Seahorse BBC2 now

[Hirsutefirs]

I wonder what the viewing figures are, for stuff like this: www.jeaniefinlay.com/seahorsefilm

I’m not going to watch it, for a start.

I'm confused about why people on this thread are defining 'mother' so narrowly - lots of women are mothers who don't give birth. I'm a mother who hasn't given birth. I get that you don't believe that Freddy is a man (which we disagree on, but having read a lot of mumsnet realise it's impossible to convince you otherwise), but your stance is so quick to exclude my experience as well - my partner carried our kid. Is my bond with my child not a 'female' experience then? Is it a 'male' experience? I mean, I don't know, because I only know my own experience - perhaps it is similar to what most dads experience?

Requiring a mother to be female is a narrow definition?

Women who are parents are mothers. Freddy is female and a parent so is a mother.

You might want to have a word with some of the trans widows on here and ask them how they feel about their husbands declaring themselves to be mothered because they cross dress?

A mother is a female parent, like Freddie.

"Is my bond with my child not a 'female' experience then"

It's female because presumably you are female, there is no other box to categories a female experience other than being female, everyone is different, has a different personality and like different things, biology makes you female, not liking pink or blue.

There are 3.8 billion females on the planet and most will become mothers at some point in their lives.

The definition is wide enough, I think, given that scale.
It doesn't need to include men.

lots of women are mothers who don't give birth.

Yes and the key word is 'women'.

Men cannot be mothers yet they want to be mothers.
They want what women have.

Freddy, in gender terms, is a man. Man is his gender construct, he lives as a man, presents within a masculine gendered construct. Grows a beard, does his best not to look 'soft' and scrawny', wears clothes aimed at the masculine stereotype.

Freddy is a female person who likes to present in a stereotypically masculine way. There is nothing wrong with this. Freddy is not a man because the definition of a man is an adult human male. Freddy is female and people cannot change sex.

I also didn't take Freddy's relationship with his own body to mean disdain for other women's bodies. Or other women. He was honest that it was uncomfortable for him to have to return to some more feminine-assigned clothing etc, because of his Trans status. Not because he was hostile to women.

If Freddy is not hostile to women or to the idea of being a woman, why doesn't Freddy simply identify as a woman who dislikes feminine stereotypes and likes to present in a masculine way? Why is Freddy trying to make the world believe that Freddy is a man?

Freddy, in gender terms, is a man. Man is his gender construct, he lives as a man, presents within a masculine gendered construct.

Freddies sex is female, dressing in a masculine way to match stereotypes does not make you a man, it makes you a woman who doesn't conform to damaging stereotypes.

So what is the problem with an individual Trans person living their life as such, and making the individual choices that make their lives possible and happy.

What Barracker said, in response to this. And I will post again, so it’s on this page and people seem to keep forgetting, that Freddie has a case in the High Court to change the meaning of mother and father, Freddie has the backing of the supposedly impartial BBC and the enormously biased Guardian making a nationally broadcast documentary about their life. Tell me WildThing in what way, shape or form is that someone just trying to live their life quietly?

I’ll repeat again that Freddie is the most influential TRA there is. Imagine if McKinnon was given the chance to film a 90 min documentary to be shown on BBC2, to have McKinnon’s voice heard. McKinnon would gloat with joy at such an massive opportunity to have their abusive voice heard and tell us all we should die in grease fires. As such, that marks Freddie as someone whose actions and public broadcasting of their actions is open to criticism.

So what is the non- transphobic freedom that Trans people are allowed?
Anything as long as it is specified as Trans?

Maybe Freddy should be listed as Trans Father on the birth certificate.

Well, as with all trans rights, if TRAs wants to make a change, and a legal change at that, they have to expect that other people who will be impacted by such a law change would get to have say in the matter. There is a definition already of what Freddie is in relation to the child.

What makes me so angry, is this.
Both Freddie and I are people with ovaries, fallopian tubes, uteruses, vaginas, ova. We've both conceived with sperm from people of the opposite sex.
Both given birth.
Both nurtured our babies, albeit I haven't removed my breasts.

And there already is a word for us. That covers our bodies and ignores our 'identities'. That simply describes our mutual reproductive anatomy, and our biological role in creating a baby.

So what is there for Freddy to reject about such a word, when all it does is clearly, literally and non-judgmentally describe the bodily sex class to which we both belong?
The word says nothing of personality, has no value judgement to make on feelings, on masculinity, on femininity. It's ONLY the word for our bodies and the act of creation we've both done with them.

What is there to reject of such simple accuracy of the word 'mother'?

It's this.
Me. And all the ugly assumptions Freddy holds about me, you and everyone who has become a mother, just like Freddy. That's what Freddy is rejecting. Freddy has overlaid the simple act of creating life with our female bodies with layer upon layer of false assumptions that Freddy is determined to hold to other mothers.

I have to be characterised as 'other', with god knows what stupid, false connotations, just so that Freddy can pretend that every other woman in history who has done exactly what Freddy did is not just a person with the same body doing the same thing with it, but something totally different altogether

The frustration I feel that a perfectly accurate word that describes a fundamental human experience has to be corrupted with nonsense so that one or two individuals can play at rejecting the people upon whom that nonsense was imposed. By them.

Nope.

There's a word for our bodies, Freddy, yours and mine, and a word for what we are to the children we've created with them.

And you aren't going to corrupt it with any stupid superfluous meanings so you can declare you're not it. It's too important to billions of us to have a word for our bodies.

I hope the courts see sense over this.

Barracker thank you and the others on here for clarification of that the implications are. I , for one, had no idea about Freddy’s profession, or the on going court case. It certainly has strengthed my GC feelings.

Poor Freddie's baby wasn't able to breastfeed because Freddie had amputated their breasts.

Never mind, there were plenty of 'other' ordinary boring women who hadn't amputated their breasts so Freddie was still able to feed the baby donated breast milk.

What really annoys me about this film is that the BBC have shown such a one sided piece at a time when the courts have to decide over this issue. Whatever happens to impartiality?

This.

Eve Sedgwick in 2008 talking about Thomas Beatie's pregnancy in the NYT:

www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/fashion/22pregnant.html

Ms. Sedgwick said that if you look at postings on Web sites like Oprah Winfrey’s and The Huffington Post, “It seems as though there are lots and lots of comments saying: ‘That’s not a man having a baby. That’s a woman having a baby.’ ”

Partly that reaction results from what Ms. Sedgwick calls a phobic response to changes in identities that for most people seem God-given and settled at birth. Partly it is a matter “of people having to go through the stages of figuring things out,” she said.

But mostly it's because people know that women are the ones who get pregnant and men are the ones who never ever do. So fuck that shit, Sedgwick. And fuck this shit:

“People experience gender very differently and some have really individual and imaginative uses to make of it. That’s an important thing for people to wrap their minds around.”

A decade on, I think far fewer people are bamboozled by the genderists' big words wrapped in rainbow fluff. We now have practical questions about the welfare of the child, about the welfare of the mother, about the legal implications for women and children - and none of these questions are addressed by the pomo gobbledegook. And we're less afraid to ask these questions.

I'm confused about why people on this thread are defining 'mother' so narrowly

Freddy is definitely a mother.....and watching Freddy's birthing experience revealed the instinctive maternal instincts kicked in very powerfully.

So, if mother, according to you, is an expansive and wide ranging term for acts of nurture,, why on earth would Freddy need to go to court to demand to be called a father?

Who does the birth certificate belong to? Trans people are now able to get their own birth certificates changed to falsely show that they were born the opposite sex. Their parents have had no say in this, because the birth certificate belongs to the child not the parent.

This trans person is now arguing that their child's birth certificate should be falsified to record the mother (the person who gave birth to them) as the father. Does the child not have the right to a birth record which shows the facts rather than a fabrication? Does the birth certificate in this case belong to the parent or the child?

Brava Barracker.

Insightful posts as always.

That's a good way to put the question OldCrone
It appears that the birth certificate belongs to the most relevant trans person

Thomas Beattie has given birth to two more children since the first child, is divorced from his first wife, and has remarried.

Every word that Barracker nailed. This isn’t an eyerolly, whatever will they think of next scenario.

This is a court case that undermines the identity of mothers. How fucking dare they?

This is a court case that undermines the identity of mothers.

And will allow any man, including cross dressing fetishists, or indeed, any abusive man who fancies sticking it to his partner, to be named the mother of his children.