Follow on thread III - Feeling sad and weary that feminists and trans-women are constantly pitted against one another.

[SophoclesTheFox]

I don't know if it has the legs to sustain a third thread, but kudos to perfectly for the impeccable timing of finally answering a question on the second to last post before the thread filled up. Genius.

here is the second thread

As I am now the OP, I wonder if this gives me the right of veto over the resolutions that we apparently made in the Great Accords of 2017?

Yes but that assumes the man wants the baby more than the experience of being pregnant. I'm not sure if that's the case for a lot of these people.

I guess if TIMs could get pregnant it might mean things like morning sickness, SPD, facial pigmentation, constipation and piles all got taken more seriously

Datun

The excerpt from the Act is in a reply to the tweet I posted at 11.57.

QuentinSummers

Well, are we talking transplanting a uterus AND egg-producing ovaries? Which seems unlikely. Unfortunately for men with an AGP desire to be pregnant, they will need to rewrite the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008. This one will be a bridge too far for them, I think. Nobody gives a shit about women's rights, as we are finding out, but a lot of people react in horror to this kind of stuff.

There we have yet another reason to determinedly hang on to the correct meanings for words - if the meaning of "man", "woman", "male" and "female" change, does the meaning of the act automatically change?

From LangCleg's tweet, it refers to "woman and man include respectively a "girl" and "boy" (from birth)" - but if transwomen are women, are they also biological women, and "women from birth"?

What I mean is that the way things are going transwomen insist they are girls from birth, and it seems society is about to accept that is true.

Thus using the words "from birth" in the Act is as meaningless as the words man or woman.

The same presumably applies to other laws using the now-meaningless word "woman".

Ahh, thanks LangCleg.

I knew I'd seen it and spent a fruitless 10 minutes trawling all the places I'm on.

Losing track is way too easy these days.

If we are planning to implant fertilised embryos into these donor uteri then we come up against another problem - rejection.

One of the things women's bodies do is reject sub-perfect embryos because from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes perfect sense. A human female is only going to be pregnant a few times, so it makes sense for each time to have the best possible chance to produce live young. Part of the mechanism for checking this is the normal feedback loop between mother's brain and the placenta, but another major part is the immune system.

It's simply not possible for the same feedback loop to be present in male bodies for the reasons I and others have outlined above, and as for the immune system backing it up, they will be on powerful immune suppressants in order to stop them rejecting the transplanted womb.

Can anyone honestly see these people, who want this purely to validate their "femininity" being happy with a baby who will potentially be disabled? How will that fit into their mind's eye view of the perfect family? We've already seen what happens to babies born to surrogates who aren't 100% perfect, how will this be any different?

Datun - welcome!

I should point out that the Act is referring, basically, to who is eligible to have ova implanted and whose sperm is eligible to fertilise said ova. Not about the uterus that might house fertilised ova.

It is explicitly saying that only FEMALE people can be implanted with ova. And it is specific about that because the Act was passed after the GRA of 2004 so there was a reason to be.

Medical ethics about tissue with life potential are highly developed.

As the law currently stands, it would not be illegal to transplant a uterus into a male. But it would be illegal to implant that uterus with donated embryos. And changing the law to accommodate AGP desires is going to hit a lot more stumbling blocks than obliterating women's rights. Nobody gives a stuff about women but everybody gives a stuff about bioengineered babies.

Can anyone honestly see these people, who want this purely to validate their "femininity" being happy with a baby who will potentially be disabled?

Exactly. I think it's fairly clear these people don't actually want to be parents. The baby (and the pregnancy) would just be fantasy validating props. I honestly don't think there's a cat in hell's chance of this actually happening.

Exactly. I think it's fairly clear these people don't actually want to be parents. The baby (and the pregnancy) would just be fantasy validating props. I honestly don't think there's a cat in hell's chance of this actually happening.

My cynicism has ramped up massively in the last couple of years.

Who would have thought that helping men with gender dysphoria navigate their life would result in someone like Ian Huntley potentially being transferred to a female prison?

The premise of alleviating gender dysphoria has gone on an insane trajectory.

I'm not holding my breath.

LangCleg - the definition of female is changing, like the definition of women. Does the law hold up if transwomen are women, and therefore "female from birth" - which is what many are currently saying?

I'm obviously not suggesting that any sane person is happy with this redefinition of words and thus the automatic altering of laws, but could it happen if it's legally accepted that transwomen were female at birth - as their new reissued birth certificates say?

Does the law hold up if transwomen are women, and therefore "female from birth" - which is what many are currently saying?

I understand your concern. But honestly, I don't think it will happen. Not because of women's rights though.

Nobody will care about the body of the woman, or the woman herself, from whom the uterus was harvested.

Nobody will care that a man wants a uterus.

Nobody will care about the woman from whom the ova were harvested.

What people in charge will care about is the ova and the embryo. The human tissue with the potential for life.

This is why the legislation is written as it is. It is protecting the embryo from the danger of being implanted into a male body. Nothing to do with women, least of all protecting them. Because, as I keep saying, power in a patriarchal society doesn't care about women!

So, firstly I am not advocating any of this madness, I am simply saying that male pregnancies may not be as unlikely as some of you think.

Secondly, don't take my word for it: Robert Winston, a fertility expert who is also gender critical, thinks male pregnancy will happen.

Oh, I don't doubt you XX, but I also know it's not as easy as some TRAs would like it to be and that a lot of hoops will have to be jumped through to make it happen is all.

Look at your passport I've just renewed mine. Ten years ago it said sex, it now says gender. I've not long applied for university. There's two positive discrimination boxes to tick on UCAS forms. Have you been in care? (Anybody with a fifth of a brain would give these people a leg up) are you transgender (it has no meaning, I'm disgusted) gender is bollox this shit is unreal

The same presumably applies to other laws using the now-meaningless word "woman".

Yes Maryz - I thought about this too - I'm a computer programmer, and if I'm changing something in a program like this, I search the code for all references, to make sure that what I'm doing to this particular variable isn't going to screw up something else.

Why, in all this, has no-one searched all the laws for the words woman/female/man/male etc. and double-checked that by changing that from a biological classification, to purely legal one applicable to anyone with any biology, that the spirit of those laws stays the same?

Boyslike I think I would now be inclined to just tick yes to being transgender. Given that transgender is simply an ethereal amorphous feeling, you wouldn't even be lying, and they wouldn't be allowed to ask.

I normally lurk here but thought I'd post as I think there is a bit of confusion about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. I'm a lawyer, although this is outside my usual area of practice.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 actually just amends the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (HFEA 1990) so it's the 1990 Act that we should be looking at. Section 3ZA of the HFEA 1990 says what eggs and sperm can be used for fertilisation - basically sperm from men and eggs from women which have not had their DNA altered. Subsection (6)(a) provides that for this section '"woman" and "man" include respectively a girl and a boy (from birth)" but this is not a reference to trans matters. It means that sperm and eggs taken from children can be used (but you would not be allowed eg extract eggs from a foetus who has not yet been born and use those to get someone pregnant). I assume this is generally used where children have to undergo medical treatments that might affect their fertility - they can opt to have eggs/sperm stored for use later.

Sched 2, para 1 of the HFEA 1990 provides that licences may authorise "placing any permitted embryo in a woman". I could not see anything in the HFEA 1990 which restricts this meaning to non-trans women only. The Gender Recognition Act 2004, section 9 provides that once a certificate is issued, from that point forward the trans person will be treated for all purposes as being their acquired gender, unless legislation provides otherwise. I would therefore expect to see something explicit in the HFEA 1990 if it was intended to treat transwonen and non-trans women differently.

TLDR: IMO there's nothing in the HFEA 1990 that would stop someone trying to get a transwoman pregnant, although there might be other legislation which prevents this or it might be that there's been no need to cover this in legislation because the science is so far off this being a realistic possibility at the moment.

Why, in all this, has no-one searched all the laws for the words woman/female/man/male etc. and double-checked that by changing that from a biological classification, to purely legal one applicable to anyone with any biology, that the spirit of those laws stays the same?

That will have been done (there's something called 'consequential legislation'), but I would guess the Government's main concern was preserving the position in respect of benefits/pensions etc. rather than anything else, and I am aware that there have been laws to change certain government form so that people don't have to give the name that they were given at birth to avoid disclosing their trans person's background. So it will have been done but you might not be happy with the result.

So Speedy, the redefinition of "woman" to include transwomen means that any law ever passed for the protection of women is now redundant, is that right?

What about exceptions to the GRA? Are they irrelevant now that "woman" and "female" are meaningless?

Speedy85 - thank you for that. I understood the Act was specifically protecting tissue with life potential but made the same faulty assumption as the tweet I'd read as to why!

What about exceptions to the GRA? Are they irrelevant now that "woman" and "female" are meaningless?

No, the law provides for certain exemptions even with a GRC. The problem is they rarely get used.

So does this mean a transwoman who has a baby with their partner [a woman [giver of birth]] would now be eligible for a year's maternity leave, even though they haven't actually given birth themselves?

Thanks for the clarification Speedy useful stuff to know, if slightly soul destroying.

ATeardropExplodes no it would be the same as any other couple. Female lesbian partners get the same paternity benefits as men and the same would go for a trans parent.

So does this mean a transwoman who has a baby with their partner [a woman [giver of birth]] would now be eligible for a year's maternity leave, even though they haven't actually given birth themselves?

If we’re talking Statutory Maternity Pay then my understanding is that the conditions of entitlement are in s164 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, and one of those requirements is becoming pregnant, so that would automatically exclude trans women and non-trans men as things stand (barring any incredible leaps in medical technology...).

I was wondering about what would happen if you had a trans man with a gender recognition certificate who had never had the full surgery and became preganant, as the legislation mentioned above refers to SMP being payable to a “woman”, but I think the answer would lie in s6 of the Interpretation Act 1978 which provides that legislation referring to men or women includes both men and women unless the contrary intention appears. So IMO a trans man who had given birth would get SMP if they fulfil all the other requirements. A trans woman would not get SMP if their partner gave birth, in the same way that in a lesbian couple only the one who has given birth gets the SMP.

I’m less familiar with the rules on leave (as opposed to SMP) but I believe that the partner of someone who has given birth is treated the same way whatever their gender. So a lesbian/transgender partner has the right to take paternity leave in the same way as a male partner. I haven’t dug through the legislation on that one to double check but that’s my understanding.