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?

You see surrogacy and egg donation as inherently exploitative, I do not.

Of course you don't because they provide you with what you want.

A considerable proportion? Really?

I'm more concerned with keeping women out of prison in the first place. Very few have committed violent crimes, and they shouldn't be inside full stop.

A considerable proportion? Really?

Yes, that's right. Really.

Or you can look at it another way. The number of "trans women" in the overall population who have been convicted of sex crimes proportionally is higher than the number of men, and many many times higher than the number of women.

Something is perplexing me but I am wary of asking as I don't wish to seem like I'm being gratuitously unpleasant or personal.

But, @PP82 , I'm interested in the extent to which you do not wish to be defined as a woman. The extent to which you are not attached to the label or identity. And the extent to which you consider biology to be unimportant, outside of medical treatment. The fact you would be happy to use a donor egg also indicates that you are not desperately fussed about being genetically related to your future child (who I sincerely hope you do have one day).

Bearing all that in mind, what I'm wondering is why you are willing to spend a large, life-changing amount of money on IVF treatment, instead of exploring adoption? The usual riposte is that adoption is not at all a simple process in this country, that it is invasive and stringent etc. But as you have the money to undergo private IVF, and also the money to shop around for a country with a legal regimen around IVF that you prefer (I appreciate this comes at great personal sacrifice, but nevertheless) could you not explore options for adoption from countries with less stringent criteria?

The thing I'm wondering is, is it specifically that you want to carry and birth your child - to have that experience that is uniquely rooted in your female biology? I ask because as I say, that experience was the turning point for me from womanhood being a simple fact about me that had some pleasant and some irritating side effects, but which I wasn't particularly attached to, to being something I identified with strongly, something that had shaped experiences so deeply personal and fundamental that they really changed how I related to my body and my identity as a woman. And it wouldn't make sense to me that someone could be so flippant about that female body, that identity of "woman", but also be so committed to that female process of gestation that they would go through huge financial, personal and physical upheaval in pursuit of it.

If course it might be something prosaic like your DH wants to be genetically related to his child, or adoption is a lot more expensive than IVF, I don't know. But it does strike me as a paradox.

It is an interesting question @herewegoroundthebastardbush and I also am interested in the answer if @PP82 wants to reply.

It is an interesting question.

I suspect we will go back in some form at some point. As I escaped to the EU just before the opportunity was lost to me, and am now on track to obtain EU citizenship, it's not really something that bothers me much. But I suspect the UK will be begging to be back in the single market and customs union in the next 10-20 years, and subject to all the rules without any say in making them. No concern of mine though. I'd never go back regardless.

What a peculiar attitude you have to women wanting single sex spaces, services and sports and clear unambiguous language.

I think a lot of it is projection @GailBlancheViola. She resents the fact that there are women who think being female is important and significant.

To be allowed to adopt from abroad I'd still have to fulfil all the same criteria as I would to adopt domestically. For various reasons it's just not possible for us. It's almost impossible where we live. If it was, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Neither my husband or I are remotely bothered about the genetic link.

I loved being pregnant, and look forward to being so again, but I believe there are people who identify as men who also feel the same. However I would adopt if I could, rather than go through IVF.

I'm able to 'shop around' only because I live very close to another a country with laws I prefer with regard to egg donation.

but I believe there are people who identify as men who also feel the same.

Yes, those people are female and their "identity" is irrelevant other than their wish to do the most female thing possible while pretending biological sex is unimportant is equally as cognitively dissonant as your own.

I don't resent it. I just resent you trying to exclude and other trans and non binary people. And find your obsession with biology a quite backward and a bit baffling. I mean it's a bit primitive isn't it?

I don't think it's peculiar. I think being so afraid of accidentally catching sight of a penis is peculiar, but each to their own.

I mean it's a bit primitive isn't it?

Not really, unless you're a bit odd. I'm not bound by biology, except when I am. Just like you are, in needing to use a donor egg, and trans "women" are in not being able to give you one. Biological reality is a thing.

I think being so afraid of accidentally catching sight of a penis is peculiar, but each to their own.

I don't think there is anything "accidental" when penises are brought into women's spaces.

I mean it's a bit primitive isn't it?

Would you say that about the biological urge to be pregnant and birth a child?

Honestly, I understand the fact that being biologically female is important to some people in the same way as I understand that being white is important to some people. Doesn't mean I agree with the impulses that lead to those feelings, nor the social consequences that arise from them.

Just to be clear, I'm a white biological woman. I just don't think that either of those things are key to my sense of self, although in patriarchal, white supremacist world in which we live, they obviously affect how other treat me.

It is if a trans woman is just minding her own business going for a swim and you just happen to be there at the same time. She's not targeting you I she? She probably really doesn't want you looking at her genitals. She just wants to get changed.

I just resent you trying to exclude and other trans and non binary people.

And I resent you othering and denigrating women who do not agree with your Brave New World view, I resent you dismissing the very real need for women to have safety, privacy and dignity, I resent you attempting to force the exclusion of women who cannot or will not access spaces and services if there are male people in there. You put yourself forward as oh so inclusive and tolerant and you are anything but.

We are not talking about swimming. We are talking about men exposing their penises.

Just to be clear, I'm a white biological woman. I just don't think that either of those things are key to my sense of self

And that is where we're talking at cross purposes. This is not about sense of self. It's not about identity. It's about concrete actual physical reality.

I am a woman in literal fact, not in a felt sense or an identity, it's just a fact. I can no more identity as or feel like a woman than I can feel or identify as blue eyed or 5'7" tall or left handed.

Well, I suppose it is. I actually don't really know if I have a biological urge to be pregnant as such. I want to be a parent, and that's the only way it can happen.

I loved being pregnant, but that's because it meant, for a while, that I was going to have a baby. How much it's related to my 'womanhood' I don't know.

She probably really doesn't want you looking at her genitals.

Then perhaps males should keep their genitals out of female only spaces.