Cristiano Ronaldo has twins

[OldBagLady]

Reports are saying that Ronaldo has used a surrogate and has become a father to twins. He also has a 7 year old DS by an unknown surrogate.

I feel a bit uncomfortable about this and thought I'd get your opinions. It all feels a bit Handmaids Tale. That a very rich man can essentially obtain a woman's womb for hire and apparently discard her afterwards.

I wonder how long it will be before women are being coerced/forced to provide this service.

Well in that case how do you feel about Elton John/David Furish and their children?
Uncomfortable.

Do you feel it is different because Ronaldo is a single man?

Absolutely not. It would make no difference if he were part of a homosexual or heterosexual couple.

Is it generally feminist thought to be against surrogacy? I'm only just learning about all this stuff and the patriarchal connotations honestly never occurred to me

No idea if it is part of feminist ideology. My objection to commercial surrogacy is the same as for prostitution. It is buying something which should not be bought. It is exploitative and damaging to society as a whole.

Capattack, I'm not interested in being right. I'm genuinely interested in how you came about the perspective you started the thread with.

I'm assuming that you believed there was such a thing as 'the patriarchy' and you seem sincere. I'm wondering if you thought it was something quite different, and was interested to here what and how you came about that perspective.

I mentioned commercial surrogacy being illegal because that is what we were originally discussing on the thread. I don't think people on the thread have a negative attitude to non commercial surrogacy. I wouldn't expect there to be a high regret rate.

I viewed surrogacy in the same bracket as fertility treatments and adoption

There is no comparison. Adoption is for the purposes of benefiting a child who already exists.

Infertility treatment may well be painful emotionally and physically for the parties involved but it is their 100% free choice for their benefit.

As for the patriarchal connotations, I viewed surrogacy in the same bracket as fertility treatments and adoption. Things that enable people who couldn't have children, to have children.

Well, the enabling of people who cannot have children to have children is basically what patriarchy is about.

Fertility treatments help people who in principle can have children to make use of that potential.

Adoption should be a way for children to have (good) parents, not the other way round.

Men cannot get pregnant, i.e. cannot "have" children in a natural way. Schemes to test the genes of a child and then inform the biological father and then give him rights over the child, are all cultural. Being chosen as a partner for child raising is the only natural way for a man to "have" a child.

Patriarchy is basically a way to ensure that men get to spread their genes without the consent of women, and that they get to own the resulting children, shape them to their will and kill them off if they want, again without the consent of the mother.

Which is I am not at all in favour of talking of a "right to have children."

What people should be entitled to through the NHS is a body that's as healthy as possible, and this health includes the natural reproductive capacity of a body. Infertility is often the result of a disease, injury or poisoining, and people have a right to have the capacities of their body restored.

But no one has a "right to have children" - that's a very patriarchal notion.

Despite the moral issues here, it's pretty well known that he's heavily closeted. Google Ricky Regufe.

For what it's worth commercial surrogacy makes me extremely uncomfortable too.

Thank you Vestal, you explained it very well! I see what you mean - this fits well to the medical feminist discussions I have been reading as well. I couldn't quite see how patriarchy fit in to methods that help women reproduce, but your post was very helpful.

Sylvia, I don't really know what I thought, to be honest. I was unclear on my thoughts so I can't justify them, and I was looking for clarity.

Thanks, Cap. I hope you don't feel interrogated!

cap wherever women exchange money for consent for someone else to use their body (whether for sex, surrogacy or organ donation) then there is potential for that to be abused especially if the woman is poor. I have no issue with surrogacy as an activity in its own right but adding a financial incentives makes me anti because pregnancy/birth are so risky for women.
Julie Bindel wrote this article about human breath milk production in Cambodia which is worth a read
www.stopsurrogacynow.com/an-example-of-capitalism-literally-milking-the-poor/#sthash.Lwe4JyHo.dpbs

I'd always assumed that CR is gay...

Yes he is gay by all accounts. I am very uncomfortable with commercial surrogacy whether the prospective parents are straight, gay, married or partnered. Apart from patriarchy it's a way for rich people to buy the bodies of the poor as with sex tourism or the trade in illegal organs.

Apart from patriarchy it's a way for rich people to buy the bodies of the poor as with sex tourism or the trade in illegal organs

Absolutely. I think all this talk of the "patriarchy" is not remotely helpful about why this is wrong.

I think Ronaldo is gay and he has a partner and this is why he has babies mumsnet is obsessed with handmaidens as if it is real it is a dystonian novel fgs people need to stop quoting it in serious discussions as it makes a mockery of all womeb

mumsnet is obsessed with handmaidens as if it is real it is a dystonian novel fgs people need to stop quoting it in serious discussions as it makes a mockery of all womeb

Pointing out that the world we live in is like a fucking dystopian novel is the point of quoting that book.

I don't see any problem with it.

Comparing women's lives to a comedy, that would be insulting.

I think Ronaldo is gay and he has a partner and this is why he has babies

Wait what? His being gay and having a male gay partner (?) is why he has babies? That doesn't make a lot of sense.

Men getting pregnant is something that really only happens in fiction.

No-one has suggested that a man has got pregnant
CR appears to be in a long-term stable relationship with his manager. They have children together via surrogacy, just like numerous other gay couples.

We know a couple of gay guys who want to have children, and will be using some surrogacy agency where (in their words), you pay 25 grand and you are guaranteed a baby No thought apparently for the woman / women who might suffer miscarriage or HG or SPD or a dangerous terrifying birth along the way.

"...CR appears to be in a long-term stable relationship with his manager. They have children together via surrogacy, just like numerous other gay couples..."

On what basis does he appear to be gay?

Whether or not Ronaldo or indeed anyone else is gay is completely irrelevant to the ethical issues in question.

MrsJay, Atwood has said she only included in the novel things that actually happen to women in societies around the world. That's the point of the novel.

Lass, yes, in one sense it is similar to organ donation versus a trade in organs. In another it is a trade in actual human beings (babies). In another it is similar to issues that are patriarchal such as child brides, forced marriage etc, and frequently targets the same women in the same societies.

'They have children together via surrogacy'

it's incredible how the mother got erased in the grammatical construction of that sentence.

As if surrogacy is like a baby being delivered by a stork.

it's incredible how the mother got erased in the grammatical construction of that sentence.

Thank you, I was thinking just the same but didn't know how to phrase it.

It makes it look like "surrogacy" is some kind of fertility treatment whereby gay men can get pregnant.

Two men, as of now, cannot have children "together" via surrogacy. (The Frankenstein science might be able, on day, to erase the woman's genes and only put the male DNA in there, but for now, an egg with full female DNA is needed. And a woman will be needed for the foreseeable future.)
Only one of them can contribute his DNA to one child. The other might be able to contribute his DNA to another child, but they cannot have a child together. They can only have children together with a woman, no matter how much one tries to erase that woman, she exists.

Let's hope that reproduction involves one man and one woman for the many future generations to come - but there is no such thing as 'full female DNA'. If it is possible to make artificial eggs from stem cells from a male (and it seems there is no technical reason why not - according to Jamescv on this thread ), then 2 men could be the genetical parents of a child.

It's very often not the surrogate mother's genetic material now in commercial surrogacy. It's usually an egg bought from a white woman gestated in the paid for body of a brown woman.

Even if it was possible to make ova from male cells, I can't believe it would be ethically approved.
Even if that happened, a surrogate female would still need to be used to gestation the baby, and the gestation and birth are the risky bits.

Thank you so much for all your incredibly insightful contributions.

Only observational but there seems to be a high number of twins being born via surrogacy. Probably because of the reliance on IVF. This immediately puts the mother in a high risk pregnancy. Another way in which the woman's health and wellbeing is ignored.