What's the problem with FiLiA?

[RhymesWithOrange]

On another thread a few posters referred to "the FiLiA debacle". Without wanting to poke at the wounds in the current feminist movement, can someone tell me what's gone on?

See what I mean? 🙄

So are all the lesbians on the thread on board with you Sappho - the misuse of State infertility services and the denial of a child’s rights?

All the lesbians I know associated with FiLia are on board with lesbian equality, yes. Very much so.

I wonder what else the State should provide us with, if we are special people with enhanced rights+…. spouses? Friends?

By ‘lesbian equality’ you mean ‘entitled to abuse State infertility service because men can be difficult and annoying to negotiate with’ yes?

Do you have any idea how homophobic you sound, Endless Tea? I'm not taking Sappho's side, I'm no fan of hers.

Do you realise the nightmarish situations that happen when lesbians have to rely on the free market to source sperm? There was a US-based podcast about a man with a major chronic illness who'd been selling his sperm to dozens, possibly hundreds of unwitting women. Imagine the cost to the NHS of that — dozens of children at high risk of developing a lifelong chronic disease requiring regular healthcare — compared with a safe, secure donor insemination service for a small number of women.

Do you realise the nightmarish situations that happen when lesbians have to rely on the free market to source sperm?

I think this must be the result of gay men feeling entitled to buy babies from surrogate mothers.

One of my school friends parents were a lesbian woman and a gay man. Does this not happen any more? Are there no longer informal arrangements of DIY?

Are heterosexual women who aren’t able to find an agreeable man entitled to use fertility services to get a State sourced father for their child?

Some friends my own age were going to come to an arrangement - a heterosexual woman who couldn’t find a man and two gay men. They were trying for a baby (her and one of the men) It fell through in the end because the potential mother on reflection didn’t want to be the fifth wheel in the men’s relationship, but these things are options.

I repeat, do you have any idea of how homophobic you sound? On a feminist message board?

Cases like this:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1334697/Gay-father-wins-court-battle-access-children-fathered-lesbian.html

are what has turned a many lesbians away from the idea of having children with a known man. You say that lesbians should just go and find a willing gay man — and then you tell a story about how that scenario turned out for your straight friend. Jeez.

Most of the lesbians with children whom I know personally have used fertility clinics. If your straight single friend can't afford a fertility clinic then she's likely to struggle with the cost of having a child.

I could give you many more examples of custody battles between heterosexual parents pattihews.

I finding the entitlement staggering.

The State does not owe anyone a father or mother for their child if they are unable to find someone of the opposite sex willing to be so.

The anecdote about my friends, was that the woman was the one who decided to pull out, not the men. If she had fallen pregnant from the first couple of attempts things would have been different. I reckon it was the fact that she was single that made it uncomfortable for her - being the outsider.

She chose the gay man because he would make a great dad. She didn’t want someone anonymous.

This is why lesbians just walk away from these threads. The homophobia is gross.

It isn’t Homophile to question and criticise staggering entitlement, just because the people acting entitled are lesbian or gay.

*homophobic

There is a wider point for me in that straight women - including feminists - have often been unreliable allies to lesbians (you can make the same observation of gay men, too). I am a GC lesbian and have lost TRA lesbian friends over my politics, but nonetheless it makes me twitchy when I read or meet straight women who are unusually exercised over the cotton ceiling and whether or not Stonewall has 'erased' same-sex attraction as I can't be sure if they're using us as some kind of pawn.

NASWALT, obviously. But enough are.

Indeed. There are some people that are simply transphobic and homophobic and these people are not our allies, even though they oppose gender ideology.

@notsurewherenotsurewhy I am starting to get twitchy myself, realising that anyone who isn’t supportive of ignoring the ethical minefield of anonymous parenthood or the devaluing of biological relationships, is deemed ‘homophobic’. I wonder how many people realise that these enhanced entitlement are what are meant by ‘equal fertility rights’. Nobody told me - it took Sappho - a supposedly reformed TRA to say it out loud.

Then you and your friend must start a campaign to persuade the NHS that straight single women need to have access to donor insemination services. I'm sure you'd find a lot of lesbians to support your cause. The situation is unfair.

But blaming lesbians for a decision made by the NHS and politicians is ridiculous and HOMOPHOBIC.

I hear you when you say this “it makes me twitchy when I read or meet straight women who are unusually exercised over the cotton ceiling and whether or not Stonewall has 'erased' same-sex attraction as I can't be sure if they're using us as some kind of pawn.”

But I think most people get an absolutely visceral reaction to the cotton ceiling. Everyone knows about blokes wanting to get their dicks about where they aren’t wanted and feels a sense of outrage about it. And even more outraged that men specifically target women who are lesbians. The injustice of it.

I personally get uncomfortable when I think lesbians talk the feminist talk, but then they seem to be siding with gay men over things like public expression of kink or surrogacy.

I suppose our interests aren’t all the same.

That’s not what I am arguing for.

I disagree with anonymous parenting. I don’t believe it’s in the child’s best interest. The sexual orientation is irrelevant. I believe a child has the right to have a relationship with both biological parents.

@EndlessTea
so precisely those are your religious beliefs that a child needs an opposite sex couple as parents .
It has nothing to do with the NHS

I’m not religious.

I believe, correctly, that sexual reproduction occurs between two opposite sexed individuals

i believe a child has the right to have a relationship with both biological parents (if the mother was raped I think her right to have no relationship with her rapist trumps this right though).

I know these principles make ethical sexual reproduction for same-sex attracted people complicated.

I don’t believe this is a problem for the State to solve.

There are other arrangements lesbians and gay men can make without involving the State and where the child is able to have a relationship with both biological parents.

There are other arrangements lesbians and gay men can make without involving the State and where the child is able to have a relationship with both biological parents.

Wasn't this 'lie back, think of England and do things the normal way'?

And I pointed out to you how offensive that is.