“Person who gave birth” turns out to be mother.

Very true @ItsAllGoingToBeFine - how the hypocrisy of that fact hasn't been called out is just staggering.

Would you live your life as a woman and suffer the unbearable mental distress of feeling you were living a lie?

Can't have been that unbearably mentally distressed if they chose to become a mother.

OK I’ll wade into the deep end and if I offend you, please don’t be backward in coming forward.

My life experience has meant I was at a birth, but I was neither mother or father but I was a lot more than significant than auntie or friend.

I see most of this issue as a conflict between ‘what is’ and ‘vanity’. ie there is only 1 egg provider and 1 sperm provider < this should be the ‘birth’ certificate or at the least ‘what we are made from’.

Then there’s ‘Vanity Plates’ - who wished made ‘us’. My parents were amazing. I was / am an amazing parent. Neither of these is a biological fact.

My sperm donor made me, my fathers raised me.

We need to put down vanity and realise a birth certificate is only recording an actual history.

I didn't say he should have found a surrogate and used his eggs just that it was an option open to him especially since he felt strongly enough about his body to go through the processes to obtain a GRC.

I think that deliberately becoming pregnant after declaring that you are a man is fraudulent and makes a mockery of the GRC. He could have had a baby then went down the GRC route afterwards he conciously chose not to thereby flouting the declaration he made to live as a man.

Freddie also does not seem to have wanted to co parent with a biological man hence the need for sperm donation.

Thank you, that’s good. Descriptions like these make it confusing to separate the two.

I'm inclined to believe that if that situation arose and came to court, that it would clarify that discrimination against women is primarily based on sex not 'gender'.

The only rational way forward to make clear, workable and just legislation is to decouple sex and 'gender identity'. Repeal or substantially reform the GRA, for one thing. People should be free to have whatever 'gender identity' they wish without discrimination or prejudice - but decoupled from rights and services related to sex. Freddie should be free to be 'masculine' but there should be no pretence that Freddie is not still of the female sex.

Spindrift - yes, they would in any event, because pregnancy / maternity is a separate protected characteristic in the Equality Act.

@Spindrift1981 bloody hell never thought of that.

Just wondering how it would work if trans men in future could be registered as fathers rather than mothers when they give birth. I lost my job because I was pregnant. Luckily because only women get pregnant this comes under sex discrimination so I had a legal case. If men can get pregnant in the eyes of the law will mothers no longer be protected under sex discrimination?

I kinda think parenthood is a good time to quit me-me-me-me.

This. A bazillion times this.

That Buzzfeed article is making so many statements of fact that are wrong and will scare and worry a lot of trans people absolutely needlessly. Is this journalism in the post-facts era? Do Buzzfeed not employ a company lawyer to check over the articles like every other media company does?
Who do we complain to?
I am really surprised that Buzzfeed who position themselves as being supportive of trans people (..quite rightly, although everybody in society already has the same legal protections to both have our kids and present ourselves however we want to..) could be so irresponsible in what they assert in this scaremongering piece.
The reader comes away with the impression that a GRC is now going to be cancelled the moment you have kids or something. Ridiculous.

It may have been unlawful for McConnell to be given fertility treatment designed for women — therefore trans people may no longer be able to access it.

That's something I wondered about, should the HFEA be getting involved for the clinic helping a legal man to conceive?

Yes, it’s a very twisted interpretation, isn’t it?

No surprise from Patrick Strudwick though, he writes loads of Buzzfeed UK’s trans propaganda, including that god awful recent one about rampant transphobia at the Guardian and beatification of Ruth Hunt.

www.buzzfeednews.com/author/patrickstrudwick

Thanks DuMonde. There’s a lot of inaccuracies about how this judgment is so disastrous. Most of it is untrue, such as the idea that this is the first time the law has said the mother is the person who gives birth. It’s said that forever, ever since egg donation has been possible. It also says that it will ruin proposals for surrogacy laws which again doesn’t really follow. The legal team says they will go to the Supreme Court with it and the judge in this case says himself that the ruling breaches fundamental human rights but that his hands were tied. If it goes to Strasbourg there is already precedent from other countries of children not having a legal mother. Either way it’s only the beginning of a longer process and any celebration of it is premature.

that Mother is also legally Male which is a first.....

The mother has been granted a legal fiction that they are male. I think the distinction is important, although it illustrates the whole problem with legal fictions.

Has anyone posted this long and indulgent article yet?

www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/mother-no-longer-means-woman-judge-rules

Forgive me if it’s a repetition. I can’t bear to read another entire thread about Me-Me-Me-Freddy.

Lol, well apparently they’re running into a few problems gathering data and a lot of it is our fault it seems:

futureoflegalgender.kcl.ac.uk/2019/09/20/engendering-criticism-reflection-on-feedback-to-our-attitudes-to-gender-survey/#more-1008

Really pleased to see several responses young women under 40 represented in the GC side. I fall into this category and am sick of being told that only old bitter women who grew up in a different time think like I do. The amount of ageism in this movement and the way it’s actively encouraged is pretty sickening. Do these people think they will never get old themselves or something?

WTF should the parents 'gender identity' be of any relevance on the child's birth certificate?

I kinda think parenthood is a good time to quit me-me-me-me.

Happy I am sure there will be a push for that. I think the thing that holds it back is that a mother must be the person who gestated the child. So for instance a lesbian couple cannot both be registered as mothers. One can be the second parent but there can only be one mother. Under the current law, a biological male wouldn’t be able to claim he was the mother. But i do wonder for instance if surrogacy law is changed so that the woman who gives birth is no longer the mother (as is the case now) whether a transwoman will try to argue that they should be listed as the mother.

Also, if the desire to change the law is pushed through as I am pretty sure it will (as some of them have promised their funders that is exactly what they will do) then it becomes a free for all. I think one of the projects, the legal gender one, is more about neutrality, so no reference to sex on birth cert for baby or parents. OTOH, Sally Hines seems more in favour of affirming people’s ‘inner identity’, meaning we could have male mothers and female fathers. Both examples would be bad but I would prefer the neutral one as at least it doesn’t distort reality to the same extent as the gender identity approach.

errol yes I agree with you the person who gave birth is the Mother, but that Mother is also legally Male which is a first.....

I don't see how, the case law seems clear that the person who gave birth is the mother.

Pota Do you think that now there is case law that someone who is male in the eyes of the law, is also registered as Mother, certain people will be pushing for biological men to be registered as Mothers on birth certificates?

AMAM and 3mks both said that Freddy could have frozen eggs and used a surrogate.

Who is saying that Freddie should 'find a surrogate' Pota? I'm certainly not!

I think Freddie shouldn't have said they wanted to be a man if they wanted to have a child. Or Freddie's partner could bear a child given that Freddie appears to favour relationships with people born female. Someone like Tigger Blaize or some other gender non-conforming person who also has their female reproductive organs but hasn't just signed a legal document to say that they intend to live the rest of their life as a man.

I personally would also much rather that Freddie have birth rather than employing another woman to give birth for him.

ITA.

The thing that was wrong with Freddie's route - 'wrong' as in dishonest and perhaps illegal - was getting a GRC, claiming to thenceforth live as a man. And the other thing wrong with the route was trying to claim anonymity after making a non-anonymous film - WTF was Freddie thinking?

I hope that cool minds will see that Freddie has effectively driven a coach and horses through the legal fiction of the GRA. It is not fit for purpose; it should be abolished and alternative means of securing the rights of transsexuals which neither ignore physical reality nor impact the rights of people with others protected characteristics.