look friendly but he was doing it to try and diminish the point I was making. That I had an massive issue with.

I don't really have a strong opinion on this. My gut feeling is it doesn't bother me but I am reading everyone's posts with interest.

I think people should watch this video about the Indian surrogate mothers. It is very short.

972mag.com/israelis-surrogate-mothers-in-nepal-are-no-laughing-matter/106114/

I think watching men laughing about them on TV is something people should see and remember.

What baffles me is that (if one goes to a licenced clinic) you have to use donor-ID sperm and eggs - but there is no obligation on you to tell the child that you have done this.

I personally would never have considered not doing this (and it's one of the reasons I went through all the legal hoops in this country even though going to Denmark or buying sperm off the internet would have been cheaper) - it's important to give my son the right to trace his biological father at age 18.

My gay friends have used family friends as donors, and their children know this (age appropriate terms at the moment are "XYZ helped to make you".)

But I have friends who have used donor sperm due to male infertility and have no intention of ever telling their daughter that she is the result of donor insemination - and that to me seems wrong.

Devora, yes, I think there is dissent. I'm not sure why you've responded to my post about the needs of mothers by telling me about the needs of children.

Also, I have just had to send off to get my long birth certificate as proof of ID so that I could get paid. They would not accept the short version.

Are DF's children going to call him Mum? I very much doubt it.
It's absurd for him to call himself mother (if indeed the reports are accurate). Equally absurd if one of two lesbians called herself father.

These are the sorts of problems that were bound to arise once society accepts surrogacy, donor eggs/sperm, mitochondrial DNA removal, enucleated eggs, same sex partnerships etc.

(That's not an indication of my personal views on these issues by the way - just on the practical aspects of a fast-changing society that does not always think through the profound implications of its advances before it barrels ahead).

"“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’" - Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Talk about the law (or perhaps problems) of unintended consequences.

As a side note..the genetics of conception can be incredibly important when it comes to inherited conditions, risks etc. Think even of something as common as rocking up at the doctors in your 40s with symptoms that could be as simple as an early menopause or as complex as cancer and the doctor says "when did your mother have her menopause?" and you have to say "buggered if I know - I know nothing about her".

OK, so I'm an oldie and a bit bewildered by modern life on occasions, but sometimes I do think we live in an Alice in Wonderland world.

Think, people, think.

In terms of being a parent being a privilege not a right, courts have ruled otherwise when it comes to maternity. Using CEDAW, actions which prevent women becoming mothers have been treated as a human rights violation because the intention to become a mother through pregnancy is deemed part of a reasonable life plan.

And the argument that recognising the unique situation of birth mothers regarding their newborns is sec stereotyping has been used time and time again to attempt to deny violation of mothers rights in court. The requirement for countries to end stereotyping based on sex was never intended to deny the specific relationship between birth mother and child. It has been made clear in legal cases that governments are supposed to recognise the social function of maternity and end sex stereotyping of mothers (for example in the workplace) at the same time.

Women are not required to deny or downgrade further the status of motherhood in order to engage in work, politics or community life free from stereotyping. We have a right to both, and the frequent threat that if we demand the latter we will not be guaranteed the former is simply intended to scare women. This prevents women actively pursuing their rights, or encourages them to actively take on forms of feminine expression totally irrelevant to motherhood to somehow prove they are 'good mothers' to protect motherhood, something which should be protected for all mothers anyway.

Is there any real dissent here about birth certificates, almondcakes? Seems to me that children need legal paperwork that (a) provides factual information about their bio/genetic origins, and (b) allows them to conceal that information as appropriate and necessary. My daughter has a long birth certificate that names her biological parents, with her name of origin. She has a shorter birth certificate that has her current name, and doesn't mention those parents, that allows her to identify herself (to schools etc) in safety and without having to explain her life history to any and every nosey parker.

I think we're all agreed on that. What we don't know is whether Germaine Greer is talking a pile of rubbish about David Furnish...

I think the perceived privileges are the romanticisation of motherhood, the sentimentalisation of mothers as uniquely loving and wise. We all know that this romanticisation goes hand in hand with low status, lack of support, limitation, poverty and belittling, but I can see that men would quite like to get some of that cultural approbation (especially if they can get it without having to give up status, resources etc).

I think a lot of this is being framed about the wellbeing of the social parents and the knowledge that the child has about its genetics.

There is a long history of human rights violations that are carried out against birth mothers - trafficking, slavery, forms of physical and psychological torture. After the Second World War, we had inadequate laws for trying crimes committed against mothers because CEDAW did not exist. Some of those mothers were revictimised due to being viewed as agitators for wanting to know what had happened to their babies.

When similar situations have happened, in Peru, for example, and mothers in prisons have experienced psychological and physical torture connected to birth, breastfeeding and care of a newborn, it has been possible to deal with those crimes under CEDAW because of human rights recognition of the importance of maternity as a social role.

Certain groups of mothers are the ones at greatest risk of human rights violations time and time again - mothers in mental health facilities, in the care of social services, in prison, in detention centres, young mothers, poor mothers, surrogate mothers, mothers in trafficking situations, mothers whose children are to be adopted.

It matters very much that maternity and motherhood mean something. It isn't about who is seen as the nurturing parent. It is about recognising the long global history of violating the rights of birth mothers in ways possible only because they are birth mothers. Surrogacy and adoption can be wonderful, but they can also be part of a global system of trafficking, slavery and the violation of human rights.

A high profile celebrity couple where everything is done by the book doesn't change the situation for many other women whose maternity is a target for human rights abuses. And this is not a problem existing outside our society - abuse has happened in our prisons, our mental health facilities, and children of trafficking end up in our country.

Information about birth mothers is important in the prevention of trafficking, abuse and slavery. Birth certificates are an international legal document that the UN maintains are needed to prevent trafficking (and to provide nationality). This is far more important than issues of changing social roles in parenting, which can be promoted by society in plenty of other ways.

They want the perceived privileges of motherhood/womanhood

What do you think those perceived privileges are?

Quite.

And I'll say again that AFAIK, the reasoning is purely financial.

I can believe having lots of loving people in your life is good, but one of the most well-adjusted women I know is someone whose father died before she was born, and her mother only remarried when she was well into adulthood.

"at least Elton and David's kids have two" I object to the insinuation here that 2 parents are better than one.

I don't understand this either.

If it's not okay to say that a child needs a mother and a father (i.e. a male parent and a female parent), why is it okay to say that they need two parents? As opposed to one, or three?

This is a genuine question. I don't get why the same people who are happy for a child to have two mothers or two fathers will say things like, 'Oh, as long as they have two parents who love them'. If the two parents don't represent each of the two genders, why do they need two at all?

Well, that's the point, isn't it, outs.

If a man calls himself the 'mother' he lays claim to that romanticised view (though I bet he also opens himself up for homophobic bullshit), but he cannot possibly change the structure of society such that he risks the economic/social disadvantage.

I see what you mean by mothers being sort of high status Lynette - we have a sort of romantic view of the mother-child relationship etc. But to me that translates in real terms to social and economic disadvantage - I'm assumed to be too beholden to my motherhood to be able to attract renumeration or promotion at the rate of my male peers, I'm held extraordinarily responsible for the moral state of the nation, etc - think about people complaining about how mothers should have/ shouldn't did or did not do x,y,z so now we've got delinquency or poor personal morality, poor diets or whatthefuckever it is I've seemingly fine wrong this week. So I'm not sure they have more status, it actually feels like I am charged with more responsibility, socially, and assumed to be less available to any other social role.

Agree with that, koala, though I would say being a parent at all is a privilege, and not a right.

Some people can't have children - and that's sad, but doesn't give them the right to have children.
Others can reproduce biologically, but aren't fit parents, and we don't have a legal system that insists you get to parent your children even if you're appalling at it. There's a point at which you don't have that right.

The problem is that the consequences and meaning for women globally of having their maternity demoted are far more profound than similar sidelining would be for men.

I think Greer has a point that women's reproductive capacity is being exploited quite badly at the moment.

I completely agree.

I also think that many of the public discussions around reproduction and parenthood have swung too far towards prioritising the rights of adults over the rights of children.

I don't give a toss whether people have sex with other people of the same gender or the opposite gender. I 100%support gay marriage. But I do not agree that everyone has an equal right to parent a child. Being a parent to a child you did not genetically create is a privilege, not a right.

I think the current focus on the rights of wealthy white males is at the expense of the a child's right to know who their genetic parents are, and also at the expense of less wealthy women.

Calling yourself a mother when you are a man is insulting. It denies and obscures the woman who contributed the genetic material without which no new life can exist. A child can have a biological mother and/or a surrogate mother, but not a mother who is a man. That would be a father.

Mothers are not held in higher regard (in our society) at all. They are vilified by large sections of the press for any and all decisions / family set-ups they are involved in. Fathers do not face this. And if they are a good parent they get praise heaped upon them, it is expected of women to be a certain way, and there is little help for those who struggle with it.

In our society mothers used to not have any "rights" to their children, then women and the children belonged to the man. This is still the case in some societies.

The thing is that for centuries men have sought to control women, through a variety of means detrimental to women, in order to control procreation. If men can procreate with no link to women at all, then for ones of that mindset it will be a right result. Use the women as brood mares and then have the children for themselves.

The disconnect of the word "mother" from anything to do with the female biological process that produces children is problematical. In a similar way that the removal of the word "woman" from anything to do with the female biological systems is problematical. In sexist societies how can it be otherwise. Women often don't have much, and are kept around for the things they are deemed to be useful for - sex with heterosexual men and having children. Start to cut pieces of that out and why are they needed? And yes I know it sounds extreme but in the Nepal situation we have newborn babies being airlifted out with their male parents and the women who just gave birth to them left in god only knows what situation. Disposable, I guess, which is poverty for you, but when that person's just grown a whole life inside them to be left by the people you grew it for just feels quite wrong. Because women have always been disposable haven't they, only important for breeding, historically and in many cultures. There are problems here, I think.

I see no problem in having "parent 1" and "parent 2" on the form; and possibly even "biological mother" for the sake of those who want to know their genetic lineage (or at least half of it). It seems very old-fashioned to still stick with "mother" and "father" when other options are quite common now.