Women's rights general conversations - Thread 4

Radio programme recommendation: BBC4 Ladykillers with Lucy Worsley. Specifically the 17 April episode 'Women's rights, women’s bodies'.

The rest of the series is a true crime one abput female murderers. This episode is different - doesn't really touch on the crimes at all but uses the ones covered in the other episodes as a jumping off point for a discussion of women's rights in the 19th century and how they have (or haven't) changed.

Disappointed by Lucy Worsley. At the end of a segment on prostitution - in which the guest expert states she disagrees with the view of 'sex work' as being just like any other job, talks about how it is driven by poverty (and currently by the effects of austerity policies), and says she hates the commodification of women's bodies - Worsley responds with a hurried 'That's very interesting. I want to start arguing with you but we have to move on'.

FFS: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4787673-the-joan-of-arc-theatre-group-are-at-it-again

I look forward to their next production, which will presumably be explaining why Marilyn Monroe (who defied social expectations of women by having opinions and founding a company) was really a transman.

I know one of those. A few years ago, me and Mr T were out with him and the subject came up of where the current issues came from. 'I think I know where it comes from' he said, 'It's in your head, it's in your heart, it's what you wear'. My Dear One scoffed loudly and said ''It's what you wear'? Fuck off!' and things went quiet after that. To be honest, seeing this side in my old friend has put me off him, which is sad but I can't tolerate the bullshit.

Good for her! I got "oh dear, this is a very emotional subject for you, isn't it? We'd better talk about something else...".

I pity the person who calls my sister a cis-woman to her face.

I know. He's just very tolerant.

How -unforgivably fucking patronising- kind of him.

After another argument with my relentlessly woke brother, I'm thinking very hard about how difficult it is for some men, who consider themselves to be good people, to see women as real. "Real" as in deserving of consideration. This is a repeated theme, I know, but it's infuriating to try to talk to someone who just cannot see that women are every bit as due consideration as trans women.

Just needed to say it somewhere. He has, with wonderful magnanimity, told me that he's not angry about our argument. Terrific.

AIUI, the number of eggs harvested varies wildly, and it doesn't mean the egg donor has to undergo a separate set of procedures to donate unused eggs. Similarly with donated embryos - they have been created and are in cold storage in any case. My daughter has four frozen embryos of less good quality than the two that were successively implanted. They paid for a couple of years to keep them frozen, but I believe will not do so any more as she is now in her forties and they don't want to have any more children. There is no chance of her having her own genetic children with her husband anyway.

@IcakethereforeIam - yes it not pleasant, though i think "brutal" is an overstatement . My daughter underwent it twice on the NHS for failed attempts, then had a miscarriage when she became pregnant with a donated embryo. They then ran out of NHS funding and paid privately for IVF using donor egg and sperm. This was very expensive - I think in the region of £18k for the two rounds, the second being cheaper because the extra embryos from the first successful attempt had been frozen. I'm not surprised that women are willing to donate eggs to reduce costs if they have enough eggs harvested for their own needs. Of course the recipient of the donated eggs has to go through most of the same procedures as the donor to make their bodies receptive to the embryo once created.

My granddaughters probably have half siblings somewhere in the world either on the sperm donor side or the egg donor side, but my daughter is fully prepared to help them track these down once the children are 18, if that's what they want to do. They are beautiful little girls, very happy and well loved, and the epigenetic factors mean that there is a real physical link between them and my daughter and our family, so I don't share all of the expressed concerns in the surrogacy thread.

I believe the process of egg harvesting is pretty brutal, not at all like wanking into a cup.

Anti-surrogacy, sorry, not anti-surrogate.

Yes, same here, Brit. It’s the removal of the baby from the mother who grew it, the mother it knows, rather than the genetic composition of the child. And of course the horrible baby-selling industry.

I’m not sure my mind/opinions were ever changed at The Other Place, but in my 5 months on MN I’ve become a TERF* and anti-surrogate.

*More of a MEF, really.

I read that surrogacy thread too and while I take the point about the issues with surrogacy I was less impressed with the point raised several times about the evils of egg and sperm donation. This could be because my two beautiful granddaughters in the UK, currently aged 6 and 3, resulted from donated egg and sperm as both my DD and DSIL had fertility issues and two IVF attempts using their own genetic material failed. The two girls are genetic sisters as they were both from the same batch of donated eggs and sperm, so they look very alike, but the younger was in cold storage for a couple of years. Weirdly, since there's no genetic relationship, they look a lot like their dad and his sister - his face shape, her eye colour. There's no family secret about it - my daughter has a book that explains it in child-appropriate terms, which has been read many times to both of them.

Oh yes, the stories I’ve read from India are heart-breaking.

Me too, Mavis. And then when I learned about the couples who treat the woman,usually overseas, as basically a portable baby factory, I became downright opposed.

I read the full 40 pages of a recent thread on surrogacy and it was eye-opening. I always used to think it was the greatest gift woman could give, what saints surrogates were, but had no idea of the baby’s point of view, being taken from the only person it recognises.

AIBU surrogacy thread if anyone is interested?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4787421-to-think-that-a-surrogate-mother?page=1

Those of us who object to baby buying are already being smeared as right wing, Christian fundies 😬

Yes but does your daughter find the time between chopsticks lessons to grow and maintain a tidy beard like Alex Drummond (or Noel Edmonds)? Thought not, joke’s on you.

Blimey! Wow! He can use chopsticks!

So can my daughter, how amazing!

I think I'll make a video of me, I can use a knife and fork! All hail ME!!!

Or go meh.

Not sure if s/he has one, it was someone else tweeting this that initially caught my attention:

https://twitter.com/drfletchington/status/1647967473856126977?s=61&t=Q6bG6UpgNNK6wBpPUj7sDg

Ooh, what's AD's twitter handle, @bignosebignose ?

Good old Bandwith.