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

I seriously hope social services are keeping an eye on the children born to these 'dads'. Something is very wrong here.

I'm very happy that Freddy had a baby. I dont see any reason why Freddy should have tried to get a surrogate. I just dont see why Freddy cant give their child the gift of accurate information- that Freddy gave birth to them as their mother - while being 'dad' to them in everyday life. There arent any definitions of how to be a dad

Oh yes - but I agree that Freddy should have his GRC cancelled.

Quite right whatwouldJesusdo

I've been stewing in this today. I can imagine that this little boy will be raised to truly believe, as he will be taught, that men become fathers by a doctor putting a baby inside them and that fathers give birth, regardless of the ruling. No one is going to do anything but affirm that with in the family, given the circumstances.

Then if a teacher doesn't correct or replace this learning with biological fact and if this expands, as it has been doing, into schools even further, a whole generation of children could not only be gaslit and misinformed but at a loss as to why this is what they were taught when they grow up and want to start a family. It's not only confusing it's lies and will be devastating to learn how far that lie extended.

I am prone to catastrophising but given the proposal here, from Freddy, it really is being made about Freddy, when it's not even about just Freddy, or just Freddy and the boy but really about what we know to be true and what are children will be taught what we know to be untrue.

Lord, please let common sense and biology prevail here, so much depends on it.

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?

Freddie McConnell describes asking one of the children (age unknown) another transmen on the panel at recent conference how they felt to have a 'seahorse father' & the child responding that they "felt special".

What a way to fuck with a child’s head . A seahorse daddy. Jesus.

There is literally a movie detailing this child's conception, implantation, gestation and birth. His mother's identity isn't concealed, it is publicised, in the movie and in multiple media articles and in a court case and now an appeal. The court record concluded that Freddy was this child's mother.
It's both biological fact, and was determined to be legal fact.

There is no possible world this child can grow up into that will shield him from those documented facts. He can literally watch the documentary of his own birth. As can all his peers.

The question is not about concealing the facts of how this child came to exist, and whose female body created and birthed him.

The question is whether the courts will agree that birth certificates record mother as 'person who gave birth' or whether they will redefine mother into something entirely incorrect that affects every woman who has ever given birth, leaving those of us who DO give birth with no legal and distinct recognition.

I'm going to keep banging on about this.
All of these attempts are aimed at divorcing biologically female people from any remaining label that can distinguish us from male people.

If you can't legally distinguish us from the opposite sex, we don't exist as a group with rights.

The whole seahorse thing drives me mad. Male seahorses gestate the young. They don’t supply the egg, they are supplied by female seahorses. The film Junior is a more accurate representation of a seahorse father FFS.

@Clymene

I presume Jack will be told that Freddie is his father and gave birth to him. He will be told that Males can give birth and that his father gave birth to him. When Jack has a biology lesson in school (If Freddie gets their way) the whole class will be told that both men and women can give birth. Jack will be able to talk about his very special father who gave birth to him. The whole class will be tested on this information and any child who doesn't say that both women and men, mothers and fathers can get pregnant and give birth will not only fail the test but will have to be "re-educated".

It will be a bit of a shock for Jack and the other little boys in the class when they grow up and realize that they have been lied to

Meant to add when Jack and the other boys in his class grow up and want to get pregnant and give birth themselves. Then they will realize they have been lied to...

I was just reading a thread started by Stephen Whittle (April 2018)

His comment is likely relevent to this case:

(extract)
2.) Do you believe it is acceptable that subjective ‘feelings’ be enshrined in law over objective fact?

I am not sure. That is a complex question.
Is being a mother or father an objective matter, or is it subjective, or does it contain both?
And if it contains both, which of those is enshrined upon a birth certificate – after all, for centuries men have been named as fathers on birth certificates, and then become fathers to the children, but another person was the biological fecundator.

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 does not enshrine subjective feelings, it allows the state to acknowledge the gender role the person permanently presents to the world, and recognises that without placing them in the other male/female category, the person and their families can face severe disadvantage.

There were several reasons why I lobbied and campaigned for the Gender Recognition Act 2004.
However, my primary reason was that without it, I could have no legal relationship to the children I raised with my partner, and to whom I was ‘dad’ (nb. from a young age our kids gradually learnt about my history and biology in an age appropriate way – but that’s another story).

If my partner – the biological mother of our children had died, social services would have taken the children into foster care and then spent time determining if I was good enough person to care for them – I could not think of anything worse that could be done to our children if such a terrible thing happened as their mother dying.

When we did a step parent adoption, after the law changed, that took 2 years of assessments before I could become a step-parent.

Two years - i wonder how long the kids would have been in foster care whilst we waited an assessment to see if I was a 'good enough' human to care for them."

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3212371-Where-are-all-the-trans-men-An-Answer?pg=3&messages=100

Whittle took his case to be named on the birth certificate of the children his partner gave birth to to the European courts & was successful.

"role"

there it is again.

Every time. These people play this role, those people play that role. Role playing is the defining reality, keep the roles, name the roles, elevate the roles, attach roles to male and female labels, detach biology.

Isn't all that irrelevant now though R0wan? Now civil partnerships are legally recognised, whittle doesn't need a GRC to be recognised as a child's parent.

So another reason why the GRA should be repealed - it's been superseded.

That's really interesting R0 what was the judgement? That Whittle was on the birth certificate despite not having any birth, biological or genetic relationship with the children?

Those pesky safeguarding measures put in place to protect children sure do make a nuisance of themselves when it comes to how someone feels about themselves doesn't it?

Whittle claims that the children would have been taken into care of the mother died but that conjecture. If it was in the best interested of the children to stay with the person they considered their father (no comment) then social services would be able to see that.

For goodness sake...

Whittle is the adoptive father, via ‘step parent adoption’.

www.familylives.org.uk/advice/your-family/stepfamilies/stepfamilies-legal-information/adopting-stepchildren/

2007 Guardian interview
(extract)
The answer, in the UK at least, would appear to be a very long way in the 10 years since he co-founded the pressure group Press for Change. And the Manchester of the 1970s, where he first became active in the politics of gender and sexual orientation, seems light years away.

"At one time, we transsexuals were what other people wiped off the bottom of their shoes," he says. This is a man who knows what it's like to lose jobs on the basis of what he is rather than what he could do, a former self-employed builder who took a part-time law degree to further his business interests and then discovered that he could use the law to "fight back", as he puts it, against the injustices he feels have dogged him for most of his life. This is a husband and father who went as far as the European Court of Human Rights so that his long-term partner could be impregnated through artificial insemination and his name could be on their children's birth certificate.

"I'm just a bolshie bastard with an overwhelming desire for equality and justice," he says. And one who was made an OBE in the New Years honours list of 2005. "That said something very important about the way this country has changed," he maintains. "The government is now conceding that we've earned our stripes. We're included."

He claims that the six categories that now come under the umbrella of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights have been joined by a seventh: "When the CEHR recently published its equality review, alongside it was a research project that I led into the unlawful discrimination experienced by transsexuals and transvestites."

Whittle has been campaigning against that discrimination for three decades - hence the honour - but only in the past few years has there been significant progress at government level, he feels. The Gender Recognition Act gave him the chance, in June 2005, to marry Sarah, a psychiatric nurse who has been his partner since 1979. " (continues)

www.theguardian.com/society/2007/apr/17/socialcare.highereducationprofile

Every time. These people play this role, those people play that role. Role playing is the defining reality, keep the roles, name the roles, elevate the roles, attach roles to male and female labels, detach biology.

YY Barracker
I was just re-reading Stephen Whittle's 2018 thread with its opening anecdotes of trans men digging gardens, having pints, mending taps & being strong silent types.
The majority of the thread is about Whittle's diregard/lack of understanding of Safeguarding.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3212371-Where-are-all-the-trans-men-An-Answer?

Whittle is the adoptive father, via ‘step parent adoption’.

In other words there were many other perfectly ordinary, straight forward ways to have achieved what was wanted in the same way everyone else does.

It just proved a useful trojan horse/special pleading to set precedents, and involved special recognition.

If it is just a parental role then what if my DH runs off with OW? Should I take him of the children's birth certificates? What if I die, should DH have me removed from their birth certificates? What if he remarries? Put the new Mrs Bam on there?

If a birth certificate is about parental roles not biology why not?

If a parent transitions after a child is born they aren’t allowed to go back and change the name on the child’s birth certificate or pretend they came out of a different human. That was one of the few things in the original GRA they were adamant would not happen.

Freddy is a wedge. Let’s not alone Freddy to lever the door so that transwidows have to have a second mother retrospectively added to their children’s birth certificates.

I assume the sex of the person who pushed the baby out - at time of birth -would have a factor on the birth certificate!

You would hope so! Who knows? 🤡

Gestation occurs in mammals, it refers to the fetus growing inside the uterus and built from the mothers body.
Male seahorses don't gestate the young; there is no umbilicus that attaches the young to the male. the fetus has an umbilicus attached to a yolk sac.

Freddy is a wedge. Let’s not alone Freddy to lever the door so that transwidows have to have a second mother retrospectively added to their children’s birth certificates.

Which in theory could enable some males who identify as women being placed in mother & baby facilities?

Freddy is a wedge. Let’s not alone Freddy to lever the door so that transwidows have to have a second mother retrospectively added to their children’s birth certificates.

So many times this ^^

I can't express the visceral fury I feel at the idea of my title "mother" being usurped.