YogabirthUK cancel event after Freddy McConnell flounce

[WinterTrees]

Saw this on twitter this morning but can't see a thread here.

Milli Hill was supposed to be appearing at an event run by YogabirthUK entitled 'Gender and Birth: A space to listen.' Milli was lined up to appear alongside Freddy McConnell and another speaker, but Freddy pulled out after the event was announced, on the grounds that Freddy could not appear 'alongside/after/in the same remote vicinity' as a birth specialist who recognises biological sex.

Full tantrum available here. twitter.com/millihill/status/1498060037536714752

The YogabirthUK Instagram link is worth looking at too. Lots of support for Milli Hill and regret about the cancellation of an event that was literally supposed to be providing 'space to listen', but the TRA input is interesting and very telling. (Spoiler alert: TRA claims MH is a disgusting transphobe for being exclusionary to transwomen when - crucially - Freddy is a transman. And excluded Freddyself.)

I am having one of those days when my patience with all this feels very thin. Very thin indeed.

Some very selfish people have kids, they really do. Children need stability and ‘boring home life’ (as a teacher I know said - no high drama, just consistent, stable and predictable). these children will ‘accept’ their life - of course they will. How many single mums tick along fine until the kids get to school and then get antsy about not having dad, why haven’t they got dad, why doesn’t dad live with them, can they have a sibling, why can’t they have a sibling, how come they’re friend goes on holiday and has a house and a dad… etc etc etc

Among others, one of the reasons I didn’t have children is because I always considered myself too selfish to put the needs of a child before my own, which to me is an important part of being a good parent.

And then I read about situations like this and realise I would have been like fricking Demeter in comparison

I never got the thing about the Swedish birth certificate. They don't have one as such - just a "Population registration certificate Extract from the Population Register"

"Sweden does not issue international birth certificates as other countries do. The document corresponding to the birth certificate is the population registration certificate Extract from the Population Register. "

www.skatteverket.se/servicelankar/otherlanguages/inenglish/individualsandemployees/livinginsweden/newparents.4.7be5268414bea064694c754.html

Reading about it, it does not seem too dissimilar to the UK register of births, except you get a number and it is a tax register. All family relationships are also listed and father is listed similarly to UK in that it is only automatic if the parents are married. Otherwise there is a further process. If you want a UK passport, you will need to supply a copy of the whole registration along with familial relationships.

@loislovesstewie

For goodness’ sake; when will Freddie realize that human men don't give birth? I really do struggle with this nonsense.

Given they didn’t seem to know women need breasts and nipples to breastfeed I think it’s fair to say they are clueless about human biology

Someone donated £1000 to the GFM (which is still active as I write this post) 24 days ago. Someone else “1 month” ago.

FM’s mother set up the GFM & included an undertaking to refund contributions should Freddy, for any reason be unable to travel to Sweden - there was no mention of a second/alternative project. So, err…?

Shutting down the GFM obviously isn’t going to be your first thought when your grandchild needs to turn up early; but it’s long LONG overdue now. Doing so should also have been planned for - including account details being shared with a trusted 3rd party (I’m assuming here Freddy knows them) so that it could be shut down & funds returned as promised as soon as it was apparent Freddy wasn’t going to Sweden; or, had the worst happened (& - I cannot stress this enough - thank God it didn’t!) they could have explained & repurposed the page for funeral expenses (with offer of refunds to donors), which you’d obviously not expect FM’s mother to feel up to doing right then.

There’s no way FM wasn’t told that taking testosterone puts the developing foetus at risk - is FM claiming that to be a complete shock as with the “you need breasts to breastfeed?!” information? Or is FM just ignoring that bit, because FM deliberately & determinedly doing something that causes their child harm rather goes against the narrative that this is magical wonderful & to be lauded. Women who simply happen to be of an age where they might have children have their treatment regimes determined by not causing harm to hypothetical foetuses even if they’re very clear about never having children. Ugh.

Surely he wasn’t on testosterone when he was pregnant?

That sentence makes no sense in my head.

Oh bloody hell, the baby arrived 7 weeks ago

@DobbyTheHouseElk

Surely he wasn’t on testosterone when he was pregnant?

That sentence makes no sense in my head.

I hope not, @DobbyTheHouseElk.

The problem is that a lot of transmen are buying "top up" testosterone online. They are seeing their GP and then buying privately or just illegally. So, who knows?

It's the long term effects of having a reproductive tract that's affected by the cross sex hormones that we need to know about.

We don't know it means. No one knows. But, we do know that older women's uteruses are not as efficient at growing and supporting a placenta as a younger woman.

So, there's that.

Sorry @DobbyTheHouseElk, I phrased that very VERY badly - certainly, as Freddie explains here he came off it while trying to conceive (though you CAN conceive while taking it) - but just stopping it while TTC [& pregnant] doesn’t actually make the body bounce right back.

What I was failing to communicate with any clarity (sorry) is how much it troubles me that there are some drugs they will go to great lengths to avoid giving [girls &] women due to purely hypothetical future children; but no such caution seems to be being applied to CSH & trans men (as completely separate issue from puberty blockers in child population).

As side note, article is quite interesting in terms of FM knowing better than everyone else but also refusing to accept any kind of responsibility for their own actions: it’s not Freddy’s fault he failed to follow instructions & drink enough water to have a full bladder for their appointment at the end of the day. No, the resultant discomfort was the fault of the nurse* doing the scan. Freddy was totally set to blame them should he not get pregnant, too.

It would be fascinating to find out whether the other parents who think Freddy is so “cool” really do view him as “a single dad” as he claims, or if they’re just being kind because FM still reads to them as female

*a nurse rather than the allied HCP you’d expect, according to Freddy…

Pregnant women can’t take over the counter cold medicine because there’s not enough research on it, but pregnant men can take testosterone? I had waiters sitting at the table googling safe cheese for me (not at my request!) when I was pregnant.

I’m sensing law suits.

I’m also increasingly concerned for F.

Yep it's bizarre isn't it?
The world seems to "own" a pregnant woman with all the rules and regulations we follow.
Don't eat soft cheeses, don't eat nuts, no alcohol, no tuna fish, absolutely don't smoke, no flying after X weeks, no pate', don't have hot baths, don't lie on your back for too long, no aggressive sports, no medications that are not approved by your doctor, the list is endless.

If you were to smoke or drink whilst visibly pregnant in public, you would certainly get some looks and maybe even comments.

But......utter the magic words "trans" and you can pump your body full of God knows what (testosterone if your are a FTM, (and also with regards to the health of a baby post-birth, Domperidone if you are a MTF trying to use a "breastfeeding" lactation stimulation protocol).

It's almost as if the needs of the trans parent massively outweigh the needs and safety of the foetus!
Who'd have thought it?

You can’t dick about with hormones. Even a slight fluctuation naturally can cause all sorts of conditions and affect fertility we know that. I can’t begin the imagine the implications of taking a male hormone for so long before becoming pregnant or even during pregnancy.

It will pass to the child. Our body isn’t designed for this artificial state of flux. As pp mentioned. Medication for various problems like acne, can’t be given to girls or women incase they become pregnant for some time after they have taken the medication because it’s known to cause birth defects.

I just don’t understand what Freddy is aiming for. Is this a huge vanity project?

His mental state must be very fragile. I do think people are kind to him because he seems very vulnerable.

Yes, but most parents learn very early on that it isn't kind to give in to your child's every whim. You have to learn to say no and mean it. As your child grows up, it becomes clear some are not as mentally strong and resilient as others. Your job then is not to wrap that child in cotton wool and assist them in avoiding everything they fear, or nod along to every deluded thought they have. Terrifying as it is, your job is to be there to support them while they do their best to cope, and to look after them if they have a setback. Also, to hold firm about what's true and real and immovable.

We would all recognise that a parent who colluded with a child with an eating disorder was failing in their basic duty of care. The kind thing there, no matter what the child says at the time, is to get them professional help.

If he has a passport, he has a birth certificate.

I thought the same but it was ruled by the judge that a passport would be issued.

Bloody expensive way of getting passport, by circumventing the system through the courts. Maybe the lawyers worked pro-bono - still applying the usual way would have been cheaper once you consider the train tickets to get to court hearings etc.

I'm inclined to agree that it's a vanity project and baby two is part of that. Both conceived with the same sperm donor, will they know their genetic father exists if their whole lives they are told their mother is actually their father?

Born slightly premature, small but bigger than they thought.

Could T have been the cause or related to a small placenta?

I thought the same but it was ruled by the judge that a passport would be issued.

Without a birth certificate? But it's a legal requirement to register a birth. Why was Freddy not ordered to register the birth and fined for late registration?

I just don’t understand what Freddy is aiming for. Is this a huge vanity project?

His mental state must be very fragile. I do think people are kind to him because he seems very vulnerable.

Did you see Freddy's seahorse film? Freddy appeared to have been g***d by some people Freddy met at university in Scotland (a long way from Freddy's family in the south of England).

I don't know who is behind this but I suspect the end game is for male people to be named as 'mother' on a birth certificate. Because female people are only ever a distraction and diversion in this male rights movement.

Well of course, he might face some tough questions that there's no logical answer for in that case.

@OldCrone

I thought the same but it was ruled by the judge that a passport would be issued.

Without a birth certificate? But it's a legal requirement to register a birth. Why was Freddy not ordered to register the birth and fined for late registration?

Good questions. All very good questions.

I'll have to look it up but I'm pretty sure the usual passport application was bypassed and approved by the judge - I guess it could be argued under human rights (freedom of movement/discrimination.)

That sets a precedent doesn't it? Would F need to go to court to do the same for the second child?

It will be interesting to see how the court case with the European court of human rights progresses.

I do appreciate that it must be very stressful on top of what I imagine to be a very busy life with little income and a newborn but it isn't something imposed on F, but sought out.

That sets a precedent doesn't it?

Yes it does. And a very worrying one. It says that people with certain beliefs and agendas can bypass the normal legal requirement to register the birth of a child if they disagree with some aspect of the process.

How will someone with what we can assume Freddy’s beliefs are, describe their own pregnancy? The contribution of their own egg? What will the conversation be when their kids start school and ask why they don’t have a mum? Who gave birth to them? It’s a huge ask for a child to accept that a parent was born of one sex but now prefers to be known as another.
But saying you actually are now of a different sex is completely different to that. Unless you avoid that question by saying you’ve always been a man and denying your female history completely? Or saying you were ‘born in the wrong body’?

Accepting any of those, would require the child to suspend facts and reality for the parent’s sake or parental happiness. Not accepting the parent’s narrative will come at personal cost to the child. There will be a lot of questions that the child presumably couldn’t comfortably ask for fear of upsetting the parent. All of us tend to get upset about secrets kept in families. We all find cognitive dissonance very difficult.

I think it likely that children who have effecting been gaslit fro birth, will grow up believing that F is their dad.

The wheels may wobble a bit when they get to biology class at school, returning home with the idea that day, SJ, a boy, will grow into a man and be able to have a 'baby in his tummy' and be a dad that way.

This can easily be 'corrected' is biological reality is acknowledge and there is an admission that sex and gender identity are two different things. I think it's possible that this will be the conclusion F comes to as a parent in that situation.

There are trans people who recognise their sex, I'm not sure which way F would go on this. So far, from all social media, the documentary, the involvement in advising NHS trusts etc, I'm not sure that will be possible, but with kids you tend to tell the the truth in an age-appropriate way.

SJ cannot give birth to a child and it wouldn't Be Kind to let that be an idea that is sustained into the teenage years.

(Unless by then womb implants are a routine operation.)

It's interesting that FM seems to say that their first child doesn't have a birth certificate and yet in the a

"When his child received a birth certificate, McConnell was listed as “mother” because he gave birth, though his sex is legally male. He started on the lengthy process of filing a lawsuit to have that changed.

“Someone's birth certificate is not the be-all and end-all. It's not that I think that the birth certificate is what defines who I am, or my relationship to my child at all,” he says. “Obviously, all the trans men out there that have incorrect birth certificates doesn't change who they are, but if we live in a society that puts significance in these pieces of paper, then it has to be accurate.”"

f doesn’t acknowledge the birth cert then. Otherwise how will this kid get jabs, register for a doctor, have child benefit laid, register for a nursery or school, travel…

Someone is just saying why they want to be true.

Sorry, fat fingers!
Meant to say: in the article linked above by nitronine

Also interesting what FM thinks accurate means.