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?

What about blood donation then? That also has side effects for some people.
And bone marrow donation? That's very painful apparently.

Firstly, single sex spaces are not a need.

Secondly, you're assuming that I'm a particular type of socialist and getting it wrong.

Are you taking the face of a living person?

Live donors aren't donating their faces or limbs to strangers, are they?

These don't result in massive profits for the clinic owner, nor the donor having genetic children walking around afterwards. These don't greenlight buying children.

Carrying and giving birth to baby is not a need. It's just what you want.

I never said it was a need.

Single-sex spaces are a need. They are a need for rape victims to have a suitable therapeutic environment, hence the Sarah Summers case. They are a need for women from many religions. They are a need for DV survivors.

You are happy to buy a woman's eggs to create a child but don't see a need battered women to have a female-only shelter. Why do you hate women so much?

You're not any kind of socialist, Labour or otherwise. You clearly don't understand Marx.

But you're not buying a child are you? You're creating one that doesn't yet exist. I suppose one COULD argue that embryo donation was 'buying a child' but if you are going to argue that an embryo is a child, logically you should also be opposed to abortion.

1. You can believe that an embryo is a human being and still be pro-choice on the basis that no one has a right to use another person's body as life support.

2. You are paying for the material to create a child de novo, which is indirectly buying the child. Yes, I might not buy a house when I buy roof tiles for the house I'm building, but a house is the end result.

I'm not a Marxist.

Neither am I, but I've read and understood Marx and Engels.

This is straight out of Monty Python and wouldn’t be out of place at the start of The Meaning of Life.

But why is Marx relevant to this debate?

I've just read about the Sarah Summers case. I don't support it at all. What a vile way to respond to a fellow sexual assault survivor.

You believe in self ID, you've said so repeatedly on this thread. So you smsupport rape crisis when they refuse to provide a women only group, as well as the trans group and mixed sex group they already provide. That's what you support, when you support self ID, that a rape survivor isn't allowed a women's rape support group.

Marx and Engels wrote about how men control women as part of what we now call patriarchy and how capitalism benefits from women's reproductive labour creating new consumers and workers. That's how it's relevant.

Sarah Summers was retraumatised by a male presence in her therapy group. Her reaction is understandable and reasonable because it is males who have penises to rape with. Her reaction is not comparable to objecting to a black or Jewish woman's presence because black and Jewish women are women and therefore lack penises.

I have donated and will continue to donate to Sarah's case.

You show a breathtaking lack of empathy for a woman who has had a man weaponise his penis against her and been put through pregnancy risk as well as other trauma.

I don't believe that she should be allowed to ostracise or exclude other survivors on the basis of their biology or appearance.

Then you didn't read the case. She wasn't asking for the trans person to be kicked out. She was asking for additional single-sex provision.

How come the trans people are allowed their own group but women aren't?

That has literally happened to me, several times. I've detailed it on this thread. Doesn't mean I get to ostracise or exclude others from support services.

I personally would also be happy to attend such a group alongside cis male sexual assault survivors. My experiences have made me angry with the men who raped me, with those who minimised or excused their crimes, and with the culture that lead to them feeling inclined and able to commit them. They have not made me afraid of all men, or all biological males. And if that is how one feels, it's such a debilitating consequence of one's experiences that it requires immediate and intensive therapy. One cannot spend one's life afraid of half the human race. And it isn't feminist to suggest that one should.

You have zero empathy for other women. Your empathy chip is missing. Many women seek a female only environment to recover from rape, domestic violence, sexual assault. Who are you to tell them how they need to recover from male violence? As I said a couple of days ago, its your boundaries that are unusual, not other women's.

So they’ve suddenly remembered what a woman is, have they?

I'm sure I know more women that have been sexually assaulted than haven't. People of all backgrounds and persuasions. I don't know ANYONE who would respond like this to a trans woman seeking support after sexual assault. Or anyone, of any age, background or political persuasion that would consider it acceptable to do so. It's not me who is lacking empathy.

I had in mind the “I want to be called Loretta” scene from LOB

”You haven’t got a uterus, Stan! Where are you going to keep the foetus, in a box?”

Your saying it doesn't make it so.

You can all going around being outraged that society is more accepting of multiple gender identities now, or that trans people have more legal rights, or that in certain ways society has become more trans inclusive, or that infertile people have more options to become parents.

But do you honestly believe that in the long term you can turn back the clock on all this? It all seems so futile.