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?

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.

@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?

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.

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.

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).