Gay men and surrogacy - the new “be kind”?

No. There is plenty of evidence of surrogacy going back to antiquity.

It’s not about 50 years old isn’t it? That’s fairly new in the big scheme of things.

But its not a new idea. It exists.

So the question is how do we best protect everyone involved. Banning it is a perfectly legitimate answer to that, albeit one I disagree with in principle but more importantly I just don't think will work in practice.

In your view, how should gay couples have a child?

But if you don't want to ban it, you should have answers to my questions to support your argument for not banning it against those of us who think it should be banned. Who benefits from this arrangement? Who could be harmed?

The new contact is going to be court mandated so adopters will have no option.

I'm not in favour. I responded to the Gov consultation to express my concerns which I suggest are similar to yours.

Imo it will be a disaster, partly of course but birth parents in the UK are not always going to be co-operative or put the child's needs first.

And also, a lot of the contact will be with other family members like siblings or aunts and uncles. A lot will be on zoom.

Anyway the adoptees want it so the Gov has acted.

And it is just not even on the agenda when it comes to surrogacy. All the agenda for surrogacy is how to make it easier for commissioning parents - names straight on the birth certificate, that sort of thing.

The whole thing needs to be remodelled imo.

Well, (disregarding the evidence of surrogacy dating back thousands of years across cultures and religions), you might as well ask - if childbirth was a new idea what would be the arguments for introducing it, who benefits and who could be harmed?

Childbirth is harmful to women. There are children who are brought up in horrific circumstances by their birth parents, and they are harmed.

But its not a new idea. It exists.

So the question is how do we best protect everyone involved. Banning it is a perfectly legitimate answer to that, albeit one I disagree with in principle but more importantly I just don't think will work in practice.

Questions of how the identities of children born through surrogacy can be supported, how contact can be encouraged and supported if that is the wish are genuine and real issues. The problem with those who leap on the 'ban it everywhere' wagon is that those issues can't be considered.

I'd like to start from a different starting point. If surrogacy was a new idea, what would be the arguments for introducing it? Who benefits? Who could be harmed?

Questions of how the identities of children born through surrogacy can be supported, how contact can be encouraged and supported if that is the wish are genuine and real issues. The problem with those who leap on the 'ban it everywhere' wagon is that those issues can't be considered.

I'd like to start from a different starting point. If surrogacy was a new idea, what would be the arguments for introducing it? Who benefits? Who could be harmed?

I had a conversation with a gay man not so long ago about the 'LGBT community'. He said in a sense there wasn't a single LGBT community. There were lesbians that had their own closed community in which gay men didn't have a role. And there was a similar gay community. He thought there was actually a limited gay and lesbian community in which they mixed as a group as their social circles didn't interact as much as straight people perceived.

I've also heard this that assumption homosexual male sexuality was the same but the opposite to homosexual female sexuality was flawed.

He's also strayed into comments about never failing to underestimate the fetishists of gay men which is something echoed here.

I have to say I've probably fallen onto the trap of thinking along those lines and making those assumptions and over looking these points.

There's nothing homophobic in this, it's just a fundamental lack of understanding lesbians and gays and their communities because we have some rather lazy attitudes about it and aren't part of it.

I think from being on MN and listening to some of the lesbians on here, they have been driven back into the closet in an act of self protection whereas this isn't something happening to gay men in quite the same way and this being something of an important factor in perceptions.

I think there are political implications from this. Complaints about Stonewall falling to represent the interests of lesbians and gay men being oblivious to this and being late to realise what was happening seem to echo that.

So yes I think perhaps have a conversation about echo chambers / restricted social circles within the gay and lesbian community and perhaps there being an issue that paths only crossing in limited circumstances (the notable one being having offspring) perhaps is something of political acknowledgement and discussion for various reasons.

Even the T always being represented on TV by prominent transwomen is notable. Aside from Steven Whittle where are all the transmen?

The idea of 'representing the LGBT community' potentially is one which is a total myth and about as coherent as a Muslim representing the Jamaican Community just because they arent white. This isn't to say it can't be done - lots of straight, white people represent minority groups within their community successfully because they have to make the effort to listen - the problem is we assume that it's being done on the basis of lumping everyone together rather than assessing how accurate that claim of representing the community actually is and whether they do actually listen to the other minorities.

It all circles around to the reoccurring concept of the invisible women...

... And going back to the OP surrogacy itself very much has this problem...

...and how gender neutralising everything and assuming that men and women think the same and have the same interests and same goals and world views is a mistake as much as we want to have equality.

It raises difficult questions for feminism itself and what we understand to be equality.

But yes, it merits it own thread.

So firstly, yes, you are right about contact being encouraged. Many adopters, however, as you probably know, struggle with the reality of that. Of course in some cases, contact is met with good engagement from birth families and can work well. In some very rare cases, in person engagement can safely happen. But for many more of us, contact is shouting into the void. We still (most of us) persist because we want to be able to look our kids in the eye and tell them we tried.

But the other thing here is that there is no real way to police the issue of contact. If you have a surrogate who is unwilling to engage in that (for very obviously reasons usually - surrogacy is usually entered into on the basis of a clean break) then there is really no way of enforcing that, just as there isn't in the case of adoption.

I don't think surrogacy 'ignores' these issues at all. Questions of how the identities of children born through surrogacy can be supported, how contact can be encouraged and supported if that is the wish are genuine and real issues. The problem with those who leap on the 'ban it everywhere' wagon is that those issues can't be considered.

So firstly, yes, you are right about contact being encouraged. Many adopters, however, as you probably know, struggle with the reality of that. Of course in some cases, contact is met with good engagement from birth families and can work well. In some very rare cases, in person engagement can safely happen. But for many more of us, contact is shouting into the void. We still (most of us) persist because we want to be able to look our kids in the eye and tell them we tried.

But the other thing here is that there is no real way to police the issue of contact. If you have a surrogate who is unwilling to engage in that (for very obviously reasons usually - surrogacy is usually entered into on the basis of a clean break) then there is really no way of enforcing that, just as there isn't in the case of adoption.

I don't think surrogacy 'ignores' these issues at all. Questions of how the identities of children born through surrogacy can be supported, how contact can be encouraged and supported if that is the wish are genuine and real issues. The problem with those who leap on the 'ban it everywhere' wagon is that those issues can't be considered.

As it happens I AM an adopter so I feel perfectly able to discuss Primal Wound theory. I have read both of Nancy Verrier's books and saw her speak in person in London about 15 years ago, where the audience was full of adoptees who absolutely bought into what she was saying.

But most children placed for adoption in the UK have not experienced Primal wound, because hardly any of them were removed at birth, and even those who were, would have had regular contact with birth mum up until the adoption placement.

Primal wound is much more relevant in US style adoptions where babies are handed over shortly after birth. And this is what happens in surrogacy. So it is worth exploring.

But back to the UK, policy makers have made it clear recently that adopted children are to have more contact with birth family. And they are doing this primarily because of demands from adoptees, who want their wishes taken into account, but also because it makes ethical and moral sense.

And so it is strange then that surrogacy ignores all of this.

I could see surrogacy working better with clear rules about the children having rights to contact with the surrogate. But as it's seen as purely a transaction, that's not on the table.

But also, re my dystopian vision, why not? 20 years ago no one thought Lia Thomas would be swimming in a woman's team. Things change and we need to be alert.

You clearly have an agenda. I'm not interested.

And who bizarrely sees fit to castigate me both for not reporting those posts (which was the initial erroneous belief they held) and now also for actually reporting those posts (when they were corrected and advised that I already had.)

I was replying to the poster who asserted I am trying to shut down Mumsnet simply for reporting posts that fall foul of Mumsnet's own moderating principles.

Well first you’d have to have concrete definitions of which prejudice and discrimination wouldn’t you? Who do you believe is being discriminated against in this thread? Men who are complicit in human trafficking? Women who are complicit in human trafficking? Anyone else?

I think your dystopian nightmare point is weird and wrong. We are not going to be in a scenario where single men are lining up to become single fathers to children conceived through surrogacy because they would prefer that to being in a relationship and having a family; or because they would prefer that to being single and childless.

Might some single men who want to be fathers use surrogacy. Sure, I guess so, in theory. But the idea that it will become the norm is just bonkers.

As to the impacts...

First, you don't need to conduct the research on babies. The research needed would be the outcomes for children and adults who were separated from a birth mother at birth, controlled for other aggravating factors like substance abuse, in utero stress and DV or like multiple changes in principal caregiver. And there is simply no evidential base that supports the primal wound theory.

Babies are not pack animals, and using the very real struggles that adopted children is precisely the sort of deeply flawed and offensive argument that many of us who are parents of adopted kids wish you would not use.

The great difficulty is the Giselle Pericot paradox i.e. the banality of evil, in normal, very ordinary men, exactly like your DP DS DF, and every other man.

This would form a thesis, but , obviously, a lot of harm arises from men and women wrongly assuming the opposite sex THINKS like they do:

For example, for males, an intimate encounter with a stranger is almost always painless and with no lifelong results. So, even if most of them don't spend time seeking such opportunities, they may, at some low level, always be willing. It only takes a few minutes, and it's pleasant, so why not?

Therefore, when some men excuse themselves from using force, and say "she wanted it really" or "she will enjoy it once it starts", they may at least to a small extent genuinely not quite understand that for females it can often be the opposite, that the encounter will often be painful and could lead to pregnancy, life-changing or even fatal, which never happens to men, or to disease, which is evidently not a particular worry to men, but is more easily caught by women and can have more serious effects.

Male police, judges or juries might truly not fully comprehend that there was no consent, notably if the accused seems presentable and is without those 'monster-identifier' fangs -plus- snarling.

"She didn't consent, so she says, but... surely she would have done, wouldn't she?" Or, "She would have enjoyed it once it started, wouldn't she?" "I wouldn't turn down a chance, would you?" "It was an opportunity for a few minutes of pleasure, so why not?"

At the same time, women with fifty years of happy marriage, children, grandchildren, are not going to think it possible their DH could be a serial rapist. A woman almost needs to delude herself, rather than accept that DH could be what she prefers to think is a very rare thing; a monster, probably snarling and with fangs, as seen in story books. She won't/can't let it cross her mind that the reason her DP wanted her to have a baby, or was keen to marry her when he knew she has a baby, or wants to look after the baby, is because he wants to abuse it.

There is a collusion-in-cosy- complacency,, in the pretty world of the so-far -unaware. Expressions of shock and incredulity, and the use of words like 'monster' betray a dangerous false notion that all men think like women, therefore all men are as safe as women, to be alone with women and children.

It is only the recent fashion for men to film themselves while abusing, that has made it plain beyond doubt, with undeniable proof, that with all men, ill-intent towards prey is not inevitable, but is seldom totally impossible.

NAMALT, maybe, but the routine starting assumption would better be that All Men MIGHT be like that, given exactly the right opportunity, a good chance of getting away with it, and the unwitting abetting and collusion of deluded and non-suspicious prey, or guardians of prey, or makers of policy, or holders of 'nice' conventional assumptions.

For a fee or course. One might almost say…. A price. You know, like selling a car or a bike. Is it only newborns you believe should be human trafficked or would you be ok with someone selling a 5 year old?

I don't regard surrogates as having no parental rights, and where the law does so I think that law is wrong. I do think surrogates can choose, as any other parent can, to give up their parental rights when a child is born.

@PlanetJanette You are making out like everyone was talking about that quackery 'Primal Wound Theory' when in reality majority of posts on here come from informed places (and I'm sure we could all post peer reviewed evidence to back up our veiws) so to reduce the whole thread to spouting quackery as I said is just bad faith.

Never mind your narrow field of outcomes that allows you to pit Primal Wound Theory against concerns over surrogacy...(The lack of agency around birthing for one).

I mean no disrespect when I say this but it seems like your projecting here.