Carly-May Kavanagh

[NitroNine]

There are rumours circulating on Twitter that Carly-May Kavanagh (the one who screams at babies: Daily Mail) has, despite her “apology” been suspended from the Labour Party. Presumably such a suspension would have an impact on her job as Lloyd Russell-Moyle‘s head of policy?

Apparently if she is suspended it [probably] won’t be made public. Given the reason for her [potential] suspension; if Labour actually do take action, you’d think they’d want to reassure people that they expect their members to uphold certain standards. I mean, “not screaming abuse at infants” is less upholding a standard than it is failing to trip over pebbles of basic decency…

Clearly one cannot put too much weight into Random Person Says Unevidenced Thing. However, it would be a foolish rumour to start without cause, so I thought it was worth starting a thread here to see if there are developments to follow.

Should Kavanagh face consequences for her behaviour it will be a watershed moment: Labour acknowledging women have rights all their own, including the rights to assemble & to speak on issues of concern to them, such as their need for single sex provisions.

No need to apologise but I'd prefer it if you didn't say it in front of my donor conceived children.

Are they Mumsnetters?

I'm not a supporter of PP.

I don't support any form of assisted conception, regardless of the sex or sexual orientation of the parties.

Lesbians have struggled (and still struggle) to get equality in fertility treatment and to be recognised as equal to straight parents.

For someone like PP with a big platform to blithely say she is totally in opposition to donor conception and IVF is very damaging to lesbians.

Lesbians are not the only party with a stake here, there are conflicting needs with those women supplying the donor eggs (who themselves aren't necessarily straight). Why isn't Posy allowed to talk about these women, who can be very vulnerable in the process?

Its not just commissioning parents whose needs matter.

Having a look at the Human fertility Association figures for 2019:

1877 egg donations registered
2386 sperm donations registered

www.hfea.gov.uk/about-us/publications/research-and-data/fertility-treatment-2019-trends-and-figures/

I am calling 'bullshit' that the first thing that comes to the general populations mind when hearing 'donor conception' is sperm donation through assisted pregnancy. Because it is really quite clear that there is not a huge difference in numbers.

Right.... still didn't answer the question.

When you call out people for 'bullying' behaviour, do you also now recognise that having a whole page dedicated to vilifying another woman who is also working in the same movement, just with different methods and there may be a difference in opinion, is extreme bullying?

Do you recognise the hypocrisy there?

This guilt-by-association tactic is actually very disturbing and I often see it from the authoritarian left. Not only is anyone to the right of wokesters now a far-right fascist, being in their vicinity makes you one two. Honestly, seeing fairly ordinary conservatives being described as fascist and having that go unchallenged (not here, but in other places online) makes me wonder where these people would actually set the centre.

Posie made a very good point in a recent video. The people who turn up at her events are there to listen to her, and the other women who speak up. She's not attending events run by Hearts of Oak or whoever and listening to what they have to say. They're listening to her. And right-wing women are women too, who deserve sex-based rights.

"Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don't like, including all the women you don't want to be around, including all the women who used to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with anymore. It doesn't matter who the individual women are." - Andrea Dworkin

I know Posie doesn't consider herself a feminist, but her argument about the urgency of the fight is compelling. The house is on fire. Are you going to turn down water because you don't like the person holding the bucket?

(and for something lighter, here's how the TRAs who cry fascist sound to me - )

No need to apologise but I'd prefer it if you didn't say it in front of my donor conceived children.

OK... so, your children were conceived using donor eggs? Because you are still lumping sperm donation into together to vilify someone who is like many other prominent feminists in her stating that egg donation is a potential life harming process for females and is full of potentially coercive and exploitative opportunities.

And to me, that is a pretty major judgement call error.

I think that we may see an awful lot of reassessment of existing rights to see if as a society we really do think they are rights and not privileges This will come about as the insane TQ+ unravels and certain other things end up being re-examined at the same time.

It seems to me that the right for ANYONE to access fertility treatments is much more akin to a TRA-demanded privilege (the right for certain men to be treated as women) than a universal right such as the right not to be sacked for being gay.

For someone like PP with a big platform to blithely say she is totally in opposition to donor conception and IVF is very damaging to lesbians.

donor conception and IVF can be very damaging to lesbians any female and those practices should be discussed with a great deal of honesty to ensure females are never exploited for the reproductive desires of others.

I think that we may see an awful lot of reassessment of existing rights to see if as a society we really do think they are rights and not privileges. It seems to me that the right for ANYONE to access fertility treatments is much more akin to a TRA-demanded privilege.

Whoa. WHOA.

Okay I am going to bow out for a while. I genuinely need to reassess my thinking on some things and some feminist activism I'm involved with. I couldn't live with myself if I was supporting a movement that was seeking to remove rights from lesbians.

Yay!

this is my current choon of choice - can’t believe it’s five years old already - it’s as if the singer had some sort of premonition.

(I posted it many pages up thread but I’m delighted to see it being posted by someone else).

The Boy Who Cried Wolf needs a 2022 update,

‘The Social Justice Identitarians Who Cried Fascist’

perhaps?

Ok. Then local feminist groups need to also then own up that they support exploitative practices of other females, if they themselves are not perfectly clear.

They need to be clear if they do or do not support donor egg conception and surrogacy.

Just because one group relies on this form of conception (donor egg), does that make it ok?

Has your group clearly published that it is not supporting potential exploitation of other female bodies to achieve the desire of having a family? Yes or no?

It seems to me that the right for ANYONE to access fertility treatments is much more akin to a TRA-demanded privilege.
It is exactly that when gay men use the argument in support of surrogacy (the logical consequence being ok, if it's your right, when do we start compelling women to be surrogates?)

One group benefitting from a practice that may/ does harm others cannot be used as the sole argument for justifying that practice.

What the actual fuck, Sappho?

Do you, or do you not support egg donation if the female who donates has been coerced in any way?

This is actually a pretty clear feminist issue. If your group is demanding that it is acceptable to exploit a female for their egg donation (and of course there will be those who are not coerced), how is this acceptable?

It's interesting to see the donor egg situation approached in a very similar way to the Trans arguments.

I.e There is a clear conflict of rights/needs/ desires.

One position is to engage only with one side, refuse to even acknowledge the needs of the other side that are being compromised, declare anyone trying to balance the conversation to be 'phobic' or 'discriminatory'.

In both cases, vulnerable, marginalised women are the ones thrown under the bus.

I think a lot of people (and I've noticed this particularly with detransitioners) may superficially change their view on some issues, but they don't actually change the way they think about things.

For the record, I do not see anything at all on that Brighton feminist website about whether they support other female bodies being part of a potentially exploitative fertility process or not.

All I have seen is a whole page dedicated to vilifying another woman who has different opinions on some things but is still working effectively to support female single sex spaces.

I'm a bit confused.

Why do lesbians particularly need egg donors?

And I want to be clear here. No chance of misinterpretation.

If you have realised that other feminists (including some of those you suggested were excellent feminists) do not support the potential for female bodies to be exploited to harvest eggs to assist other females to have a family (and again, I want to be clear, I am not including enthusiastic and full knowledgable consent for egg donation from a friend, partner or family) does this mean you consider those feminists to be 'removing rights from lesbians'?

Or have you read something into that quote you have posted that makes you think that anyone is trying to remove rights specifically from same sex couples?

Why would they particularly need them more than the general population?

This is the question.

Well in theory they would need them less than a heterosexual couple.

Bit weird to only just notice that you’ve been fraternising with women who have serious reservations about reproductive technology when it’s been part of radical feminist discourse since the 1970s (before the tech was actually available)

Here’s Janice Raymond in 1994:

www.nytimes.com/1994/02/06/books/can-t-win-for-losing.html

Posie often name checks Sheila Jeffreys and Julia Long, both radical, separatist, lesbian, feminists with strong opinions on reproductive technology.

Here’s a Sheila Jeffreys article from 2014 on surrogacy that starts by pointing out that the commercial surrogacy industry would not exist without it’s predecessor, IVF:

This industry is an offshoot of the very profitable reproductive technology industry, which created, through IVF, the possibility of persons buying children in the marketplace.

theconversation.com/reject-commercial-surrogacy-as-another-form-of-human-trafficking-30314

Good intentions paved the road but the consequences are dire, and many of those dire consequences were anticipated by radical feminists long before anyone else noticed (reminds me of another issue currently affecting women and children!)

Now that I’m thinking about it, the majority of feminist writers and activists who have informed my own objections to reproductive tech are themselves lesbians.

Julie Bindel is an obvious one

(although obvs unlike Drs Long & Jeffreys, Julie Bindel does not collaborate with Posie)

With egg donation, there's the 'right' for people to access a service; and the reality that there will be a limit on the number of eggs available, because egg donation is not as simple as sperm donation.

If your primary concern is 'who gets those eggs' then you've ignored the feminist issue of ethics. Its always a woman who carries the risks associated with donation.

I don't think this page is unbiased but the facts are here;
cbc-network.org/2020/06/the-risks-of-egg-donation/

Back to the original point of the thread, I've been thinking about Kavanagh's uncontrolled rage at Fascist Baby. Thinking about public protests where people have strong feelings for a particular cause (eg a new law like the hunting with dogs ban, or the Iraq war). The only instances I can recall where protestors' faces contorted with explosive screaming hate against individuals like this is when people gather outside courts to throw rocks at police vans transporting those accused of child murder.

I'd love to show the footage of their barely coherent frenzied shouting to some woke 6th formers, without showing who was the recipient of the abuse. I bet they'd all guess they were protesting agains police brutality or racism, not women speaking for women's rights.

Blimey, now we’re getting derailed on to reproductive technology as a diversion from accusations of PP being far right which were a diversion from a TRA shouting at a baby.