Womens liberation and lesbianism

[LesbianonFWR]

I've been reading this board for years. I'm a lesbian. It feels like until recently, there was a good appreciation here of the importance of lesbian rights to women's liberation and the womens' rights movement. If lesbians face discrimination and oppression, then it's harder to come out and lead a good life as a lesbian - more lesbians will get stuck in straight marriages that make them unhappy. More young lesbians will struggle with bullying at school. If lesbians who want to be parents are supported by the community in doing that, again, it makes it easier to imagine a good, fulfilling life as a lesbian. Easier to come out and live honestly for lesbians - that's important to women's liberation.

It suddenly feels more hostile to lesbians here. Does anyone else feel that, or is it just me? Like, there is reasonably regular criticism of lesbians who have kids by sperm donation, criticism of LGBT education/anti-bullying classes in schools as a whole. A general anti-LGBT feeling as a whole, which includes a feeling that lesbians are fine now in 2020 and just need to get over themselves and get on with it and not moan.

Maybe that's unfair, but it feels like there's quite a bit of talk about lesbians as "those people in the LGBT club over there" rather than as part of the women's liberation movement.

You're going to want examples aren't you, but I don't think I have the energy and anyway, then it would be a thread about a thread. It's more a feeling that this board is for straight women now. Does anyone else feel that?

[twoHopes]

This seems part of a growing sentiment that parents (especially mothers) must prioritise their child's needs over their own needs at all times and if they don't they are doing active harm. The idea that women must sacrifice themselves at the altar of child rearing and the nuclear family is exactly what many of us have been fighting against and it does seem strange to see people pushing that idea on a feminist forum.

I also don't think there's evidence that this is in the best interests of children as it puts enormous pressure on them (and risks turning them into little narcissists).

[jojomolo]

Yeah, I saw that one. I saw the one about insemination fraud where 5 or 6 posters agreed that donor conception was immoral anyway and so those women (impregnated by a rogue doctor) were asking for it. I've seen a bunch actually, now I think about it, ramping up a lot this year.

I think in general this is the hard work of feminism, though. If we think of feminism as at base an enlightenment critique of public and private power, then all our solutions are located within liberalism: freedom from patriarchal control (by father or husband instead of king) and access to law, education, and the market. And a lot of those solutions are both good and necessary. (I definitely appreciate my job, bank account and divorce!) But feminism also exposes the limits of liberalism, or of the idea of personal sovereignty and self determination, because there are some things in life we cannot consent to, chief among them: being born.

I don't imagine we will solve this problem in this thread as it's been a central confounding issue of feminism for 200 years! But maybe it's useful to identify it as a pressure point.

[LesbianonFWR]

Of course some kids have two mums or two dads because mum doesn’t always mean biological mum and we shouldn’t insist that it does

Elsiebear, maybe try and get involved in a local lesbian mums group (post-Covid, maybe) when the time's right and this might really help you feel better. The women doing the heavy lifting of mothering every day in a child's life are the child's mums. The child will know that and so will you.

God knows what someone thinks is to be gained by pointing at someone and saying, you're not the child's REAL mum. In real life, people generally apply some compassion and common sense and appreciate they that's an appalling thing to do. And they don't often do it. No-one has said this to my wife, not our child's biological mum - there have been a few tricky situations, a few assumptions made/unhelpful comments- but nothing like the sort of nastiness you've experienced here.

[RealityNotEssentialism]

@Elsiebear90

I agree with you OP, particularly regarding sperm donation being regarded as immoral and people calling for it to be banned. People are entitled to their opinions, but as a lesbian who will be going down the sperm donation route it does put me off posting about it on here, as I’m expecting to get flamed by a number of posters for being “selfish” and “putting my needs above the child”.

I remember one particular thread I did get involved in where I was told even if my partner uses my eggs and carries my baby, I’m not a mother and can’t expect to be called one. As someone with endometriosis who may never be able to carry a pregnancy myself, I have to say that really hurt, and again they’re entitled to their opinions, but it seems on here that with some posters anyway of having a child that is not “traditional” is viewed as selfish and immoral. Whereas heterosexual women that have children through PIV sex in terrible situations, that will undoubtedly negatively impact the child are almost always defended. There seems to be two sets of standards for who “deserves” to have a child and who is just being “selfish”, if you create a child through PIV sex you hardly ever fall in the selfish camp, but if you create one through assisted conception you almost always do.

Awful but I’m no longer surprised, sadly. Went through a few old threads just now and some people even seem to have a bizarre view that sperm donors are named on children’s birth certificates, which is completely wrong. It clearly states in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act that someone who provides donor material is not regarded as a parent and they absolutely do not appear on the birth certificate.

I also saw a thread recently with a poster saying that their 5 year old came home from school saying that some kids have two mums or two dads and she felt the need to immediately sit him down and give him a biology lesson about how that wasn’t possible and you must always have a man and a woman. Which is fair enough if the kid asks how it’s biologically possible but not really okay in the context described, where it was intended just to undermine the idea of alternative types of family. Of course some kids have two mums or two dads because mum doesn’t always mean biological mum and we shouldn’t insist that it does. After all, many people on here are at pains to point out that a surrogate mother is the real mother, when she will rarely be genetically related to the child because there will be a donor egg. If there is concern about sperm donation, what about egg donors? Does the child have a right to know the egg donor when that person didn’t give birth to the child?

[Elsiebear90]

I agree with you OP, particularly regarding sperm donation being regarded as immoral and people calling for it to be banned. People are entitled to their opinions, but as a lesbian who will be going down the sperm donation route it does put me off posting about it on here, as I’m expecting to get flamed by a number of posters for being “selfish” and “putting my needs above the child”.

I remember one particular thread I did get involved in where I was told even if my partner uses my eggs and carries my baby, I’m not a mother and can’t expect to be called one. As someone with endometriosis who may never be able to carry a pregnancy myself, I have to say that really hurt, and again they’re entitled to their opinions, but it seems on here that with some posters anyway of having a child that is not “traditional” is viewed as selfish and immoral. Whereas heterosexual women that have children through PIV sex in terrible situations, that will undoubtedly negatively impact the child are almost always defended. There seems to be two sets of standards for who “deserves” to have a child and who is just being “selfish”, if you create a child through PIV sex you hardly ever fall in the selfish camp, but if you create one through assisted conception you almost always do.

[LesbianonFWR]

Sometimes also with an explanation that they are really feminine now

This!!!

[RealityNotEssentialism]

@LesbianonFWR

Another thing I've seen sometimes is women who see themselves as having been gender non-conforming in childhood, explaining that they now have a husband and 3 children so it all ended well. Nothing wrong with telling your story - of course there isn't.

But sometimes there is the implication there - clearly or less clearly - that "phew, I'm straight and normal - these girls might end up lovely and straight and married and normal too". Not intentional, obviously. Not meant as homophobic. Not some terrible, shocking, injuring thing to say - but just a lack of awareness about how it sounds when you explain things in a particular way.

Yeah I have seen that too. Sometimes also with an explanation that they are really feminine now. I think it’s said with good intentions but it comes across as suggesting that they came to their senses and are now following the path all women should follow. Same with the ‘preserving fertility’ argument, especially if you simultaneously argue that the best place for kids to be raised is in a nuclear family.

You’re totally right that being donor-conceived is not an adverse childhood experience. The downside of it is growing up in a society where you are told that you are somehow lesser than someone who is raised by both their biological parents. That’s where I think the problem lies.

[LesbianonFWR]

Another thing I've seen sometimes is women who see themselves as having been gender non-conforming in childhood, explaining that they now have a husband and 3 children so it all ended well. Nothing wrong with telling your story - of course there isn't.

But sometimes there is the implication there - clearly or less clearly - that "phew, I'm straight and normal - these girls might end up lovely and straight and married and normal too". Not intentional, obviously. Not meant as homophobic. Not some terrible, shocking, injuring thing to say - but just a lack of awareness about how it sounds when you explain things in a particular way.

[LesbianonFWR]

Wouldn’t have happened here years ago but now there are several who chime in and say how awful it is for the child to not know their donor (which is rubbish because the research doesn’t suggest this at all)

And

The dumb thing about ppl who say this is that every time the kids of lesbian couples have their outcomes surveyed, their outcomes are good

Yes. There have been quite a lot of studies about how children fare with lesbian parents/after donor conception and (shock) they do well. But this doesn't seem to convince some posters, who say it's the sort of violation of the child's rights that wouldn't show up as the sort of harm a study could identify.
Which is odd - it must be a very special sort of scarring/damage then - as we know plenty about trauma/adverse childhood experiences and how they affect children and adolescents. It's almost as though lesbian parenting by donor conception doesn't cause any trauma and isn't an adverse experience. Who would have thought it.

[highame]

Just catching up but My feminist concern for young lesbians and trans issues is more around the current day lack of lesbian visibility/role models and the inability for lesbians to meet socially and organise politically without penis-people derailing them. Fertility preservation in gender distressed girls is immediately understood by the average woman or man on the street This fits in my bucket, this is the support needed, the attitudes needed.

[RealityNotEssentialism]

Also if you go on Relationships and actually if you just speak to the people you know and who they know, you will see how common abusive relationships are. Obviously they can go both ways but violence against women by intimate partners is endemic. Many of these women will have children who will witness the abuse, gaslighting and mistreatment. THAT is the stuff that fucks kids up, not being conceived by a donor and raised in a loving and supportive household. But nobody tells women that having children in a heterosexual relationship has a high risk of messing the child up, even though it is more likely to do so than being conceived through donation.

Also, the reason someone might be ‘messed up’ is not because there is some inbuilt biological need to only bond with those we are genetically related but because society tells us constantly that the nuclear family is the best family form and that we can’t be happy without a biological mum and a biological dad in our lives. If this message wasn’t sent out, I’d bet quite a lot of money that there would be fewer people ‘messed up’ by not having a relationship with genetic parents. And the research suggests that they aren’t messed up anyway, even kids born to surrogates! I’m against commercial surrogacy for other reasons but it’s simply not true that every child needs a nuclear family.

[RealityNotEssentialism]

OP, I don’t think you’re imagining it because I have noticed it too. I am bisexual not lesbian but I have noticed it. There has been an increasing number of posters who seem to argue that the nuclear heterosexual family is the only good way to bring up kids. Also increase of pro-conservative policies.

Yes, have seen the arguments re sperm donors. Wouldn’t have happened here years ago but now there are several who chime in and say how awful it is for the child to not know their donor (which is rubbish because the research doesn’t suggest this at all). Also support for parents protesting about LGBT teaching and pretending it was just about trans (the parents had literal placards about gay parents- it was not just about trans at all). Quite a few posts that seem pro biological essentialism and how women are hardwired to be nurturers. Basically all the stuff the second wave radfems rejected and fought against. It’s not everyone, that’s true. But it’s definitely noticeable.

[SophocIestheFox]

This is a really interesting thread, OP. I’ve not been aware of the issues you raise, but I’m going to be aware now that it’s been flagged as an issue. Feminism should always be woman centred, and therefore an explicitly welcoming space for lesbians, or something has gone wrong.

[NiceGerbil]

Wow again at this thread.

I'm. I don't know. There's too much to say. I got this bit.

'My desire to protect future fertility of DsD is way down the list compared to wanting her to have the opportunity to grow into a happy and content well-adjusted same sex attracted woman, whether that be lesbian or bisexual (she’s not sure yet, she’s only 14).'

Yeah when I was 14 I didn't want kids. I mean. Not on radar.

As a person who has a ?passed on defect.

I spent years in and out of hospital. Specialist children's hospitals. I thought. I won't ever have children. Because they might inherit this thing.

Anyway cut a long story short. I procreated in the standard way and my thing is not passed on. I was terrified though that they might inherit my disability. And it's fucked my life totally, you know? Not fun.

But my two children are just brilliant. Amazing. I love them so much.

You think it's ok to remove that option at 14????

Yeah, WTF.

What parent says I'm going to get my kid sterilised at 14 and that's... Fine.

I don't get it. At all.

[NiceGerbil]

Catching up again

'I’m in favor of male gamete donation being legal'

Yay! Good news for the bloke who donated his gametes up my leg on the tube. Also the fella who was getting near to producing gametes on the bus that time. And another chap in the park...

I am still baffled at the idea that semen is on a level with eggs.

And that any ??? around women getting pregnant with some donated come is in any way equivalent to IVF. Surrogacy.

This is bonkers. That fertile women are seeing IVF as a more cost effective option... When semen is plentiful and free...

Is nuts.

Of course most stuff is run by people who want to make money...

The whole thing sounds dodgy as fuck.

How has it become the norm that group fertile women who aren't with a man see it as more cost effective to go through IVF?

I can't get over that tbh.

They are after eggs seems like.

Not good.

[BlackWaveComing]

@LesbianonFWR

But you propose that they are letting their children down, and invoke morality

There is an inconsistency here between saying to young lesbians - "it's fine to be a lesbian! It's lovely! Nothing to worry about, you'll be fine." Purporting to support and care about lesbians.

And also - most of those grown up lesbians out there with families, they're doing it wrong. They are scarring their kids, they shouldn't be doing that. Holding us up to a higher standard of scrutiny than the rest of womanhood.

The dumb thing about ppl who say this is that every time the kids of lesbian couples have their outcomes surveyed, their outcomes are good.

There's no evidence to support an assertion that growing up in a lesbian household is bad for kids. The opposite, really.

[BlackWaveComing]

@Shedbuilder

Yeah, there's a quiet and often plausibly deniable homophobia rising that we haven't see for the last decade. I'm a lesbian, by the way.

The first thing to do, OP, is stop linking LGB and T. Separate it out. It's not the LGB anti-bullying groups who are doing the damage in schools. It's the fact that the transactivists have forcibly co-opted the LGB agenda and added the T to it that's so damaging and is turning people against the lot of us. So we need to break that link — and that involves never writing LGBT+ again, always LGB and T+ and making it clear they are not one thing. Join the LGB Alliance and start doing something about it. The LGBA is open to everyone who supports LGB people, not just LGB people.

I've just watched another little, secret lesbian group I'm part of (only 30 or 40 people) bite the dust because one of the members who was quietly woke took offence at someone saying something mildly critical of trans ideology and has outed the group on FB and invited all her trans friends and their friends to come to events. Another small tragedy, more lesbians who are unlikely ever to be able to socialise comfortably together. I mention this because I'm sitting here seething bitterly at the moment about the damage that lesbians are causing their own community. How this woman would square what she's done with being a feminist I don't know and will probably never learn.

There are often strong whiffs of homophobia here on Mumsnet, some of it subtly expressed and by a handful of names I'm beginning to recognise, including Goosefoot. I think it's become quite acceptable in right-on society for people to be scathing of lesbians. I went to a WPUK event a couple of years ago. The four female speakers were all straight and there was the occasional comment that assumed that everyone in the audience was too. During question time at the end a local female Labour councillor got up and said something along the lines of: 'I never used to have time for lesbians, but now I feel sorry for them.' I thought of all the lesbians I know who run voluntary sector services in her area, all the lesbian social workers and teachers, my lesbian friend in child protection and the DV shelter I know that's effectively run by dykes. And this sainted Labour councillor, a local legend herself, didn't have time for them. Would she have said the same thing about red-haired people, Asians, deaf people? No she bloody well wouldn't. That was the day I understood that I was going to have to move away from Labour.

This.

A handful of ppl expressing anti-lesbian attitudes. Probably not enough push back from het women.

Lesbians have often had our (het women's) backs. We need to have theirs.

[LesbianonFWR]

Hi @BettyDuKeiraBellisMyShero

Did you want me to talk about some of this stuff? That's fine, but I'm sure you could talk to your lesbian friends you know. It's not like you're being randomly nosy - you're concerned for your family member- and if you must be pretty close to provide an adoption reference! Have a chat, I say & I bet you feel better.

I will hold my hands up and say I know little about the processes and counselling involved in acquiring sperm through legal channels...Would love to hear more about it

I don't think you need to worry about this really...it might all be different if ever your DSD decides to have a baby like this and it'll all work itself out at the time. Clinic channels aren't the only 'legal' channels - it's legal to obtain sperm donations informally at home as well. I'm not aware of illegal channels for obtaining sperm . If you do go through a clinic you have to have quite a lot of health screening and so does the donor. For me, I remember questions about smoking, drinking, medication, medical history, general and family health, weight, STI tests etc. And the counselling looks at how you will talk about donor conception with your child, how they might feel etc.

I don't think you need to worry about DSD not having a lesbian relationship at home to model her future relationship on! I mean - virtually no lesbians had that, and many of us manage to form functional relationships in due course! I'm sure if you are loving and respectful at home, she'll see that and that's fine.

[FWRLurker]

How do they hold them all?

I’m in favor of male gamete donation being legal, however I still don’t necessarily see a contradiction with b assuming the main issue with medical transition in kids is the inability of children to properly consent to losing their fertility and drastically and irreversibly altering their bodies while their identities are still developing.

Also some may express some ethical qualms about any gamete donation but still, on balance, think it should be legal - particularly because of the importance of lesbians (or single women) being able to live separately from men if they wish.

[BettyDuKeiraBellisMyShero]

My desire to protect future fertility of DsD is way down the list compared to wanting her to have the opportunity to grow into a happy and content well-adjusted same sex attracted woman, whether that be lesbian or bisexual (she’s not sure yet, she’s only 14).
Wanting decisions that affect fertility to be made in adulthood does not mean not also being perfectly happy if she chooses to be child free, or the non birth mother (legally ‘parent 2’) in a lesbian relationship.

Some years ago, back in the bad old days of lesbians having to adopt their own children in order for both to have legal parental responsibility, I had several meetings with a social worker as a lesbian friends non-relative reference. It felt unnecessarily intrusive, although I do understand why adoption (and that’s what it was in a legal sense) needs to be so carefully and cautiously vetted. Happily, by the time my friend and her now wife came to have their second child, the law had changed both on legal recognition of same sex partnerships and on legal parental responsibility in lesbian partnerships.

My feminist concern for young lesbians and trans issues is more around the current day lack of lesbian visibility/role models and the inability for lesbians to meet socially and organise politically without penis-people derailing them. Fertility preservation in gender distressed girls is immediately understood by the average woman or man on the street, but it’s only time me part of a bigger picture.

I will hold my hands up and say I know little about the processes and counselling involved in acquiring sperm through legal channels, despite having two lesbian couples and one single lesbian in my circle, more because of not wanting to invade privacy than disinterest. Would love to hear more about it in a one-step-removed conversation (ie, on an Internet forum) but for want it’s worth, it has never once occurred to me that the lesbian mothers I know are any lesser than any other mother (and certainly more prepared/better at handling the awkward questions from their offspring than many single mothers by accident or circumstance - I had a baby on my own from a causal relationship 20 years ago, and my lesbian cousin has said how I made it easier for her to decide on sperm donation a decade and a half later, because I had already dismantled all the ‘no father’ stigma in our family, albeit by accident 😂)

So I am on the page of ‘more in common than divides us’ and willing to listen and learn re: specific lesbian experience (whilst also having serious, sometimes conflicting, thought re: reproductive technology and it’s potential harms to women and children).

We are only going to be able to organise those internal and external conflicts through education discussion, although I understand why a straight person asking for ‘discussion’ might sound like a demand for ‘justification’, I promise it isn’t intended to be.

One of the problems I am personally experiencing is how much harder it is to raise a same sex attracted adolescent in a heterosexual family set up than it is to raise a heterosexual adolescent (we cannot model healthy, normal same sex relationships ourselves, so need to seek out those role models externally) and I expect some of that cuts the other way, although perhaps less so if only because heterosexuality is the norm. Perhaps a more pertinent comparison is lesbians raising sons/ gay men raising daughters?

How to we move forward, in the understanding that all feminists want to centre women and girls, but have different life experiences?

Ie, I support the rights of lesbians to have lesbian only spaces (and can see why it’s not just a nice to have thing, but a vital thing) and straight women entering lesbian spaces to finger point is rude/stupid/annoying/missing the point (to refer to the example from elsewhere earlier in this thread) but how do we ensure open communication and prevent the kinds of IdPol silos that reinforce division rather than entrench them?

We have common goals, and empathy. Let’s tap into those.

I prefer Mumsnet to the more general GC feminist subs because the common goal is easier to locate, I think? Will ponder some more.

[Stripesnomore]

I am not finding it personal at all and agree with many of the points you and the OP have made. I just find it gets a bit pointless to continue trying to explain if we end up talking at cross purposes.

I am also perhaps not being helpful by homing in on one point rather than writing something broader.

[NiceGerbil]

This isn't personal btw stripes I don't tend to pay a huge amount of attention to who posts what unless there's a big reason to.

I just respond to bits and bobs that jump out at me.

I've just had a look at your posts and I'm not saying you're a terrible person or anything. Just that a couple of things you said I had some stuff I wanted to say about them.

[Stripesnomore]

As I have said, I didn’t introduce the term morality into this conversation.

It is a bit of a leap to jump from morality to the immorality police in Iran. Hopefully we all have moral principles without thinking this makes us the immorality police.

[NiceGerbil]

I'm not outraged at all.

Just finding this interesting and putting my view across.

If moral is not a loaded term then immoral isn't either. Hmmm.

In some countries they literally have morality police who check that women are covered up properly and beat them/ arrest them if they aren't.

Google gave me this which is a more encouraging article on it than the usual!

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/02/19/middleeast/iran-morality-police-intl/index.html

[Stripesnomore]

I don’t find moral a loaded term, and my use of the term moral was literally in a post where I quoted the OP using it.

You are both just looking for something to get outraged about, by inventing meanings and statements that were never made.