I really want to try to understand the points being made by Freddy M’s team but I can’t follow. Are they saying because being on a birth certificate as the dad is somehow optional (?) that being the mum on the certificate should be too?
That it’s not fair that being the one who gives birth lands you with the ‘mother’ tag on the paperwork, whereas men can choose not to be on the certificate..?
This is from the Metro: www.metro.news/transgender-man-i-gave-birth-but-im-not-a-mother/1932140/
‘Hannah Markham QC, who is representing Mr McConnell, said being a ‘mother’ or a ‘father’ was no longer gender-specific.
She said: ‘In society, being a mother is a social construct and for a person trying to move away from the terms because of their gender dysphoria that is a offence to their right to private life and their identity.
‘It is the impossible dilemma between gender identification and wanting to have a family. If those titles, which we say are forced on prospective parents, (are given) they may choose not to be a parent such is the impact on them of being gendered in the wrong gender.
‘This claim is brought by a man who has given birth to a child. He filed evidence to the effect of the distress and impact on him.
‘We are talking about the impact of trans people being misgendered and it is the right and responsibility of the court to ensure that doesn’t continue. It is not a minor inconvenience; it is not a trivial matter; it is significant.’
Mr McConnell says the ruling breaches his and his child’s human rights.
Ms Markham said that ‘mother’ was a ‘gendered term’ in law.
She added the last judge did not consider whether the term was a ‘sociological construct… where the person who gives birth is a mother in both the legal and social sense (the caregiver), whilst a father can choose to accept that role, both in a legal and social way and rather than a construct based solely on biology’. The appeal continues.‘
It’s confusing because I don’t get why pregnancy and birth is apparently such a trivial detail in this argument? That takes away from the needs of all women and children, surely? Why is motherhood a thing to be distanced from? It’s not equality for anyone to trivialise the hassle, pain and risk of pregnancy and birth in order to either make men feel better about not doing it themselves, or make women feel that what they are doing in pregnancy and birth doesn’t merit any kind of attention or support. Plus children usually really are very interested in who gave birth to them at some point in their lives. There’s no escaping that.