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

I personally would also much rather that Freddie have birth rather than employing another woman to give birth for him. There are so many threads on here about the risks and dangers of surrogacy yet people are now saying that this person should just ‘find a surrogate’ rather than use his own healthy body.

Already if you read the stuff that local governments, universities, and other supposedly respectable bodies tweet, they are already playing fast and loose with the law by pretending that gender has replaced sex under the Equality Act. There is a widespread push to pretend that the law is already what they want it to be- no reference to sex, just gender identity.

3mks you are wrong - gay men have the choice to have their own biological children through a co-parenting arrangement with single women or lesbian couples. These options are not open to Freddie.

If Freddie had a biological child through surrogacy he would have to find a willing surrogate, take IVF hormones, have his eggs extracted, get them implanted in the surrogate and likely pay thousands of pounds. It's hardly a simple option!

I can see why he ended up going down the route he did.

happy sorry but that’s naive. This ruling by the High Court will absolutely not lead to the GRA being repealed. The judge called for clarification in the law but you’re reading things into it if you think he meant that the GRA should be repealed. I am not just speculating as I have listened to presentations of what people like Sally Hines want and they now have the right moment to push for that. They have been given millions of PUBLIC money for this.

*@NotBadConsidering * Still can’t get my head around why the GRC panel aren’t asking questions. Given the fact they probably can’t and can't challenge someone, a GRC isn’t worth the paper it’s written on

It is possible to have the certificate rescinded for fraud but it requires the case to be taken to court by the Secretary of state (see s8(5) here) www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/section/8 so it's not the GRC panel themselves who ask questions and presumably the Secretary of STate is not going to be getting involved in most cases. The judge in this case asked the government lawyers whether there was going to be a fraud challenge here and they decided not to. Presumably (a) they don't want to waste the time and energy for the bad publicity that would inevitably come from being seen to persecute a Guardian journalist whose situation has ben on TV; and (b) it would require very uncomfortable questions about what 'living as a man/woman' means and so show the GRA to be on built on a test that lacks any substance.

So it's pretty difficult to imagine any scenario in which a GRC would be challenged.

I don't understand why they want to get rid of the category of sex.

Maybe because the inconvenient existence of physically verifiable facts effectively invalidates the whole of her Pomo-addled 'research'?

But if people can have their other beliefs e.g. Religion recorded on official documents, maybe I think just let them have it. It keeps gender and sex separate, they have their gender confirmation, and other family types have their own acknowledgment as well. And we still record sex.

Yes, separate recording of sex and gender would be one solution. But as Pota has pointed out, people like Hines want to get rid of the category of sex. But I don't understand the argument that this ruling helps their cause, and I don't understand why they want to get rid of the category of sex.

Pota But isn't it more likely that due to the unintended consequences of creating legal fiction, such as GRC's, the GRA will need to be repealed?

Laws do need to be founded on truth and fact after all?

I feel I'm missing some own goal though-what are you thinking the new law might possibly be?

The perceived injustice of the case

The only injustice here is that Freddy isn't being prosecuted for fraudulently obtaining a GRC, by stating that Freddy was going to 'live as a man' for the rest of Freddy's life, just days before taking steps to become pregnant - an act that had been planned well before the GRC was granted.

Just whatever a Father role is in Fred's belief system. That's Freddy's faith, Freddy can have it. Just n it impose it on the rest of us.
I'm with you, as far as I'm concerned gender is woo. But if people can have their other beliefs e.g. Religion recorded on official documents, maybe I think just let them have it. It keeps gender and sex separate, they have their gender confirmation, and other family types have their own acknowledgment as well. And we still record sex.

happy because it will get superseded by legislation. The perceived injustice of the case will create the necessary conditions for new law to be proposed, some of it already having been thought up by the academics getting million pound grants. You don’t get that money for nothing. They have promised significant impact in the form of a change in the law.

Well it’s evident Freddie can’t commit to any particular role, given Freddie committed to “living as a man” then immediately did the most woman thing possible.

Still can’t get my head around why the GRC panel aren’t asking questions. Given the fact they probably can’t and can't challenge someone, a GRC isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. This is also why the new law in Victoria in Australia isn’t worth anything, you just have to get a friend to say you intend to “live as man/woman”.

Freddy can self-declare and commit to a Father role

Other than breastfeeding, which can only be done by the mother (if she is able to), what is the difference between a 'mother role' and a 'father role'?

pota I can kind of see what yr concerned about but I think the ruling just lays clear the absurdity of the current situation. That a trans man can have the legal status of being male and also be a Mother....can you elaborate on why this is a negative? My bran quite can’t compute how this is bad for women.

We should extend it to:

sex
self ids as... (so very open - can be anything). It means nothing anyway.

People clearly feel very strongly about making gender declarations, so maybe we can have both. I don' se why we can't retain the Births Registry document as strictly non-fictional record of historical record, and for those who need to have personal commitments and declarations officially acknowledged, there can also be a stat dec, type certificate. Freddy can self-declare and commit to a Father role, extended families and other non-nuclear family units can be acknowledged, and there we have diversity embraced and celebrated, and the child retains his/her right to a factual record of birth.

While we're at it, passports and driving licenses can record sex, and if someone wants to list a gender identity, they can have that option too; just not 'instead of.,'.

the legal undoing of binary understandings of reproduction

Sally Hines is an idiot, or at least talks like one. Reproduction in humans is sexual, it is factually binary. There may be some variation if detail due to IVF methods (donated ova and/or mitochondria) but that has precisely nothing to do with 'gender' - the ova still has to come from a woman, the gestation has to be done by a woman, the sperm has to come from a man. Binary.

There is then a completely separate issue - of accepting that ' all families of all genders and all bodies will be recognised.'. Is that in any way controversial at this point in history?

twitter.com/sally_hines/status/1176915492000403457?s=20

So a compromise would be to have sex obsevered at birth and then at 18 be allowed to choose your gender, but sex would remain the same as at birth.

Arnold it’s a record of birth, it’s not for anyone’s ‘benefit’ as such. Birth certificates existed back in the days when you could sell your children. They were never intended to benefit anyone, just to record an event.

I get your point but would you rather a small exception or the kind of change these people really want which I have written about above? I have seen them present on this and they are pretty dogged and this case and the ‘injustice’ of it all creates perfect conditions. Team that with spineless MPs who won’t stand up for women’s rights and bingo.

To Datun and OldCrone.

Research ongoing that has been funded: Sally Hines on pregnant men. Also a legal gender project that will propose legislation. They want to abolish reference to sex in law, a bit like in Tasmania where it is not mentioned on birth certificates. Instead, they think people should be free to choose their gender identity, possibly at 18, and it should be upheld by law. Their aim is to get legislative change. The whole thing is a shitshow but they got loads of money for it and there is a lot of support for it because they’re so woke and inclusive etc.

If Freddy loses in court then it creates the conditions necessary to suggest law reform. It’s what happened with the GRA- it came out of a court case. Therefore this is actually better for them than winning because they don’t just want an exception for trans men, they would prefer to abolish the term mother or redefine it as anyone identifying as mother.

If the courts had interpreted the law in such a way as to allow only those with a GRC to be registered as parent and not mother (not make a general rule) then Freddy would no longer have anything to complain about and nor would Sally and others have any ‘barbaric law’ to attack. Now they do.

It’s up to you whether you choose to believe me.

Scarlett, Freddie feels he is a man and has a GRC and becoming pregnant is the opposite of this. It wasn't an accident he planned it. He could have had a biological child through surrogacy or (as in the case of your wife) had a child which was not genetically his if he did not wish to go down the surrogacy route. This is the same choices gay men have which is what he claims to be. No one is saying he can only be trans or a parent, but as he feels he is a gay man this limits his choices.

I am concerned that now because mother can be female or someone who is legally recognized in law as male with a grc, the next challenge will come from transwomen claiming the title of mother. The judge only seemed to rule on the birth certificate in relation to the person who gave birth, which means that if it is the case that the rest of the parents can be called whatever they want it discriminates against mothers.

Yes, they change their Twitter bio within days to “mom/mum/mother”.

Then you will wish that they had made a small exception for a small number of people

The fundamental problem with this is that the 'people' who would be having their record changed are the children, and the 'people' being made a 'small exception' are the parents.

Society has to decide whose benefit a birth certificate is for. I was under the impression that it is for the benefit of the child, not the parent, so why should the parent's wish to be 'exceptional' even come in to it?

Law reform:

Bill introduced, debated, passed by House of Commons, passed by House of Lords (Ruth Hunt). Nothing apart from Brexit is getting debated in the House of Commons any time soon.