To tell you the Scottish Govt are targeting 18 year old girls for egg harvesting

[VestaTilley]

Yes, really.

Surrogacy Concern broke the news on Friday night. I can’t actually believe it.

Over a month to come, the Scottish Govt are asking for egg and sperm donors as young as 18 to come forward in a series of targeted ads on social media and the radio. They’ve expanded IVF provision and - in their own words - have a supply and demand issue.

I’d heard of fertility clinics advertising (bad enough in my view) but for a national Govt to do this to women is staggering. Women can die from complications arising from OHSS, which can be caused by egg donation. A British woman died in 2006 as a result.

The ads don’t mention these risks; it’s all “be kind” “do something amazing”. I cannot actually believe a Govt could be this stupid. They’ve only just apologised for forced adoption!

AIBU?

Language is not inclusive when it excludes but I don't expect you to understand that.

May the Lord open 😳

Oh really? Do they pump people full of hormones when they join the army? And then operate on them to remove eggs 😡

Yes, the fight for easily accessible, confidential contraceptive and sexual health services is crucial, as is the battle for better public transport. Maybe more important than the battle to ostracise and exclude trans women?

We don't yet fully understand how women's bodies work, but you are promoting the uterine replicator as a viable solution?

How do we develop such technologies in a way that doesn't endanger the baby?

Children are not commodities to be used as experimental subjects whilst developing medical technology that benefits them in no way. Children are not commodities to be bought, sold, engineered, or bred to order through surrogacy. Children are full human beings and so are their mothers. From this truth, all else I've said about egg donation and surrogacy follows.

And before you say it, I'm not saying woman is an offensive term, just that political efforts to make language more inclusive aren't necessarily bad just because they aren't 'organic.'

It's not more inclusive to pretend biological sex doesn't exist, when it clearly does.

No, they pump your mind full of nationalist propaganda then send you off to kill or be killed at their pleasure. Which is to my mind far worse than a few hormone injections to which an adult woman has freely consented, and which have been subjected to extensive safety testing.

No one is pretending it doesn't exist. They just don't think it's important.

But it is important. It's why you can only get donor eggs from one sex of humans and not the other. Approximately half the world, but not the other half.

ostracise and exclude trans women?

That's how you frame defending female-only spaces?

The most vulnerable women in terms of contraceptive access, abortion access, and inability to travel to a better service are female prisoners and disabled women.

Reverting women's prisons to being truly single-sex and defending the right of disabled women to request and receive a female carer is hence very high priority for me. Rape prevention through single-sex spaces is high priority for me.

It's not inclusive to pretend that biological sex is not important either.

Here are some other reasons it's important:

Males commit 98% of sex crimes, mostly against female people

Males commit most violent crime, against other males and also women and girls

Males are physically different to women and girls, especially after puberty

Male symptoms of many serious health conditions present differently, and males often need different drug dosages

And for many other reasons. I could go on.

As I'm not a scientist I have no idea of the specifics, I'm just speculating based on what has been achieved so far. All new medical procedures are subject to a high level of ethical scrutiny. I don't know what the future holds, but I'm excited to see what humans can achieve, without harm or exploitation of course.

You see surrogacy and egg donation as inherently exploitative, I do not. Although I accept that they can be, and that safeguards are needed to prevent that. I will use donor eggs if necessary and am comfortable with that decision. In the country where I plan to have treatment there is a limit on how much a person can be paid to donate eggs, to prevent commercialisation.

Maybe more important than the battle to ostracise and exclude trans women?

That's not what the battle is. The battle is to rightly classify them as the males they are, along with other men and boys. No more, no less. No male should be in female only spaces, or they are instantly not female only.

"1) A woman is born with a fixed number of eggs. If she donates some, she has fewer to bear her own children with.

2. The hormone cocktails used to stimulate egg follicles have horrendous side effects."

I am testament to this.*
After ivf I had an early menopause at 38. No eggs left 😐

Of course it matters in terms of medical treatment. I was talking about in terms of gender identity.

Men do not commit sex crimes because of their biology. It is because of how they are conditioned by the patriarchy. Which is why we need to smash it. Not obsess about changing rooms.

The blood of women who've previously been pregnant is more risky for men than blood from other donors. https://time.com/4987922/blood-donations-transfusions-pregnant-women/

Rape is commonplace amongst the males of many species, including the mallard duck.

It's rarer in human societies that are matriarchal, such as the Mosuo, but nonetheless there's no evidence that men commit sexual offending at the same low rate as women even there.

A woman in their 20s has hundreds of thousands of eggs. One or two donations make no difference at all to their fertility.

I'm sorry you had early menopause, but there is no evidence at all that IVF causes this.

Men do not commit sex crimes because of their biology. It is because of how they are conditioned by the patriarchy. Which is why we need to smash it. Not obsess about changing rooms.

You speak in activist buzzwords. You get on with "smashing" the patriarchy then. MTF trans people are patriarchy 2.0. Most women do not want penises in their changing rooms. The sort of males who want to get them out in women's changing rooms are the exact sort of males most women try to steer clear of.

Can I ask by what extensive process of research you have arrived at the conclusion that the sex crime imbalance is as a result of nurture not nature (or a balance of the two)? I'm not saying you're wrong as such, merely that to the best of my knowledge it is a very vexed question which the leading experts in the field have not come down on one way or another - so what info do you have access to that has left you so very certain?

I only got into this argument to distract myself from the pain of losing my baby. I believe in everything I said, but it's not an argument that I'm really interested in having here. You believe that single sex spaces are important, I do not. I believe that a world where we respect everyone's gender identity is a better world for all, you do not. No one is changing their mind here today, and the fact that I'm bored of talking about it here doesn't mean you've 'won' just that I can't be bothered to continue the conversation, any more than I would bother to argue for equal employment rights with the Taliban.

This is a thread about egg donation. That's why I'm here and what I actually wanted to discuss.

I'm genuinely sorry you lost your baby. I have too. It's a very female experience, not something a man will understand, however he "identifies". And that's why we do this, because being female means something.

Honestly, just instinct. I haven't researched it much, it's just my belief. I don't spend much time engaging with these issues. I'm not a trans rights activist as such, although I've been to plenty of LGTBQ+ events in my time. I support trans rights but they've never been a focus of my activism.

Why men commit sexual violence is an interesting question, but not one I've researched much. Maybe I shouldn't have started as fact that it was social conditioning. But thats where my inclinations lie. I think we stop sexual violence by breaking down the patriarchal system, not by classifying people's identity according to their biological sex. I do not believe that trans women are the patriarchy, nor that they advance it's agenda, but if you do I have no interest in trying to change your mind.

I believe discrimination against trans and non binary people will end by taking the fight to power, and by inclusive education in schools and positive representation in media. Not by arguing with TERFs on the internet, whose minds are already made up.