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.

Actually, it is part of the PP 'far right' discussion.

It is discussing the extreme bullying that involves a page on a feminist group's website that lists PP's 'sins' and pointing out that a large % of those sins are simply more bluntly stated statements that reflect other feminists (the acceptable ones) beliefs.

I'm a bit surprised at Sappho's surprise at the possibility of exploitation in the fertility industry isn't a relevant subject for feminists (and others) to consider and have views on. Some will have no issues with this industry- others, for various reasons, will be deeply concerned by it and will reach that conclusion by different routes (e.g Pope John Paul I and I in the 1970s)

Discomfort about the fertility industry is often rubbished as being anti- gay. It isn't- gay couples may need to resort to it more than non-gay couples, but that's incidental to the legitimate questions and scrutiny which this industry raises.

To be clear "It seems to me that the right for ANYONE to access fertility treatments is much more akin to a TRA-demanded privilege" is a potentially misogynisitic statement, dependent on whether you trust me when I say I am talking about opening up debate or whether you think I am pushing a misogynistic ideology. Nothing in my words singled out lesbians who are struggling to conceive as distinct from all other adult human females who are struggling to conceive.

I couldn't live with myself if I was supporting a movement that was seeking to remove rights from lesbians.

Yet as a self confessed once upon a time TRA, friends with TRAs and their allies you were more than happy to support the movement that was and is doing exactly that up until it impacts/impacted on you personally. Very much do it to Julia vibe, happy for other women to be impacted but not yourself and you use the same trope to imply that that is what will turn CMK, only care when you or her feel the impact up until that point complete disregard for the women it has already and is already impacting. You are doing it again regarding the donor conception discussion - all about you and no regard for any other woman and the impact or toll on them.

It just shows how selfish and self centred the entire TRA movement, all those who support it, and a huge swathe of left wing feminists are.

Good article by Joan Smith unherd.com/2022/09/why-has-keir-starmer-banned-feminists/

With Labour treating women from their own party like this I think and female voter who still votes for them lacks self-respect

I disagree with donor assisted conception, if donors are required to be anonymous and play no part in the child’s life because of the denial of reality. Like accepting that a man is a woman, the child is expected to deny any interest in their biological parent, and that’s not fair to them. Children aren’t toys.
But I don’t hate lesbians, gay men or infertile heterosexual couples.

You seem to be saying that you believe that a child has a right to know who the donor(s) were, and to reach out to and have a relationship with the donor(s). Is that right?

If you believe this then arguably babies should have a right to form a relationship with the donor(s) from day one, as surely if the child has a right to some sort of relationship then it is best if that realtionship starts as early as possible so to be as meaningful as possible.

And if we care about the child as much as possible then the next step is to give the child the right to be brought up by its biological parents unless there is a good reason not to, such as the father is a convicted sex offender or the mother is a crack addict, or the parents died.

Which then leads back to the idea that if the rights of the child trump the rights of the infertile couple then there is no place for donor conception.

I don't have the answers, but it seems to me fairly clear that their is an imbalance currently, with the rights of couple who are unable to have children naturally being given far too much importance, and the rights of donors and potential donors and children being very much secondary.

I'm very uncomfortable with how sperm donation and egg donation are being conflated in this conversation; the issues surrounding them are completely different. Surely "donor assisted conception" is a term invented by the fertility industry to conflate sperm donation, egg donation and surrogacy - there's no benefit for anyone who cares about women's rights, as all of us here do, in using the term. Woolly language benefits the enemies of women's rights, who like to hide atrocities behind ambiguities. Let's speak precisely.

And I have to say that while I think "debating" the ethics of sperm banks is fine in some contexts, it's not a great move to press the issue with someone you know to be a lesbian who has conceived children with the aid of sperm donation who's already somewhat under siege in this conversation.

(also

If you believe this then arguably babies should have a right to form a relationship with the donor(s) from day one,

doesn't remotely follow, and it should be argued instead of saying "arguably" were this thread an appropriate place to argue it - I don't think it is.)

I am saying that. Of course I would never express such views directly to donor conceived children, although I have met adults who were donor conceived and felt they had been considered a possession of the presenting parents, rather than as individuals with their own needs in terms of their origins. I believe strongly that a child’s right to family life includes access to birth parents, whenever possible and an understanding of their history. I feel this particularly strongly when children grow up without a mother or mother figure. It may just be my sexism coming into play, but I think children who grow up without that generally feel the absence more keenly than those absent a father/ figure.

You haven't actually argued that point, you've just said that you have strong feelings about it. And if you feel that it's different with different sexes, you should argue separately about the different cases of sperm donation and egg donation, and the completely different case of surrogacy and of children growing up without any mother at all. As I said, this conflation of terms benefits the fertility/surrogacy industry and absolutely no one else, certainly not women.

As far as I know the evidence supports that children conceived by sperm donation need at some point to know who their fathers were, but there's zero evidence suggesting they need to know that from birth.

I apologise for adding to the derail. But I don’t apologise for my beliefs. We know that stifling debate because hurt feelings is a truly bad idea.I do have some sympathy with Sappho's position. I am quite uncomfortable with some stuff around Kjk, but Sappho went so it seems weird to be so anti. I disagree with loads of stuff, I see on here, and sometimes I say so, and sometimes I don’t.. I think disagreement is healthy.

@TastefulRainbowUnicorn .I’m not sure that if you are scolding me for being insensitive to Sappho, you can then also ask me to argue my beliefs.I haven’t said that I am right, they are difficult issues.

The derail only happened because Saph (or more properly, Saph’s friend with the anti Posie website) used Posie’s opinions* on reproductive technology as some sort of evidence of Posie being beyond the pale, and we pointed out that it’s actually a well established train of Feminist thought, espoused by some pretty serious radical lesbian academics.

*FWIW as far as I can tell Posie is in the same frame of mind of most of us which is still coming to terms with what we hoped was a nice thing for infertile women actually being quite a shit thing for women as a group, and possibly quite damaging for the children who were conceived this way (to be determined as more reach adulthood and speak out for themselves).

Maybe it's contradictory. I'm mostly trying to point out that conflating the different issues of sperm donation, egg donation and surrogacy is very unhelpful for a discussion of women's rights. And also that perhaps it's a bit insensitive to turn this particular thread into an abstract debate about the ethics of sperm donation.

So yeah, I don't think this is the right place for it and I also think that if people are going to argue it on a different thread or even here, since it's not like I can stop you, then being precise about the ethical issues is a lot more helpful than talking about "donor assisted conception." It's one of those phrases like "reproductive rights" which is designed to lump different issues together, to disguise or even promote sex-based oppression.

Anyway I think I've repeated that point more than enough so I'll wander off now.

I agree that we should be careful not to use Big Fertility’s corporate-speak, it’s bloody insidious the way it gets in tho!

eg I always make a point of typing ‘surrogate mother’ rather than the lazy shorthand ‘surrogate’ (but even that’s better than the new fangled ‘gestational carrier’ that makes women’s bodies sound like luggage).

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.

This is exactly the same argument some gay men, or people who think they are supporting them, make about surrogacy. It in no way adresses people's actual objections, just tries to make them back down by saying thay are bigots if they disagree.

It's a very dangerous sword to wield.

I don't know about anybody else but I'm working through calling a one time poster a bully whilst at the same time backing someone that rants at a man holding a baby and a woman that has a web page belittling another.

This is my position.

The rights of the child, which are increasingly recognized in adoption, are given little or often no consideration where reproductive technology is concerned.

Hand waving that away as homophobic is seriously disingenuous.

But women's rights are never the only thing.

Any more than people arguing for the interests of any other group should do so totally without consideration of women's needs.

Yeah, maybe it's in the interests of some women to access fertility tech, and that includes surrogacy, it's certainly not only gay men that use surrogates. But in no way is it the only consideration.

Some people might argue it was good for women to ban all men from being out after dark, but it would be rightly seen as questionably ethical.

The subject came up because someone thought it was a slam-dunk way to accuse PP of being a bigot. I'd suggest if people can't stand talking seriously about a topic that might be an unwise thing to bring up.

But women's rights are never the only thing.

No one suggested “women’s rights are the only thing.”

I feel ridiculous saying this AGAIN but the point made is only that “donor assisted conception” is imprecise terminology likely deliberately coined to be harmful to women’s rights. There’s no reason to not be specific.

okay now I really am done repeating this. I’ve got zero interest in participating in the argument beyond making this simple point. The conflation of these very different issues on this thread is harmful here and more widely.

Unfortunately words have meaning, actions have consequences and doing controversial things are going to harm allegiances.

I’m sure I agree with Carly-May on gay equality issues but I can’t get past her shouting at the baby.

I agree with PP that women need female only spaces but I can’t get past her event being live streamed by Tommy Robinson supporters and her speaking out against donor conception. (And yes donor conception via sperm donation is a world away from donor conception via surrogacy - thank you TastefulRainbowUnicorn)

Not agreeing with things people do or say that are out in the public domain doesn’t make anyone a bully. Posting your dissenting thoughts online doesn’t make anyone a bully.

Robustly disagreeing and challenging one another on here doesn’t make anyone a bully.

Snidey little posts like this that don’t actually engage with the content of any posts? Oh look it’s a bully.

God this thread is weird.

I'm probably the furthest away from Sapphos in political and social issues: I'm a conservative (she'd probably think I'm a fascist!) and I have concerns about assisted conception (in various forms) but Christ even I can see that she's experiencing some genuine cognitive dissonance about where she places herself within this debate and the deep held beliefs of her and her community.

She's tried to explain, but because she doesn't reach the correct conclusion, she is constantly and repeatedly berated and examined.

What do you hope to achieve? That Sapphos will repent in real time?

And to now flock to insist she also sees how wrong she is on assisted conception when she's revealed her own children were conceived in this way, and she's the only poster here being challenged, despite this thread not being about that, feels like a mob smelling blood.

It's as if all Sapphos inconsistencies must be toppled now by the righteous. She is not the one looking like she's been seized by religious fervour here.

Give it at rest.

A single post from a one-time poster, critiquing what you said, does not constitute bullying.
You said things, people said things in response to them. Actions, meet consequences.

MalagaNights the only reason donor conception found it's way onto this thread is because it was used as yet another stick to beat KJK with and was on the list of her sins as judged by the holier than thou's posted by and agreed with by Sapphos.

If you set the hare running you can't expect it not to be chased.

After repeatedly being asked to to justify in why she finds PPs views offensive.
Not a surprising view if your own children are conceived in this way.
Understandable I'd say.

And it's not a requirement to keep going and going as a group at one person. You can choose to leave it at any point.

You don't have to catch the hare and declare victory.

Carry on as you wish, just saying from here it's not very edifying.