Freddy McConnell appeal today (Transman who wants to be registered as their child's father) *Title edited by MNHQ*

[MrsSnippyPants]

Haven't seen anything about this and it just popped up on Sky News. Hearing continues tomorrow

Newspaper report here
www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/transgender-man-who-gave-birth-21629478

Freddy has female plumbing. Freddy does not have a fucking superpower, Freddy has simply done what women have been doing for millennia.

Freddy is not a man who gave birth, that hasn’t happened outside the realm of science fiction movies. With the emphasis on the fiction, not the science.

“I’d never say I wanted to be pregnant. I’d say I wanted a family, I wanted kids, and it’s more that the pregnancy felt like the simplest and safest option for me.

As a woman who struggled for years to become pregnant, this enrages me. Pregnancy was hell for me. I had 40 weeks' abject fear that I would lose the one baby I managed to carry, having previously had five miscarriages, including the twin I was carrying at the time.

I hated myself and my body, questioned why as a mother I couldn't keep the babies I carried safe, and I was disgusted with my own body because I felt it was killing my babies. I know how irrational and cruel that sounds, and to any other woman who might be reading this who has suffered the same heartache it was NOT your fault any more than it was mine. The only point I make is that to me, at that time, that self-loathing, fear and disgust felt very real, and it was a torment to me.

Is this or is this not 'body dysphoria?' As if my own pregnancies weren't hell on earth for me or I 'enjoyed' them? Or that other women in the same position wouldn't have similar feelings? Ridiculous. But being a woman, of course, it's just a case of 'suck it up'. No special dispensation here.

The thing about this 'my identity is the centre around which the universe revolves' mentality, is that it's so egotistical it defies belief. To hell with the greater good for the greater number (the axis on which most of our politics is based). It's all about me, me, me, and screw whoever else it affects.

Please, appeal courts, do the right thing.

Transmen having babies is a superpower ….

Words fail. This is delusional. The effect of a child being sucked into this level of disturbance and this reframing of reality has to be very seriously considered here.

I hated myself and my body, questioned why as a mother I couldn't keep the babies I carried safe, and I was disgusted with my own body because I felt it was killing my babies. I know how irrational and cruel that sounds,

No, that was exactly my experience with repeated miscarriages. I had terrible nightmares and couldn't stand touching any young mammal, even kittens and puppies, I felt so dangerous to them. A female experience that only another female can understand. What that female wishes to call themselves makes no difference at all to the reality.

I wonder if the legal firm Natalie Gamble are involved in this. They successfully represented a gay man who got his child removed from her biological mother by claiming she had agreed to be a surrogate (she hadnt).

They did what???

Horrible story
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3068796/Deceitful-surrogate-mother-carried-baby-wealthy-gay-couple-refused-hand-desperate-child-herself.html

WTF

I've posted it before but I will never forget that breastfed baby, her devastated mum and those selfish men.

September 2019 Guardian
'Transgender man loses court battle to be registered as father
This article is more than 5 months old
Ruling in Freddy McConnell case is first legal definition of a mother in English common law'
(extracts)

"Stonewall, the LGBT charity, said the ruling was “deeply disappointing” and failed to recognise trans parents for who they were. “It’s another example of how current legislation contradicts the fragile equality trans people currently have,” said Laura Russell, the director of campaigns.

Michael Wells-Greco, a partner at the law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, said the ruling “flies in the face of the social reality of this family” while the law firm Irwin Mitchell said it was time England “respect the human rights of the trans community” and follow Canada and Sweden, which allow gender neutral birth certificates.

The judge praised McConnell for “properly and bravely” bringing his case and said there was a “pressing need” for the 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”.

He said existing legislation and UK and European human rights case law “do not themselves directly engage with the central question”.

He conceded that “the social and psychological reality” of McConnell’s relationship with his child was as a father and this was in tension with the law as it stands.

In the Netherlands, for example, trans men who give birth are registered as fathers. (continues)

The registrar’s insistence McConnell be registered as “mother” appeared to him to be a result of an administrative need for every child to have a registered mother and was a breach of McConnell’s rights under the Human Rights Act 1998, his lawyers argued. Finally, those acting for the child applied under the Family Law Act 1986 for a declaration that McConnell was his father.

A representative for the child told the court that it was important for his identity and self-esteem that the birth certificate “reflects the reality of his life”.

“Father means male parent,” they said. “That is exactly what [McConnell] is. Anything else gives the impression of something secretive or shameful. This could lead [the child] to feeling excluded for society and that he is different or odd.”

McFarlane concluded the decision to register McConnell as a mother did not breach his or his child’s human rights and, given the Gender Recognition Act was both retrospective and prospective, it was also in line with that law.

The Aire Centre, a legal charity that helps people assert their human rights, also intervened in the case to highlight the right of children to be protected from discrimination due to the sexual orientation or gender identity of their parents, as well as children’s right to know their lineage.
www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/25/transgender-man-loses-court-battle-to-be-registered-as-father-freddy-mcconnell

A representative for the child told the court that it was important for his identity and self-esteem that the birth certificate “reflects the reality of his life”.

Agree. And the reality of the child's life is that McConnell is their biological mother, and a transman. That's the reality. McConnell may not always choose to identify as a transman. There will be no point at which McConnell will cease to be this child's biological mother.

“Father means male parent,” they said. “That is exactly what [McConnell] is. Anything else gives the impression of something secretive or shameful. This could lead [the child] to feeling excluded for society and that he is different or odd.”

Transmen are secretive and shameful? What? This is transphobic rubbish, surely? The child has a parent who is a transman. That's it. It's no big deal. It's fine. The one and only issue is the desire of that transman to be recognised falsely as biological male.

Reality isn't transphobic. The limits of personal choice around identity has to be other people's lives and realities.

I hoped we were past the days when the person who birthed you could be a shameful secret 😢

Is it intended for the child never to be told that its mother is McConnell? Surely it can't be the plan that when the child asks about its mother it is told a lie.

So if the child is told that its mother is McConnell, does that mean that the child is to keep this a secret? Because it's secretive or shameful in some way?

Will the child be told the truth, and how is the child to navigate this, seem be to considerations getting little weight compared to McConnell's feelings.

duLang exactly
we're only a couple of generations (if that) away from back when babies were commonly being separated from their mothers and given to be adopted purely because of illegitimacy. that stigma and separation has been terrible for so many people.
There’s no stigma about being a transman and having a child. It’s the reality distortion that seems to be being needed here that creates problems.

...given the Gender Recognition Act was both retrospective and prospective, it was also in line with that law.

Subsection (2) provides amplification of subsection (1), making clear that the recognition is not retrospective, so the certificate does not rewrite the gender history of the transsexual person
from: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/notes

Absolutely vital questions nauticant
Lying is awful for kids that much is obvious.

Its the sacred caste principle again, isn't it?

If any couple told an adoption agency they intended to hide the truth of the child's birth from them, they wouldn't be passed for adoption. There's decades of work on the need for children to know the truth of their circumstances, why, how to do it, whole support groups on it.

Is that child entitled to less, to abandonment of standards for all other children, because of the invocation of the 'rules don't apply' phrase? It's the usual 'put aside safeguarding' justification.

All this could be summed up in 'the child has rights and is the primary concern, not the grown up'.

And agree: this is a set up, financed test case.

There never will be as long as the GRA allows legal falsification of sex. We're either going to take the lie further and enforce it harder, or we're going to repeal the entire principle and start again.

Another vote to repeal.

(And incidentally those rules for ordinary people, like safeguarding, are based on an evolving picture from decade on decade of evidence, reviews, lessons learned, input from those devastated children coming back as adults to inform services on the damage to them and their lives..... WHY does all of that suddenly cease to matter if gender identity is involved?)

I've spoken to a couple of people who, not paying attention to trans issues generally, actually believed that men can give birth now. As in by some miracle of modern science. Because they'd seen 'men can give birth too!' and 'pregnant people' mentioned everywhere and hadn't given any thought to what was involved in those statements. When I questioned just how that worked then, blank faces. So I explained that it meant transgender men, not men gestating babies in their abdomen, womb transplants or something. To which one reaction was 'Oh! Well, that's not what I thought it meant, that's not exactly new and groundbreaking, is it?' The other reaction was just a facepalm!

How is McConnell going to get round the 'where did I come from' questions? Is Jack not going to be told that McConnell carried him and gave birth? Or is Jack going to be told that and that the basic biology lessons he gets taught in school aren't true? And is he going to argue against his friends when they tell him that only mummies have babies?

I can't help thinking that McConnell hasn't really thought this through

I seem to remember an article about Jack Nicholson finding his sister was actually his mother and his parents were actually his grandparents. It destroyed his world as he knew it.

Imagine finding out (if this goes through) that your 'father' is actually your mother. It will totally screw up the poor child involved's head.

Freddy isn't thinking of their child though. Freddy is only thinking of them self. Freddy is a very selfish individual.

And selfish individuals who are only thinking of themselves should not be the one’s to change laws.

I don’t understand how someone so traumatised at the even thought of being a woman - really wants a baby enough to go through and give birth. Why not a buy a surrogate mum if a blood related baby was the requirement? Was it all about the film and the ‘principle of the thing’?

To me ChattyLion, you can't lie to the child and if you don't, you can't force the child into secrecy over its parentage. At that point, when it has to be permissible for the child to tell whoever it wants that its mother is McConnell, then the incorrect birth certificate serves no purpose beyond McConnell having a sense of validation. But in achieving this, the child will see that a key part of its identity is a lie if it ever looks at its birth certificate.