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

While I have no issue with him calling himself "mother" and being named as such in the birth certificate, I hope for the child's sake that the biological mother is also named (or at least a record kept somewhere). The child may want or need to know in the future,

Wtf was that about Nepal? Got a link about the surrogate mother's?

He is the child's mother.

And I'm a cupboard.

Words mean just what I want them to mean.

No more and no less.

If David Furnish wants to call himself a mother, that's perfectly right and proper. And if I want to call myself a laptop, or a shoe, or a door, that's perfectly right and proper too.

Who needs words to have meanings?

I was just reading this article this morning OP and l agree. He is not the mother simply because he's not female.

IMO female = mother and male = father, regardless if it's biological, adoptive etc.

And to that poster who said some single families, the mother has to be both that and father l say you're wrong as the mother can't be the father, they can just be one person doing a two person role.

Calling David Furnish mother on the birth certificate (or mum day to day) wouldn't bother me. I don't feel like it takes anything away from my being a mother.

It's just my opinion though and I suspect it would bother most people in society.

I hope "the more official" parts of bureaucracy catch up with modern families. It would be interesting to see how countries which are more progressive in such areas handle this "paperwork".

Orlando IME usually mummy and mama, daddy and papa, or sometimes daddy David and daddy Elton/mummy name and mummy name.

I don't think birth certs must be biologically accurate, but I think it is a bit rude to single parents to say that 'at least' these children have two parents. Ok, often being a single parent isn't a choice, but very occasionally it is, and as I understand it, the factor that discriminates is financial.

orlando - why do you wonder? Gay parents are fairly common, aren't they, and usually it's not beyond the wit of man to call someone mum and someone mamma, or whatever.

One thing that I have wondered in such cases. What do the children call their parents?

If you have 2 Dads or 2 Mums, it would get kind of confusing if you call them both Dad or Mum. I know several adults with same sex parents - no idea what they call each parent - but I think that they married / formed a civil partnership when the children were older so the children knew their "original" mum / Dad (i.e. the one they lived with when they were born).

But now - you have babies in same sex families. Do these children know which of their mums / Dads is the biological one? Does it matter at that age? Do they call them both mum / Dad? What about school - we all know that schools are keen on telling their child that their mum is here to collect them and doing cards for mother's day etc.

Society is changing. But we still have systems and names for a heteronormative society. At least we are getting past the idea that all children need 2 married parents with a Dad who goes to work and a mum who must stay at home. But there is still a lot of catching up to do.

Where I live (Canada) the birth certificate has for 'parent one' 'parent two' and in a few recent cases 'parent three'. I don't think that birth certificates were ever designed to be accurate documents on a biological front. Although I can totally see why that might be very important for the child.

Disgusting that two people of the ruling class (white men) can take advantage of a politically and economically disenfranchised group (women) and basically do what the fuck they want with their bodies. For some men it's renting orifices in the form of prostitution, for other men it's renting wombs.
Both prostitution and surrogacy are dangerous to women's health. Maternal death rates through pregnancy and childbirth are sky high in even developed countries, and are especially high in countries that practice c-sections.

But what's a little female death as long as men get what they want, eh?

This is the feminism board, yes? The issue is not about the child having parents, adopted, biological or whatever - the issue as I see it is that a man (DF) is trying to take a title that technically can only belong to a woman. I'm pretty sure that's why it's been posted in here and not in AIBU.

Short birth certificates don't give parents' details.

I don't think it is true, and I feel David Furnish has been unfairly singled out.

But Germaine Greer seems to have been making a lot of other points about reproductive technology as an industry, the concept of motherhood, and what the reasons were for changing abortion laws (concern for rights of women or the needs of the medical industry for eggs and embryos).

I think the press has jumped on the David Furnish issue and largely ignored the rest, and the rest seems pretty important right now, particularly given the situation of the mostly Indian surrogates who have been either left in disaster zones in Nepal while their babies were airlifted out, or if pregnant removed to Israel for the birth, after which the Israelis intend to place the mothers in immigrant detention centres.

I have a birth child and an adopted child and have near identical short birth certificates for each, naming DH and I as parents.

Lots of kids in the UK only have one parent listed on their birth certificate - at least Elton and David's kids have two. Do posters who think that birth certificates must be biologically 'accurate' think that mothers should be compelled to include the baby's fathers name on the birth certificate. [

Assuming this is true...

I don't know why anyone cares. . As long as the DC concerned understand who is who what does it matter to anyone else. David Furnish can call himself whatever he wants as far as I'm concerned. As long as he is a responsible and loving parent I can't see how the terminology matters. I don't think I've ever looked at anyones birth certificate outside my immediate family.

I'm amazed anyone would be bothered by this other than Journo's desperate to cause a fuss.

I don't think he should be listed as mother either, purely because he's not female and doesn't identify as female. Nowt wrong with there being 2 fathers, nor 2 mothers on a cert., but not relabelling one as parent of the opposite sex just because.

Devora, I have seen no "fetishing" of anyone here. Just a desire for accurate record keeping. Recording what is known about them at that time.

I completely agree with you, OP.

I find it extremely bizarre.

In the main, I also agree with you flessan. But I think there is also a fetishising of genetic parentage which is evident in some of the more, erm, fussy surrogacy arrangements (mixing sperm from different fathers, eggs from one surrogate implanted in another etc). Although I couldn't be more positive about same sex parenting, I am very troubled by surrogacy.

Where children's social/legal parents are not their biological parents, I think we have a strong duty to listen and not to lead too strongly on their feelings about that. My job is to identify as my adopted daughter's mum as fiercely as I do with my birth child. I owe that to her. I do not and will not accept that the genetic bond transforms the experience of parenting because, frankly, that is not my experience in parenting both bio and adopted children.

But that doesn't mean that I am denying or diminishing the role of my dd's birth mother. My daughter doesn't owe it to me to think and feel about her birth mother, or about me, only in ways that make me feel comfortable. And that is one of my objections to Furnish calling himself 'mother': I think it steps very squarely into a space that should be about his sons making their own sense of their family situation.

I've thought on a few threads recently that the negative attitudes to liberal feminism might reduce our knowledge and understanding of various women's issues.

I think 'liberal feminism' has come to mean sex positivity, pro porn etc, and people who call themselves liberal feminists often mean that, but liberal feminism used to mean using legal means to protect the rights of women.

Women globally have the right to have maternity recognised as a social function. It is in the same article of CEDAW as ending sex stereotypes, that placement of the two together surely makes it pretty clear that being pregnant and being the birth mother of a child is not meant to be seen as some sort of stereotype, but as recognition of something unique to women to be respected alongside ending of stereotypes.

Women have successfully won court cases, including court cases against governments over violation of maternal identity, on such issues as 'missing' children and acts which target mothers having or being with their children safely. The human right cited in those cases is from article 5 - recognition of maternity as a social function. Countries that have used that have made it quite clear it is not to be used to prevent mothers or women from doing things other than having kids, but to protect the unique situation of being pregnant and then a birth mother.

I see in a lot of places online discussions of feminism (from all sorts of feminism) a kind of disconnect from the way women's rights are advanced globally through human rights specific to women and the law in general.

Flessan, I totally agree with your post 23:20.

lass - yes, of course.

It is one of those situations where you have to keep making a compromise between recognising that people socialised female need support because they're currently penalised for that socialisation/the expectations that result from it, and trying to destroy the underlying system that requires that socialisation.

There isn't an easy answer. But agree with you, whatever it might be, the answer isn't this.

"Hatching eggs" is a lovely expression isn't it?

And seeing eggs hatch or newly hatched birds is wonderful. If you've never seen it happen you've missed out.