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?

Most of them are quietly supportive of trans rights while spending very little time thinking about such issues.

Just wanted to highlight this you said earlier as it really does say it all. The more you think about this issue, the less sense the direction of travel makes. The more you try to make the complicated simple and the difficult easy (if it weren't for those damn TERFs!), the more you prove you know very little about this issue. What I'd like to meet is a cis woman who has really, deeply engaged with this issue and still comes down on the side of TWAW and TERFs are evil bigots. It's a position it's easy to hold when you skim the surface of the issue, rather difficult to maintain when you dig down into it. Which is probably why do many refuse to do so, because it is uncomfortable and difficult, especially for a lefty, to turn and tell all their friends like you who don't know the issue but tow the party line "actually I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that."

As I said, marvellous sunlight. Always useful to the feminist cause.

You were sent links from left wing sources. Including, an OFFICIAL POLICE BULLETIN. So you admitted you never read the links, because you are not interested in a discussion in good faith, and you never were.

Also a woman's refuge, and subsequently a women's refuge in England, followed by a woman's prison.

How many girls and women have been harmed by this one man being encouraged into women's spaces?

I was just sent a link salad, mostly to accounts of individual cases from publications I wouldn't deign to read.

Goodness how convenient that you won't deign to read any evidence.

We've had comparison to racism,

Yep, conveniently ignoring their own racism that their ideas will totally exclude women of certain races, religions, cultures and ethnicity from access to society. Bravo PP82.

I'll add, @PP82 , that there's quite a difference between allocating single sex spaces as safe spaces and imposing sex segregation as part of a society where women are oppressed because of their sex.

I don't believe for a second that anything I said indicates that, but I don't care if that's your interpretation.

And that's what you want to focus on, rather than the social structures that make refuges necessary in the first place?

What social structures do you mean?

You can't even keep up with your own posts:

PP82 · Today 20:09

Actually, yes. That is what I think.
ArthurbellaScott · Today 20:08

So women just have to put up with unwanted penises in their spaces because some men don't feel comfortable in men's spaces. Got it.

Women need to be safe in refuges.

Only the very religious. Should we base all our policy decisions around the views of religious conservatives? We can easily have individual stalls where women who wish to preserve their modesty can go to the toilet or change in privacy.

We need refuges, and single sex spaces, because of the internationally prevalent scourge that is male violence against women and girls. This is committed by men, however they identify. Hence we want to protect women and girls. The needs of women are more important to us than the wants of men, however they identify.

And that's what you want to focus on, rather than the social structures that make refuges necessary in the first place?

How do you suggest dismantling those "social structures"? I assume you have some odd Pollyanna view that by not acknowledging biological sex the whole concept of male violence towards women will suddenly become obsolete?

We can easily have individual stalls where women who wish to preserve their modesty can go to the toilet or change in privacy.

How about your male friends just stay out of female only spaces? You could ask them really nicely, being such decent people that they are, I'm sure they wouldn't mind.

I don't think that individual's subjective feelings of discomfort at the presence of certain types of people should be grounds for those people's exclusion. That's not misogyny.

If a homophobe feels uncomfortable around gay people, should they be able to demand gay people are excluded from certain spaces? Many homophobes genuinely feel that gay people are predators, and I'm sure could provide lots of Daily Mail and Fox News links to support that. What about their feelings?

So far as egg harvesting is concerned, I understand the kind of desperation that can lead women to consider using donor eggs. In my own case, I ultimately decided that it wasn't for me.

I decided that it would be selfish of me to bring a child into the world where s/he was not going to have a safety net. By the time I got to the stage where the only hope would have been a donor egg, I was in my late 40s.

When my consultant accidentally gave and then withdrew the offer of a cycle of fertility treatment, I had 'unexplained' infertility and he told me that I had 'as much chance as any other woman [my] age'. (I guess he was letting me down gently.)

We tried for another few years, but I had three miscarriages. My husband is a good bit older than I am and we were both only children so the likelihood was that any child would have finished up on their own at an early age.

However, I can envisage all kinds of problems with donor eggs and donor sperm, for the donors, the recipients and the resulting children.

I had a friend who used donor sperm to conceive her only child. The marriage didn't survive because of the husband's resentment.

I don't think that individual's subjective feelings of discomfort at the presence of certain types of people should be grounds for those people's exclusion.

How come the transwoman's subjective feelings of discomfort matter, then?

Equating trans with homosexuality, another one for the bingo card.

I mean it's incredibly complex and multi faceted, but we're not going to get there by making trans women the problem and obsessing about who uses which toilet. Women ard most likely to be raped in their own home.

Well as I said can we not fix that first before dismantling the structures that help women cope with and survive that society?

Men are the problem. No matter how they identify.

You just said you think men shouldn't be made unsafe and uncomfortable with other men.

But it's ok for women to feel unsafe and uncomfortable with men in their spaces.

You said it yourself. Men must not be made to feel unsafe and uncomfortable, but women can be. You said it yourself, mens discomfort counts, womens discomfort doesn't count. Therefore you said it yourself, mens feelings rank higher than womens needs and rights.

And again, don't even consider weaponising and using gay people in this. No one is asking for gay people to be excluded. And I sent you left wing links, which you conveniently didn't bother to read because you know as well as I do that if you had read them that you'd have to admit you are wrong and way out of step with the community.