Trans argument comparing adoptive parents to trans people

it’s a difficult one. I know what you mean re sperm donation. I just cannot see someone who donates bodily material to another person whom they do not know and without knowledge of whether their material will even be used, as a parent. So I am not that ethically troubled by putting down the factual parent.

With trans birth certificates I am obviously concerned about rewriting history. It’s not merely inaccurate but it erases a moment that was recorder years ago and pretends it never happened. That troubles me far more than two women on a birth certificate. I am trying to work out why they allowed it in the first place. It just seems so unnecessary and also potentially dangerous.

By implication, the existence of transwomen 'extends' our understanding of what it is to be a woman.

I think it extends our understanding of what it is to be a man.
Men are whatever men say they are and women are whatever men say they are.
It is obedience training.
Adoption is just the latest forced teaming that transgender advocates are using to make their case for submission to their beliefs.
Intersex people said no to the forced teaming with transgenderists, and Black women said no to the forced teaming with transgenderists, to no avail.
Faithful Followers of Genderism do not take no for an answer. Not ever.

I've posted before about being an adoptive parent and how this attempt to draw a parallel really pisses me off.

DD and I would love nothing more for her to have been born from me - if you met us on the street, you wouldn't think for a second that she hadn't been. We don't tell people that she is adopted unless there is a real need to know (school teachers, for example). Getting her a passport means that, along with the short birth certificate, she has decent ID that satisfies most situations that she needs to produce something to confirm her identity, but occasionally (visa applications, for example) we have to share the long certificate which I hate doing, because it also shares some of her most personal information. But, it's necessary and we have yet to encounter any problems as a result.

But if the state won't pretend that DD is actually my biological child, why on earth should it pretend that it's possible to change sex? And why should it be possible to get what is in effect a falsified document with minimal checks and cost?

An adoptive parent is someone who desperately wants to be a parent but can’t be one in the normal biological sense

No. Just fuck off with this ignorant nonsense. There are plenty of adopters out there, like me, who are also bio parents.

I'm not desperate to adopt men as my 'sisters' or fellow women though. Im happy to accept feminine men, well they can do what they want really, aside from infiltrating women's safe spaces and causing harm to others. Adopting is nothing like this at all. Will the trans brigade stop at nothing to further their cause

Having said that I know that if I had got pregnant as the result of sperm donation I would have put dh down as the father on the birth certificate. It bothers me that I know I would do it, because from the child's point of view and the legal point of view it's not accurate.

The face was relating to government collusion in lies - such as the pretence that transpeople have actually changed sex, and that their change of sex should be backdated to the day they were born.

I believe birth certs should be accurate, so it does trouble me that two women (or men) would be listed as parents on a birth cert, especially if the actual biological parent is known. This is nothing to do with parents being gay - I have similar concerns about children who are the result of surrogacy and sperm donation; I think the birth cert is the property of the child and should reflect their biological parentage, as far as it can.

But that's a whole other thread.

Not sure why the face maryz....

There are indeed legal fictions with parentage, such as a birth certificate which has two women on it (following IVF treatment) with no legal father. You could argue that is lying and indeed state collusion in a lie. It bears no relation to biology.

The subject matter of the thread is still a rubbish analogy though because woman is not a legal construct in the way that parent is. Parent does not by itself have anything to do with biology, although most of the time, parents will be those biologically related to the child.

The adoption analogy is definitely flawed for all the the reasons already given.

A more accurate analogy in my opinion is national identity.

That one doesn't work either. National identity is to a very large degree culturally and historically determined. National borders are pretty arbitrary. There's no inherent reason why the border between England and Scotland is where it is - it's a result of war and negotiation and politics etc.

So compared to the differences between men and women, the differences between Scottish and English people, for example are much less clear cut. And I can see how it could be perfectly reasonable for an English person who has, say, lived in Scotland for years, to claim Scottishness, or a type of it.

And it's also much easier to see how someone could have multiple national identities (the English person in Scotland could reasonably feel both English and Scottish) that could happily coexist. This doesn't work in the same way when talking about sex.

In order to even be considered to be suitable as an adopter you have to go through a rigorous, intrusive, lengthy process.

Months of one to one sessions with an assessor (including full life and relationship history)
3 references
Full medical check and medical history
DBS checks
Proof of financial ability to support a child

This process is very intrusive and takes a considerable amount of time.

Then you have to go before a multi-professional panel, all of whom have to agree on your suitability. The panel has access to all the above information that has been gathered about you. At that panel a decision may be made to send you off for further training/counselling before you are considered suitable. Or you may be turned down altogether if the panel does not think you suitable to adopt.

If/when you are finally approved to adopt, matched with a child and have it placed with you, you are subject to numerous social work visits and multi-agency reviews.

If you then decide to proceed with adoption you are, these days, expected to pay the Court fees to submit the Adoption application. If there is a contest by birth parents and you wish to have legal representation in the Court proceedings you have to pay for that yourself.

This is what you have to do to adopt. It is lengthy, intrusive, costs money. At the end of the process of assessment and going to panel you are not even guaranteed to have a child placed with you.

And this is how it should be.

yy PeakPants, there were, in the past, many instances of lying. Not any more, or at least not government collusion in such lies .

Adoption has been completely "cleaned up" in that there is no longer any way of lying about it or covering it up an any way. Lyingg about adoption would be illegal and would be the quickest way to have your children taken from you, if you were to persist in insisting that they were biologically yours, or hide their background from them. Illegal adoptions are just that, illegal. For example paying money or influencing biological parents would nullify any subsequent adoption order.

The reason adoption works, for the most part, is that there are onerous, intrusive and time consuming checks and balances. Something that the trans movement are trying to get rid of.

By implication, the existence of transwomen 'extends' our understanding of what it is to be a woman.

If it extended our understanding of what it is to be a man, I think we could all get on board with that.

Oh dear god. I just tried reading the article to find out what I was rolling my eyes about this time but I couldnt make it through the first few paragraphs.

@TeenTimesTwo

Good point. The old short form ones were identical to other birth certificates, that's why adoption certs were always used as an example of legal fiction, but you are right- that hasn't been the case for many years.

Whereas (I understand) that even the long form certificate is retroactively changed when someone has a GRC.

So there is absolutely no similarity between the two processes, legal or otherwise.

Adoptive parents go through a lengthy and stressful bureaucratic process, adopt a child, build a relationship, commit to and love that child and embark on the immense, exhausting, life-changing, decades-long task of parenting.

This argument effectively conflates all that lifelong work and love with the act of declaring oneself a parent in the absence of any child and insisting that everyone pretend to believe in the declaration.

I'm not an adoptive parent myself but I'm genuinely offended on behalf of those who are.

In some cases adding things into a category doesn't extend them, it dilutes them and makes the category less precise. I'm not a philosopher or a linguistician but I agree that 'woman' as an adult human female is a category that doesn't need extending. A woman who has transitioned remains for me in the category of woman, and having a higher testosterone level and facial hair doesn't make her a man (or I would be one - I usually shave my face twice a day and I'm a woman). Categories may or may not have importance in different situations but they do exist. Babies just born are noted to be alive, then more or less healthy, then male or female. That's how fundamental those categories are. If those categories cause distress later in life then that's a cultural and social issues which shouldn't be ignored but it doesn't mean the categories are wrong.

donquixote The new birth certificate an adoptee gets is a legal fiction and is analogous to the new birth certificate that someone gets when they have a GRC.
That is the only similarity between the two things.

No! The adoptee doesn't get a new birth certificate with any legal fiction. They get a birth certificate without any parents named, and a certificate that is similar to a long form birth certificate but is clearly marked as 'adoption register entry'.

So no similarity at all.

How is it a legal fiction?

The new birth certificate an adoptee gets is a legal fiction and is analogous to the new birth certificate that someone gets when they have a GRC.

That is the only similarity between the two things. This argument gets trotted out a lot by TRA and it's hugely insulting to adoptive parents and adoptees.

Adoptive parents are real parents; because they are cuddling away nightmares, changing bums and wiping up vomit. We have always described these people as parents, whether they donated some genes or not. Being a parent is an act of love- not a right.

There might be occasions where someone is a parent but (for whatever reason) they can't get parental responsibility- they are still a parent. Nobody things the dickhead who gets a lass pregnant and then abandons all responsibility is a real dad, even if he's given that title for convenience/politeness.

The author of this article clearly has no clue what adoption involves, as evidenced by the following rubbish:

An adoptive parent is someone who desperately wants to be a parent but can’t be one in the normal biological sense.

plenty of adoptive parents report an abiding regret that they aren’t biological parents

If the arguments the author is making have value, then they can stand on their own. If they only have value by shoehorning them into a parasitic comparison to adoption then they are weak arguments. Either way, I wish this lots would piss off and leave adopters alone.

I really don’t get this idea that “woman” needs broadening or enlarging, that women gain anything by having “our” understanding of what it means to be a woman extended

Why is it not enough that woman means adult human female? Why do so many people seem to believe that a good word is being wasted if that is all it means.

CRAP ANALOGIES

For a bit of light relief, above are some poor analogies. My own favourite:

"The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant".

Adoptive, not adopted parent. Sorry- am on my phone and brain somewhat overheated.

Well, Maryz in the past there was definitely many instances of people lying about adoption and parents not disclosing to their children that they were adopted and pretending they were biologically related. Lying about biological parenthood also happens e.g. if a mother tells a man he is the father when she knows this to be untrue or doubtful.

BUT the point is that they are not comparable because parent is a legal construct and woman is not. A parent is someone who falls into one of several categories. It does not depend on biology for its definition. E.g. a woman giving birth to a baby conceived by egg donation who is not biologically related to her is a parent. A man donating sperm through a clinic is not a parent but a man making a DYI donation is. An adopted parent is a parent. An adoption order means that a previous biological parent is no longer a parent. So parenthood is not exclusively biological at all. It is based on a variety of factors and is sometimes merely a presumption which could be disproved with evidence.

Biological female is not a legal construct. It is a material reality.

Ageee with you.

There are myriad different ways to be a parent; all of them valid. There is only one way to be a woman. You either are or you aren’t!

Interestingly I was thinking about this yesterday but from a different angle....

It is very easy for most people to become a parent - no laws, etc - you just give birth

BUT if you want to adopt lots of safeguards in the way and long and onerous process....

Parallels with changing gender/sex????

Lots of us are just born women - don't have to do anything special it just happens

But for those who want to live as a woman it should be a similarly onerous process, with lots of checks and balances....

Doing this is a very significant thing - as is bringing up a child - Both should rightfully be taken very seriously with appropriate safeguards for all concerned

Come to think of it, I couldn't self-identify as an adoptive parent either; I had to fill in a heck of a lot of forms and satisfy a huge number of requirements. Much of the assessment was intrusive and embarrassing and time-consuming and fucking awful.

I also can't just change my mind and identify out of it if i decide i don't want to be my children's parent any more. And even if I tried to, my children would retain legal inheritance rights etc.

So there is pretty much no comparison at all