NHS told: give trans patients equal access to fertility service

NotBad bluescreen your post doesn't make sense. Can you explain?

Sorry, that was meant to be heavy irony. I don't think this policy makes sense at all. On the one hand you have 'trans' children whose puberty may be arrested and who may never be able to use fertility treatment, trans adults who are transitioning and may want to bank sperm or eggs before undergoing surgery or hormone therapy, and AGPs who want to do the whole Danish Girl thing. On the other hand you have infertile couples, and people about to undergo radiotherapy or other harmful treatment. And you have uber-stretched NHS resources. My sympathy lies with those whose need isn't merely self-identified.

At the moment I am listed as an organ donor for any part that is needed but I am very tempted to change that so say that I do not consent to my uterus and/or ovaries being used for donation after my death. The way things are going is chilling.

'too' even!

Thanks heresy , this particular lobbying focus is far to close to personal experiences.

Masculine women are trans

I might actually fall into that category: I studied a subject at university that is traditionally male-dominated, work in a male-dominated sector, have no interest in children, am not at all interested in being fluffy or coy, was brought up by my father and so was not socialised in a traditional female way, never wear high heels etc.

OTOH, I wear makeup (and occasionally scent) to work and only ever wear dresses and skirts. (Though the latter is because I have a long torso and find trousers uncomfortable.)

I also have Asperger's Syndrome, which is considered by some experts to exemplify an extreme male brain.

Not only that - I don't identify as female.

ESRC seem to be funding quite a few things like this recently.

R0wantrees

I'm sorry you're having a rough one.

The law considers the woman who gives birth the legal mother

But there is, I believe, an ongoing court case concerning the term 'mother' on a child's birth certificate. The child was born to a transman who is seeking to change the birth certificate to record their relationship to the child as either 'father' or 'parent'.

I presume that if this were successful, it might then make the term 'mother' open to challenge?

Bowl
Did you spot that the Trans Pregnancy Group are a part of Leeds University and are being sponsored by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)? Their main focus is supposed to be on transmasculine people and non-binary individuals (formerly known as females).
The speaker mentioned in their Tweets appears to be separate to this group, though, and researching at Liverpool University for a PhD in transgender reproductive rights.
These are not just some "crazy people on Twitter."

So that’s why the ‘need’ for a womb, so that they can experience gestation. Not so that they can fulfill a deep desire for a child. It’s about the transperson, and their desire for validation.

This has been explicitly articulated on the FWR board a number of times. On a couple occasons in response to me.
(On other days I might go and find the posts but not today, its a bit too raw.)

Thanks @OldCrone @Waddlelikeapenguin and @PencilsInSpace

That is one big umbrella! Masculine women are trans? Bet that's news to them!

Fascinated to read that gender incongruence excludes exhibitionism.

What does 'marked distress' here really mean - does it imply that they don't enjoy the arousal? That they feel shame?

Urgh

This is, however, the sort of thing that will peak trans the general population almost immediately upon reading

banana - I don’t think I put my post so well. What I mean is what you’re saying - that the person who gestated is default mother. I’m absolutely not saying that being unable as a woman is to not be a mother. A woman is of the class that produces ova and beats live young. Am individual who cannot due to cancer/birth defect etc is just as much a woman as any other (and I loathe the argument TRAs make that appropriates this.)

So that’s why the ‘need’ for a womb, so that they can experience gestation. Not so that they can fulfill a deep desire for a child. It’s about the transperson, and their desire for validation.

What they’re saying is ‘ I must gestate’ not ‘I deeply want a child.’ It’s almost fetishing reproduction.

Apologies if I wasn’t clear and caused offence, I don’t think I explained myself well

With this year's new ICD 11, the condition is 'gender incongruence' not 'gender dysphoria'. In order to get a diagnosis, paraphilic disorders have to be excluded.

AGP would either fall under 6D35 Other paraphilic disorder involving non-consenting individuals or 6D36 Paraphilic disorder involving solitary behaviour or consenting individuals depending on whether it was inflicted on others non-consensually or not.

If the AGP only involved solitary behaviour or consenting individuals, it would only be diagnosed as a paraphilic disorder if it caused marked distress or involved significant risk of injury or death, so in such circumstances someone with AGP could be diagnosed with gender incongruence.

Interestingly, in light of recent events, 6D30 Exhibitionistic disorder is one of the specific paraphilias that must be excluded before a diagnosis of gender incongruence can be made.

Where all this fits with May's assertion that 'being trans is not an illness' I don't know.

Bingpot
According to Stonewall Transwomen are
Male transsexuals and Male transvestites (erotic transvestites gets sexually excited by the dressing, a social transvestite simply feels more comfortable in those clothes)

I think the inclusion of erotic transvestite =AGP

bowl
heresy "will allow transwomen to experience gestation" wtf! Is this the next layer of validation? No reference to the child i can see, is the child just a byproduct?

Bingpot
The trans umbrella. Includes cross dressers. AGP is an extreme version.

I don't read it quite like that, Bowl. I believe legally motherhood is defined by gestation, hence a surrogate is legally the child's mother until a parental order is obtained, even if a donor egg is used.

Yep

The law considers the woman who gives birth the legal mother - it makes no differentiation between a woman giving birth to her own child conceived using her own egg, her own child conceived using a donor egg, or a surrogate giving birth to a surrogate child conceived using the egg of the intended mother, a surrogate child conceived using a donor egg (referred to by surrogates as host or gestational surrogacy) or a surrogate child conceived using her own egg (known as traditional or straight surrogacy).

Until the surrogate chooses to relinquish parental responsibility and a parental order is granted by the court, she is the legal mother

I cannot carry a child because my uterus is unable to sustain a pregnancy. Lots of women in the UK surrogacy community were born with MRKH - without a womb. They usually have working ovaries but no uterus.

My uterus doesn't function due to an accident of biology. They don't have a uterus due to an accident of genetics

We are women whose reproductive organs don't work as biologically they should

We weren't born with functioning reproductive organs of a different sex.

Oh god - is it? I thought it was separate to gender dysphoria. I need to go do some reading as I'm not clear on this.

I wonder if what we're actually dealing with here then - in some cases - is potentially preferential treatment for men with AGP and the exploitation of the NHS to fund a sexual fetish. Until you can clearly distinguish AGP from trans I don't understand how this is acceptable.

Isn't AGP under the trans umbrella?

There is a reason the nhs should offer three rounds of IVF - that is how many it is deemed necessary to have a reasonable chance (very much not a certainty) of having a baby. That might also include three rounds of egg collection. And it also does not take into account the much much lower success of frozen eggs.

Wouldn’t they need a pelvis transplant too?

Read that tweet screenshot - the bit about motherhood being defined by gestation. This is about appropriation of femaleness.

I don't read it quite like that, Bowl. I believe legally motherhood is defined by gestation, hence a surrogate is legally the child's mother until a parental order is obtained, even if a donor egg is used.

The whole thing about uterus transplants for tw is appropriative as fuck though and deeply unethical - all to give a tw 'the experience of gestation'

Equal treatment means gamete storage and access to IVF on the same shit terms everyone else gets, surely? It won't mean surrogacy on the NHS or uterus transplants.

EHRC has form for trying to argue for preferential treatment for trans people.

In 2010 they intervened in a case where a tw was trying to argue that their breast augmentation should be funded by the NHS. EHRC argued that you couldn't compare a tw who was dissatisfied with their breast size to a natal woman who was similarly dissatisfied because:

Only a transgender woman needs breasts to address the very condition from which she suffers, and only transsexuals suffer, of living in a body which is not the gender which they feel themselves to be.

They lost and the judge said:

This is a very far reaching submission. It argues that the logic of Webb v EMO Air Cargo applies to the treatment of transsexuals; and that therefore, as a matter of discrimination law, the case of a transsexual seeking surgery or treatment to change the shape of her breasts can never be a like case to that of a non-transsexual seeking the same surgery or treatment.

I do not accept this submission. It may be that a transsexual seeking genital reconstruction surgery can rely on Webb v EMO: that will if necessary have to be decided in another case. But for breast augmentation surgery the hypothetical comparator identified in paragraph 35 above is a valid one. Otherwise it is hard to see how any request by a transsexual for surgery or treatment, however expensive, for GID could lawfully be refused.

(the hypothetical comparator being a natal woman seeking breast augmentation)

There's an irony in a movement wanting to reduce the 'intrusiveness' of formally transitioning to a 'I am because I say I am self ID, promoting the most invasive / intrusive procedures such as harvesting eggs for children .
Such a skewed set of values.