“Person who gave birth” turns out to be mother.

[aliasundercover]

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/25/transgender-man-loses-court-battle-to-be-registered-as-father-freddy-mcconnell

It’s just not fair he says.

He’s no less attractive than many other people. What does telling people they are ugly actually achieve? The only thing it does is give ammunition to TRAs who frequent these boards looking for evidence that we are not feminists, just bigots.

Didactylos well said.

Very pleased about this judgement

Whatever is on the birth certificate this unfortunate child will be brought up with the narrative that he does not have and has never had a mother. This may satisfy Freddy's dysphoria but it can hardly make for a happy secure child. The child will also, along with everyone else be required to tiptoe round Freddy's narcissistic obsession with looking male.

I saw the film and thought that this was the nearest example I had seen of a F to M trans person fetishising their own appearance

I don't think there's anything 'bigoted' in being honest about the look someone has deliberately chosen for themselves not really working for them (in my opinion). I'd say the same if he'd had a horrible facial tattoo or his tongue forked like a snake. Feminism does not mean we lose our personal sense of taste or style or our ability to give it to people straight. We're not bound by the 'gorgeous' 'brave' 'stunning' brigade and can tell the emperor he's naked.

OneEndedStick

Honestly, I don't get it. Our (hypothetical) child doesn't need a falsified record of her birth, and I don't need the validation.

That is the definition of throwing lesbians under a bus!

My wife cut the cord when our daughter was born, has been there for her every day of her life holding her, feeding her, dressing her and loving her like any normal parent.

If anything happened to our DD (imagine she was rushed to hospital) and the sperm donor was on the birth certificate rather than my wife then my wife would have absolutely no legal right to make any decisions about our DD.

If my wife and I split and she wasn't on the birth certificate she would have no legal right to see our DD and I would have no right to claim maintenance. I could take the DD she has loved and cared for her whole life away to the other side of the world without my wife's permission and there would be nothing she could do about it.

As a fellow lesbian, surely you can see why lesbian couples who have a child would need that 'validation'?!

It’s becoming more and more common to see the word male used to describe trans men and female to describe trans women. It’s clear than they need the validity of that word to help try and add some authenticity.

Interesting that there is some talk of sympathy to trans men for being sold a lie that their legal status will be changed but it turns out not to be true in every respect. Firstly, the legal exemptions are clear and ought to be understood by anyone making the effort to undertake this legal transition. Secondly, the judge seemed quite scathing of the fact Freddy essentially lied to to obtain his GRC as he had no intention of living as a man due to his ongoing efforts to become pregnant. He invited the relevant body to consider voiding for fraud. Had Freddy disclosed at the time he was trying to have a baby it is likely his GRC wouldn’t have been granted. I can only assume they left it alone as they didn’t want to deal with the fall out of trying to void it.

Given the language used in the judgement, I feel that we are now going to see further cases in court, seeking to test the ‘man as mother’ principle that has now been established here, seeing if it can be extended into other areas beyond birth certificates and also extended to men (ie male born people) regardless of how they identify, who want to also be legally mothers in other scenarios even if they did not give birth.

I feel that birth certificates will remain highly vulnerable to be being politicised in favour of genderism even if Freddy McConnell doesn’t appeal this particular case, which the BBC article says is being planned. And it is worrying how the BBCs article is not even trying to be journalistically neutral about all this (John Humphrys is right about that).

So as I pasted above the Law Commission is likely to review birth certification laws anyway. And what they have in mind to examine covers way more than this case does.

Basically we have years of this ahead of us. This judgement doesn’t feel like a victory for reality, it has not confirmed a firmly watertight sex-based definition of mother, it is intentionally kicking this decision way down the road, but in opening that uncertainty it seems to open the door for non-reality based claims to be made.

I think the BBC can see this and that’s why they quoted this extract in their article heavily slanted in favour of the case brought by Freddy McConnell:

Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the Family Division of the High Court, said: "There is a material difference between a person's gender and their status as a parent.
"Being a 'mother', whilst hitherto always associated with being female, is the status afforded to a person who undergoes the physical and biological process of carrying a pregnancy and giving birth.
"It is now medically and legally possible for an individual, whose gender is recognised in law as male, to become pregnant and give birth to their child.
"Whilst that person's gender is 'male', their parental status, which derives from their biological role in giving birth, is that of 'mother.'"
Sir Andrew added: "There would seem to be a pressing need for Government and Parliament to address square-on the question of the status of a trans-male who has become pregnant and given birth to a child."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49828705

I think that the current legal inconsistencies about when the law accepts reality about sex and when it doesn’t, will allow more test cases of this kind to be brought, and these legal inconsistencies stem directly back to the GRC which tells people that they are now the opposite sex, legally, and doesn’t seem to exclude that change to opposite sex from being true in any setting.

I think the best way to maintain reality for everyone is to repeal the GRC and to rely on the existing anti-discrimination laws which already allow all of us to present however we like, without fear of discrimination because we like doing or wearing whatever it is [...insert gendered stereotype here..]

A slight derail but It always amazes me that people throw around the word bigot so lazily. It means a person who is intolerant to another persons opinion. By that definition all the TRA 's and the Woking dead should be labelled as bigots because that is what they truly are.

Tired I actually didn’t say it was bigoted. I was saying a load of twats patrol the boards and copy and paste threads to twitter about what awful people are over here.

I also stand by the comment that commenting on someone’s looks unkindly doesn’t serve any purpose.

I wasn't aiming it at you @Pota2 I was aiming it at the blithering idiots that like to stalk us on here then run off saying how evil we are.

I will remain neutral in my opinion on Freddy beyond that I think they are incredibly self-centred and the world doesn't revolve around them.

I agree Chatty that this isn’t a triumph for sex based rights. This was the high court. There are two courts above it and Freddie no doubt has access to significant funding. He will fight. It is also likely to lead to legislative reform which may totally remove the word mother or make it connected to gender identity. This is the beginning of a bigger thing and I bet the TRAs are secretly delighted at the attention this is getting.

Also, remember that there were quite similar circumstances that led to the GRA in the first place. A trans person was unsuccessful in the courts. The courts said that they were following the law as was but that parliament needed to change the law. Whoosh, the GRA was passed with relatively minimal fuss. Leading to this mess. If they’d just let the trans person in question marry someone of the same sex in the first place, maybe we would t have this mess. I fear it will be the same with Freddy’s case.

Sorry, Tired, I misunderstood

The judge asked if the general Vermont would be persuing the fact Freddie had decided to get pregnant and give birth after he had obtained his GRC. They said they would not be persuing, but obviously the judge felt there was a case that Freddie had fallen foul or his promise to live the rest of his life as a man.

For this reason I can't really find fault with the judges conclusion. Freddie chose to do an exclusive act which can only be performed by women. If he had used a surrogate with his own eggs then of course he should have been recorded as the father. Then he could have had a biological child the same way as every other man does.

You can't live as a man and give birth, end of story. I don't know why anyone is arguing against it.

This isn't a case of a trans man not being treated fairly, it's a trans man wanting the law changed to make them feel better. It's the childs BC, not theirs. There's plenty of other ways this could have been done. His female partner could have birthed the baby and him gone on the BC as a second parent.

If you give birth, you are a mother and female. If you want to live as a man, be one! Men don't give birth

Government self corrected to general Vermont? sorry

Surely the easiest thing is to repeal the GRA, after all same sex marriage is now legal and bad laws will ultimately fail to serve a purpose.

Freddy is a single parent, they have chosen to raise a child on their own, that child will most likely see them naked in the shower or whilst dressing and that child will have a lot to unpick about their so called Father. I think it is unethical for a trans man to have IVF though I appreciate others may disagree.

I think this is a victory for children's rights. The birth certificate is primarily there to document your mother - as everyone knows, any other parent named may or may not be biologically linked to the child named, for a wide variety of reasons. So for children it lets them know for certain who their biological mother is, and it may provide information about more family (other parents) or it may only record the biological mother.

But recording the biological mother is crucial - it is the known fact of their genetic history - and I think the court was right to defend this.

As for recording other parents - that's great for the child and the family. Whether it is two mums or two dads or any combination - but the info about the bio mum should be sacrosanct.

Thing is if the BC has Freddie down as dad - and if Freddie later decides ‘hey actually... the way I thought I was a man... now I think I’m really a woman’ - then what?

Pota2 yes

GRC was not the right solution but of course we were right to change the institution of marriage to cover everyone, regardless of sexual orientation.

Because a lot of other legal protections arise from being married and stopping people from having same sex marriage meant those people were missing out unfairly. (And that’s why it’s right to extend civil partnership to everyone too so everyone has the same options.)

But can anyone tell me, what legal protections (not validation, not feelings of being accepted, not emotional comfort) - what actual legal protections is a transman who is not allowed to call themselves ‘father’ on a Birth certificate, missing out on?

What actual legal protections is any man, however he identifies his gender at the time of the child’s birth (a self identification which could of course change or fluctuate) currently missing out on if he can’t be officially recognised as a mother?

The law shouldn’t be about validation to help with emotional distress.

Itk well it’s not necessarily the genetic mother. It is however always the gestational mother and that is what counts in the eyes of the law. A child can be born to a woman who has used a donated egg and will not have a genetic link. Therefore a birth certificate can never be proof of genetic parentage for either mother or father. It can however be proof of who gave birth.

And chatty I agree. Also, sex shouldn’t be a legal status. It should be biological and the law should give protections for those who need it on the basis of sex. When the issues came up re the GRA, they should have remedied all the problems faced by trans people by allowing same sex marriage, prohibiting your employer from knowing about your history, and prohibited discrimination based on having gender reassignment treatment. Instead they decided that you can legally change sex, with some exceptions and it’s unworkable in reality.

For all those tho don't support Freddie I'm interested what you would do in his situation?

The prevailing argument seems to be Freddie should not be allowed to be both transgender and a biological parent. It seems he should have to pick one or the other.

Would you live your life as a woman and suffer the unbearable mental distress of feeling you were living a lie? (I would liken it to a gay woman forcing herself into a straight marriage)

Or would you sacrifice having your own child to live life as the person you felt you were?

I don't blame Freddie at all for wanting both, and as a society I think we should support and recognise that he deserves both.

The prevailing argument seems to be Freddie should not be allowed to be both transgender and a biological parent. It seems he should have to pick one or the other.

I don't think anyone's said that. Freddy is the mother. Freddy gave birth. Only women can do that. Freddy was not 'living as a man' when Freddy became pregnant and gave birth.

Freddy is correctly recorded on the birth certificate as the mother. Freddy fraudulently claimed to intend to live as a man for the rest of Freddy's life when obtaining a GRC just days before attempting to get pregnant and having already stopped testosterone treatment in preparation for this.

Scarlett I would be happy to see Freddie registered as a parent rather than mother and that being available as an exception for those who have a GRC.

I don’t think he shouldn’t be allowed to be transgender. He can do what he likes and since he has a female body capable of giving birth, he can do that too.

Would you live your life as a woman and suffer the unbearable mental distress of feeling you were living a lie? (I would liken it to a gay woman forcing herself into a straight marriage)

These are in no way comparable. A gay woman is attracted to other women (fact). A woman who believes herself to be male is suffering from a delusion. People are not 'born in the wrong body'.

What is your definition of 'living as a woman'? How does it differ from 'living as a man'?

No one is stopping Freddy from living their life. Freddy has a right to be a parent. But Freddy carried and gave birth to the child. That can only be done by a female, by a mother. No one is stopping Freddy referring to themselves as a father socially but it's not factually true and the BC is based on the biological fact.

It is confusing for someone to state their dysphoria is so bad that being referred to as a mother is damaging, and yet they were able to become pregnant, carry a child and give birth using the female organs they hate. Freddy could have adopted. The biological desire to have a biological baby shows that biology counts.