What's the problem with FiLiA?

This is why lesbians just walk away from these threads. The homophobia is gross.

She chose the gay man because he would make a great dad. She didn’t want someone anonymous.

I could give you many more examples of custody battles between heterosexual parents pattihews.

I finding the entitlement staggering.

The State does not owe anyone a father or mother for their child if they are unable to find someone of the opposite sex willing to be so.

The anecdote about my friends, was that the woman was the one who decided to pull out, not the men. If she had fallen pregnant from the first couple of attempts things would have been different. I reckon it was the fact that she was single that made it uncomfortable for her - being the outsider.

Most of the lesbians with children whom I know personally have used fertility clinics. If your straight single friend can't afford a fertility clinic then she's likely to struggle with the cost of having a child.

I repeat, do you have any idea of how homophobic you sound? On a feminist message board?

Cases like this:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1334697/Gay-father-wins-court-battle-access-children-fathered-lesbian.html

are what has turned a many lesbians away from the idea of having children with a known man. You say that lesbians should just go and find a willing gay man — and then you tell a story about how that scenario turned out for your straight friend. Jeez.

Some friends my own age were going to come to an arrangement - a heterosexual woman who couldn’t find a man and two gay men. They were trying for a baby (her and one of the men) It fell through in the end because the potential mother on reflection didn’t want to be the fifth wheel in the men’s relationship, but these things are options.

Are heterosexual women who aren’t able to find an agreeable man entitled to use fertility services to get a State sourced father for their child?

Do you realise the nightmarish situations that happen when lesbians have to rely on the free market to source sperm?

I think this must be the result of gay men feeling entitled to buy babies from surrogate mothers.

One of my school friends parents were a lesbian woman and a gay man. Does this not happen any more? Are there no longer informal arrangements of DIY?

Do you have any idea how homophobic you sound, Endless Tea? I'm not taking Sappho's side, I'm no fan of hers.

Do you realise the nightmarish situations that happen when lesbians have to rely on the free market to source sperm? There was a US-based podcast about a man with a major chronic illness who'd been selling his sperm to dozens, possibly hundreds of unwitting women. Imagine the cost to the NHS of that — dozens of children at high risk of developing a lifelong chronic disease requiring regular healthcare — compared with a safe, secure donor insemination service for a small number of women.

By ‘lesbian equality’ you mean ‘entitled to abuse State infertility service because men can be difficult and annoying to negotiate with’ yes?

I wonder what else the State should provide us with, if we are special people with enhanced rights+…. spouses? Friends?

All the lesbians I know associated with FiLia are on board with lesbian equality, yes. Very much so.

So are all the lesbians on the thread on board with you Sappho - the misuse of State infertility services and the denial of a child’s rights?

See what I mean? 🙄

I think you are a spoilt brat Sappho.

Hi Sappho. Yes, I think you are talking about me. I think you are massively entitled.

Anyone fertile who feels entitled to use State funded services intended for infertile people is massively entitled in my opinion.

Furthermore, anyone, who is quite capable of making a private arrangement with a man to father her children, but thinks the State should give her access to services meant for infertile men, so she doesn’t have to face any problems of potential STDs or negotiating with a man over custody of the child, issues around the CSA, or anything else which are completely standard risks for mothers, is massively entitled in my opinion.

Any parent who believes their child’s birth certificate is simply provided for the parents’ benefit and not an identity document belonging to the child for their whole life beyond childhood, is massively entitled, in my opinion.

I believe you subscribe to all three, as part of your ‘equal fertility rights’ yes?

The brutal truth is I think some GC women are homophobic.

Lesbians were useful to these GC women when they wanted to highlight the cotton ceiling and the infiltration of lesbian groups.

When it comes to lesbians having equal rights with straight women (yes using the example of getting fertility treatment on the NHS) it becomes a very different story.

I feel dismayed too. Especially when it is straight women ganging up on lesbians. It made me realise that lots of GC women are not lesbian allies.

People do know that Kathleen Stock came out later in life, at round 40?

www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,kathleen-stock-i-wont-be-bullied-into-submission-18395

So she was either heterosexual or bi before. Do people think that makes her less of a lesbian now?

That was the accusation made by Sappho, yes, using a screenshot designed to misrepresent an anti big fertility point.

The thread that followed eventually became a pretty good discussion about the ethics of Big Fertility and included many contributions from lesbians, including some very insightful stuff about how fertility clinics specifically exploit lesbians by convincing them to go for IVF (and part paying via coerced egg sharing) rather than going for the cheaper and less physically gruelling option of IUI.

Lesbians are often seen by clinics as particularly appealing mark to coercive into egg sharing as they are far more likely to have healthy reproductive systems and be attending the clinic for social reasons (donor sperm) than straight women, who are usually there because they have a physical reason for their failure to conceive (although some lesbians are there for that reason too).

All of this was pointed out by a lesbian Mumsnetter towards the end of the thread.

The thread was was a wild ride for sure, but an enlightening one by the end.

(apologies for tangent!)

’No one is entitled to children’ in the context of a debate about Big Fertility refers to EVERY SINGLE HUMAN, including straight women!

it’s not a mealy mouthed way to secretly denigrate lesbians.

But I read those posts and laid off FWR for a while because I was so dismayed at the message coming loud and clear from some posters that homosexual people shouldn't have children, full stop.

yet another of your bizarre twisted interpretations.

’No one is entitled to children’ in the context of a debate about Big Fertility refers to EVERY SINGLE HUMAN, including straight women!
it’s not a mealy mouthed way to secretly denigrate lesbians.

I’ve not looked at all the comments but those I have read are excellent and very supportive. Here’s a sample:

re: definition of lesbian - I’m not one, I’m so straight I’ve had three husbands so far 😆 but like Stock I passionately believe that women need a word that means ‘adult human female’ and a word that means ‘adult human male’ because just female/male alone says nothing about species or life stage.
It’s thus not hard to expand that idea to understanding that lesbians need a word that exclusively means ‘female (monosexual) homosexual’ and women who come to same sex relationships via a different route can have different words (and still be included in wider sapphic/wlw culture, community & events).

I fully support lesbians who choose to exclusively focus on other lesbians, whether that be in their personal relationships or their political ones - if my daughters (or possible future grand daughters) or nieces (or possible future great nieces) grow up to find themselves to be exclusively same sex attracted then damn right I would like there to be a thriving community and associated political representation already out there waiting for them.

(… but please, please do consider inviting us supportive straights to your discos occasionally 🙏😬😂)

Lesbian friends from the SE have had their GC group taken over by a straight woman who until lockdown was ardently pro trans. She's a businesswoman. As well as taking over a pre-existing group and picking fights with the lesbians who'd been organising it for years in order to oust them, she has bought GC-sounding domain names and is in the process of setting up websites that will offer LGB-only and feminist/ women's rights training and educational resources. She has talked about how people in Stonewall and Pride make a living out of offering training and she's positioning herself for when things move on. She's subtly but openly homophobic and not interested in what the lesbians in the group think. For her this is a business opportunity. It happened to Stonewall, which needed to monetise itself after achieving its aim, it happened to Pride and it will happen to GC groups if we allow it.

I listened to Kathleen Stock on Coleman Hughes’ podcast yesterday (YouTube episode released 3 weeks ago) - Hughes has been one of my go to sources for a calm, rational take on race related issues in the US for a while now but he has largely stayed away from trans related conversations - he broke cover on that with Helen Joyce when her book was released in 2021 and since then the topic comes up here and there in his other podcasts but nothing much in depth.

The episode with Stock is really great - they share a background interest in philosophy and Hughes own interest in woke culture stems from studying in a similar university environment to the one Stock taught in.

While the Joyce episode was a great overview on trans as a concept, Stock gets to really drive home how lesbians are particularly effected. At the end she mentions a work project she isn’t yet able to announce so I’m now thinking it must be The Lesbian Project.

(coming back with the link because MN has once again started wiping my unfinished posts if I go off to another browser tab)