Is this parody? I hope it is. (Reproductive rights for people with testicles. What?)

As PPs have said this article is very weird for its denial that, for all the mental identification and surgery in the world, biologically male bodies and biologically female bodies are simply factually different. It reminds me a bit of this post, which I came across after someone on the AIBU "cis" thread running ATM referenced the idea of 'the cotton ceiling':

factcheckme.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/the-cotton-ceiling-really/

Essentially 'the cotton ceiling' seems to be saying that trans people are discriminated against by people deciding that they don't want to have sex with them due to them being trans. However, various lesbian activists have pointed out that they, as lesbians, would object to having sex with a transwoman not because she is trans, but rather in cases where she still has a penis. The trans activist in the discussion linked above said:

"There is nothing inherently male about a woman’s body, unless she identified things about it as male herself. So, no, I do not consider trans women with penises to be male-bodied, unless that is how they identify." and that, therefore, lesbians who choose not to engage in PIV intercourse with a transwoman with a penis have "internalized the message that trans women are somehow male".

I remember when I first encountered sex and gender, actually in the context of university history, it was drilled into me and my coursemates that sex = biology and gender = the various societal meanings lumped on top of that. To me it doesn't seem remotely helpful to try to conflate the two and, indeed, the fact that transactivists are trying to do so (and in so doing are tramelling over lesbian concerns and the lived experiences of people with biologically female bodies that have periods and babies etc etc) makes me lose a lot of patience with them.

Surrogacy like that is very wrong. It leads to things like the situation where the woman had twins (I think) and one had Downs, and the parents who were to adopt (perhaps, this is the wrong word, because it doesn't seem like an adoption. Perhaps 'Commission' is more the feeling I get from the prospective parents), didn't want him.

I was horrified that this could happen, after all the risk she took for them. Of course the mother kept him, but also of course she needed help - she was poor, and not planning to have a baby to raise!

I didn't have a girlhood. I had a childhood. Fraught with body shaming and being excluded from things I wanted to do because I was a girl (I like computers and practical things. I've lost count of the amount of time I was the only girl in the room, and how poorly I was treated by the males present).

Not to say that there weren't some very happy bits, but none of them were girl related - being a girl never brought me anything good until I was an adult (yes, I mean my kids and my DP - soppy I know) - I'm still often the only woman in the room, and I still get treated poorly because of it (not as much now I'm older and senior)

In fact, more than uneasy. I think it's wrong.

Yes Micah, I don't think back to a 'girlhood' either, I think of a childhood. If I have to name a part of my life as a 'girlhood' it would mostly be negative events around puberty involving being ashamed of my changing body, being objectified etc. My childhood before puberty was a childhood had by a girl but not a girlhood in any sense more than that.

I too am uneasy about surragacy when it involves much poorer womens' wombs being rented out by Westerners.

I am very uneasy about cross border surrogacy, whether the womb renters are male, female, trans or whatever.

Oh, I got mixed up, the quote was:

". She told me about her niece, who ran around the whole time in her dress, playing jokes and being sweet and ridiculous"

Apart from the dress, there's nothing gendered in this behaviour! I'm sure the writer ran around playing jokes and being sweet as a child too!

It also seems to me that L meant "don't you miss being a kid and feeling like that?" - twirling around randomly not being an adult thing, really!

Thing is, that often the women being used as surrogates are very poor. There's a roaring trade in surrogacy in rural SE Asia. Comparatively rich, white westerners from Europe, the US and Aus/NZ are paying women to merely incubate a baby for them.

Homosexual men and TW literally rent space within a woman's body. These arrangements aren't comparable to most surrogacy in the west, where relationships are built with the birth mother, who, if she wishes, will be part of the child's life. In these arrangements, once the rented space has been evacuated, that's it. She hands the baby over and is never heard of again. The situation has got so bad that some SE Asian countries have enacted laws to try and prevent the practice.

Yet another example of women's bodies not being their own in times of economic hardship.

slightly off track, and I'm new to this issue, so apologies if it's been done before.

But this;

*“Don’t you miss being a girl and feeling free like that?” L said, sighing.

I felt a familiar pang of loss – for the girlhood with the dresses and the giggling and the running.

people who don’t know any better assume that I had a girl-presenting childhood during which I ran around feeling femme and free. Maybe I had a girlhood and a boyhood all rolled into one,*

I can't identify with that at all. I don't know if it makes me odd, or I had a particularly non gendered childhood, but when I think back to being a child, I don't think of being a girl at all. I certainly don't remember waiting around in dresses feeling "femme and free"

I do remember loving being active, revelling in the things my body could do, enjoying playing and being carefree. I really don't remember anything being girl-specific.

Dresses were something to be endured when my mother wanted to show me off.

It seems to me trans women, or this one at least, has some romanticised, stereotyped version of childhood where girls are an entirely different species to boys- tying in with the increasing gender divide in children generally.

Here's another! This person also fails to mention where exactly these adopted children are going to come from, but at least they don't pretend they're going to be gestating anyone:

www.buzzfeed.com/zoewilkinsons/on-trans-motherhood#.le4zLNEyR

Surely there are many more couples infertile for medical or unexplained reasons or same sex couples unable to source a donor or surrogate than there are trans people?

So is showing baby pics also homophobic or medico-phobic?

"which seems to muddy the distinction by obfustication"
I don't think this is an ACCIDENT :-)

Mrsfrumble that sounds about right.

EF is just weird.

So does it boil down to: feminists FOR sex, AGAINST gender. Transactivists FOR gender, AGAINST sex? Where sex means biological difference and gender is the socially constructed difference?

Sorry, I know this is a very simplistic breakdown and probably a dumb question. I find it difficult to keep straight in my head, especially with the language used in the articles on EF which seems to muddy the distinction by obfustication.

You DON'T solve the problem of sexism by pretending you can ERASE sex and replace it with a gender that someone of any sex can have (hence no SEXISM stoopid!).

Yes. This.

I found pregnancy knocked me for six. I struggled to walk for months with SPD, had morning sickness pretty much the whole way through, insomnia, restless leg syndrome, exhaustion. I never expected it to affect me so severely. Then childbirth with ventouse, tearing, episiotomy. I still get some pain during sex around the stitches, 15 months after giving birth. Plus let's not forget the stretch marks and the fact that my once toned stomach now has a permanent sag. But yeah that's all exactly the same as producing sperm. I see that now. It was wrong of me to think otherwise.

"ask the person in question, not the person carrying them to term"
This is INSULTING to women (Oh, how surprising!) in SOOO many ways! Referring to a 'person' first dewomanizes the MOTHER if someone is really pregnant (who'd a thunk I'd have to write REALLY pregnant!) they are hopefully going to give birth and people who give birth are female, and are mothers, whether or not they are the biological mother in the genetic sense (egg donation, sperm donation etc etc). The BIRTH mother matters, SHE isn't just an incubator. Reminds me of my little bit of classical culture Orestes, after killing his mother (who killed his father, cheery lot these classical greeks!), is on trial, and Athene (I think) as his advocate argues that the FATHER is the one true parent, the mother is just a receptacle for his sperm, just an incubator..............

The PERSON carrying the baby will be the birth MOTHER, but that's messy female biology for you!

The PERSON in question will be a baby if carried to term, and referring to a fetus AS a person is just anti-abortion campaigners all over!

Are we SUPPOSED to act as if the actual sex of the actual baby ISN'T known, whilst magically pretending that it DOESN'T matter, and this little proto-person COULD be a mother (or a father) irrespective of their ACTUAL biology! So, don't you go buying different nappies depending on their actual plumbing then.........................

It's jusy co-opting what feminists have always said, we treat babies DIFFERENTLY based on their actual or assumed sex. Rather than try to CHANGE that, instead the genderists would have us treat them differently based on their GENDER when they are old enough to tell us what it is. And insist they MUST have one..................

It's a a GIRL, that MATTERS when it comes to what will happen to her body later in life, and shouldn't matter when it comes to what toys she likes or doesn't like, what subjects she prefers at school, what career she choses, and what she gets PAID! You DON'T solve the problem of sexism by pretending you can ERASE sex and replace it with a gender that someone of any sex can have (hence no SEXISM stoopid!).

I'm thinking it can't get any more stupid or offensive, but I've said that before and was disappointed. Seems there IS no peak trans, it just keeps getting worse and worse.................

I get the impression that actual, real, growing a baby inside you, pregnancy and birthing is one of those 'fucked-up' messy female biology things that the writer would prefer wasn't spoken about in favour of euphemisms and saying you're pregnant because you can produce sperm.

The 'ask the person in question, not the person carrying them to term' one annoyed me a lot - coupled with the 'yes, this includes your own child' it seems to be framing the idea that I can know the sex of my baby as some sort of tyrannical position. A doctor told me some medical information - it has no bearing on how I will treat a child or what I will expect them to like or do.

It's terribly written, so maybe that wasn't intended but the 'carrying them to term' just irritated me because it sounds like they're intentionally removing the role of the mother from pregnancy, but also because 'carrying to term' means a particular thing, it isn't just a synonym for pregnancy. Surely one can't 'be carrying to term' before being full term?

I just came across this tragic story:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-30544737

Even though the mother TOLD them she gave birth to a girl, they still insisted the baby boy was hers. They made a mistake. The parents have now been told the children won't be swapped back, since it has been five years. And this mother was just doing what any one would - referring to the actual biological sex of their child. Except some would have it that doing such a thing is coercively assigning the baby female at birth (I THINK that is what the whole CAFAB thing stands for). This is the sort of (hopefully) RARE thing that happens to women giving birth, something where the sex of their child matters, with people NOT LISTENING to her because she's 'just' a woman, or 'just' poor, or 'just' black.

And we're supposed to get all worried and apologetic and shut up about actual female experiences (like bleeding, like giving birth, like panic when you were young and just started your periods and you couldn't find a tampon machine and you were too embarrassed to go to the school nurse, like suffering period pains, or hot flushes, or PMS and ALL those other things that go along with out actual biology!) -- we're supposed to SHUT-UP and not even celebrate the birth of a child by showing colleagues pictures, just in case some male is made to feel a teeny bit uncomfortable because they have been reminded that they DON'T have female biology.

Makes me want to take up free-bleeding, to be frank! :-)

How many people actually go round showing their baby photos to people they haven't know very long? You'd be considered quite odd if you did...
It's such a random thing to take issue with.

I guess it could be any/all of those things.

The pink and blue thing plays into that - although my kids as babies just wore whatever came next out of the big box of second hand clothes we had - whatever colour it was, because they're just babies, and they're just clothes so there's a plus point for Rad Fems surely? If we dressed all babies in whatever colours we liked (ie. ignore gender) then everyone could freely show their baby photos.