Trans Widows are the only mothers of our children.

[TinselAngel]

I don't want this claim by @bathhy to get lost in a thread that will no doubt go along the usual lines.

"As a trans woman mother who uses Mumsnet, I would never recommend coming here."

Trans women can never be the mother of any child. We women, the trans widows who are usually your exes, who give birth to those children are their mother and always will be.

If you adopt a child, you can be the child's parent, but as a male you are not the child's mother.

Trans widows say no to having our status and legal responsibility as mother taken from us.

Women here must not allow forced teaming from men who wish to appropriate our status as the mothers of our children.

Every woman here should consider how they would feel if the father of their child after having taken so much from them already, then demanded to be called "Mum."

Only women (adult human females) can be mothers. Pretending to a child that you're their mother is abusive. I can't think of another word for it. It's such a betrayal of their reality. It will profoundly affect their ability to make sense of the world, to make human connections and relationships, to understand themselves.

It is unconscionable.

Go to anyone raised in a rural or farm setting and tell them this nonsense and they will laugh in your face.

Cutting the bollocks off a bull doesnt make it a cow.

A man with any amount of woman costume or any amount of body modification will never be a mother.

Just a delusional man.

And I would say 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the world agree.

So crack on with your batshittery.

Changing your name, or your clothing, or even your gender doesn't actually kill you. And if the feminist position is that you can't change sex then these husbands are still very much alive.

Have you ever heard the term "golf widow"? Or maybe you should call out Madam on the use of "deadname"?

also, If nothing else the married wife of the woman who gave birth would be the step mother, so she still gets to use the title mother

But equally, if the husbands themselves are saying its their ''deadname'', then I'd argue that calling themselves widows is being respectful of that.

There is definitely a grief in losing the sense of a partner who is still alive.

A lesbian can be a mother or a step mother.

A transwoman can be a father or a step father.

I'm relieved that the law does not appear to work in the way that Bathhy implies but I'm appalled that someone would gaslight a vulnerable child like this without even a legal fiction to back them up.

Only women can be mothers.

'The fact that a person’s gender has become the acquired gender under this Act does not affect the status of the person as the father or mother of a child.'

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/section/12

Agreed

And the way I see it is - what does the child see? By and large, a female parent, regardless of sexual orientation, is ''mum'' and vice versa for male. Would not a man who believed himself female but calling himself a father, challenge gender stereotypes? And vice versa?

I cannot imagine wanting to put my own self identity before the global perception/interests of my child. It just seems very selfish to me. Parents, but women especially, already lose a lost of their own identity when they become parents.

Don't take the very last vestige from us @MadamAndTheAnts

I cannot imagine wanting to put my own self identity before the global perception/interests of my child. It just seems very selfish to me.

I agree. It's largely (though ofc not exclusively) male behaviour and thinking. It's narcissistic and not what good parents do. Any time spent reading the MN Relationships Board shows these traits and patterns.

But if you’re going to accept a lesbian who hasn’t birthed a baby can be called “mother”, and I assume you wouldn’t be so rude as to call a transwoman by their deadname, then surely the transwoman can also called the mother”
No.

I’m shocked at the attitude that in applying to adopt a child, it’s absolutely fine not to disclose something very fundamental about yourself that will have an undeniable impact on any child.

Adoption is about the need of the child, not the needs of an adult to be validated in a new “gender identity”. This is all about the adult, and it perpetrates a fundamental dishonesty that is at odds with what a child’s needs are. Children who are potential adoptees will pretty much always be suffering from serious attachment and emotional issues, perhaps also medical issues.

An adoptive parent who is fundamentally dishonest and self-seeking, concerned with their own “identity” and what others think of them, and happy not to disclose an important history about themselves, is not what those children need or deserve. I’m quite horrified, actually.

Non-trans women? Just say women. The real kind 🙄

Well said Tinsel. TW are not women.

Yes. I would have thought it would have been imperative that a trans woman adopting a child would be required to be honest about their birth sex in age appropriate ways. Just as, as I understand it, adoptive parents now are advised to be as open as possible about the fact that their child is adopted with that child from an early age in an age appropriate way. The whole issue raises a lot of questions about the rights of a child and it’s dispiriting to think that when so much work has been been done by adopted children themselves in highlighting issues as adults there appears to be a blind spot with trans adoptive parents.

@Bathhy So you got a GRC 20 years ago and married a man. The GRA was granted royal approval 19 years ago. Please explain?

From what I can make out, in term of the law, adoptive mothers are in exactly the same position as @Bathhy. They are legally recognised as parents but not as mothers.

The difference is that overwhelmingly we don't care whether or not the law recognises adoptive mothers as mothers, we are happy to recognise them as mothers anyway. Women mothering other mothers' children is an arrangement as old as the hills. It's something we have always done for each other, probably since before we were identifiably human.

If the law is not on your side then you need social acceptance. Adoptive mothers have tens of thousands of years worth of social acceptance.

Men wanting to be 'mothers' otoh is kind of new and WTF and how does this benefit the child?

No thank you.

Only women are mothers.

Be a dad or a parent. It's not about you.

What was thay? A narcisstic self centering above the needs and rights of all other people involved?

what an absolute SHOCK...

It has me thinking... Is society going through a macro- level 'relationship' with a narcissit (the T movement). Like the same ehich happens on the individual level...

So on the individual level, when a relationship commences with the narcissist, initially everything seems rosy, they are all glitter and rainbows and lovely and sweet and vulnerable...

And then slowly a creeping happens where ALL the attention goes to them, a certain drama is constantly unfolding, nothing is ever good enough, they are the perpetual victim, they suck you in, they make you change your behaviours and such to suit them

... They basically start to warp everything so it centers them always...

And initially you go with it, you try to serve them, you sympathise, when non-sensical conflicts arise you think that surely with logic this can be resolved...

And then a slow realisation occurs where you understand that nothing is good enough, no amount of attention is enough, logic will never ein an argument, there is no fairness or reason.... And you realise the only thing you can do is to end the relationship and not give in to any demands.

IS society going through this on a grand scale?

If so I would say we are at the part where there is a dawning realisation that this is not a normal, healthy, reciprocal relationship

Yes, I don't know how old this child is but if he's old enough to understand, does he know he's adopted? Does he know that he was grown and birthed by a woman?

How does the 'where do babies come from?' discussion go?

Do you tell your child that you are 'a woman who couldn't have babies' if you are a man with viable sperm?

How deep does the gaslighting go?

I did think after I posted that actually I think most children in the uk now are adopted as children rather than babies and actually that puts a whole new spin on the situation. There was a deeply moving article in the Sunday times magazine yesterday written by a foster and adoptive mother. It was entirely about the needs of the child, how everyone had to work to try to ensure the child, often unfortunately from an abusive or neglectful background, had what they needed to thrive, about the honesty and clarity needed to give that child what they deserved, a happy forever home. I don’t wish to insinuate the poster isn’t providing that as that just wouldn’t be fair and I hope they are, but I can’t square the limited information they have provided with the account I read yesterday and the rights of the child if they have not been honest with the child about who they are and their journey to this point in time.

Good spot, I was thinking this was unusually long. I was also thinking how much better linking history from previous names to current seems to have been 20 years ago.

Odd really

Princess Mom. Now there’s a shining example people assigned male at birth can be mothers

Enjoying Tinsel's ability to use no as a complete sentence here.

100% agree, under no circumstances can biological males be mothers. If they try and claim they are, they're doing the opposite of what mothers are supposed to to - put their kids first.

Yes. This is the stand out for me. The role of a parent, mother or father, is to parent. Not to use a child for validation.

A male getting their child, adopted or otherwise, to call them mother because of the way it makes the parent feel, irrespective of how it gaslights the child, is so wrong.

Something that Bathhy is singularly unable to see. Hence being so mystified by tinsel starting this thread. A trans widow, a woman, a mother, on a site called mumsnet. Where the dominant theme is how to nurture children!

All incomprehensible to Bathhy.

I think Bathhy's situation is different from parents who father a child and then transition. They haven't explicitly said, but I am going to assume Bathhy is an old fashioned transsexual, who underwent all the medical diagnoses etc that used to be required.

When adopting there is a very thorough discussion of childhood etc, medical checks etc, so I would frankly be amazed if the trans status hadn't been covered. We had to show our educational certificates (can you get them changed?) as part of the 'are we being honest' process.

The SWs, medical advisors, and approval and placement panels must all have thought that Bathhy and partner were stable and suitable to parent the child they adopted. They have the child at the centre of the process. Adoption is to provide parents for a child, not a child for parents.

I actually feel that Bathhy is likely to be one of the TW who has got caught in the self id crossfire. Going about their daily family life and then the TRAs come along, overreach, upset everyone. Bathhy isn't taking something away from the child's birth mother in the way some trans widows exes are.

One of the old fashioned transexuals who are supposed to be on our side rather than berating us on Mumsnet?