Women's rights general conversations - Thread 4

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of Thread 3.

There is so much excellent information and so many active discussions on FWR that I wondered if it would be useful to have a thread to sort of "cross-fertilise" between them - airing little thoughts or vignettes that wouldn't themselves merit their own thread, to highlight other posts/threads of particular interest or to point to notable developments on fast-moving threads so that casual observers know where to look.

(For example, "the X thread has meandered onto a fascinating discussion of Y" or "Poster P's amazing analysis on thread Z might have relevance to the scenario in thread W" or "Has anybody noticed this recurring theme that keeps coming up??" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions, grr"- that sort of thing).

It was many moons ago back in the days when the old place was still GU. There was a small Brighton meet up and after throwing out time a few of us went back to hers to continue "partying". We were both sitting on the floor. She was wearing a skirt and going commando. At some point there was leg uncrossing and a vague moment of legs semi akimbo. What I momentarily thought was black pants I then realised was full muff and very luxuriant it was too. After the initial shock, because I wasn't expecting to see it I appreciated the luxuriance of an abundant bush. Mine is very fair and has never been abundant and just as those with thick curly hair have often wished for straight hair and vice versa, I have envied copious downstairs hair. The heart wants what it wants but has to accept that merkins are ludicrous and that not all gardens bloom as fully as others.

Well, that inspired me to open the 'full bush' gif drawer 😲

@NotDrowningJustCrowing, that is an excellent story, beautifully told

That’s a great story, @NotDrowningJustCrowing

That's brilliant, Crows.

That's a good story, Crows. I wonder if JB remembers it. Maybe she'll see this post! 😅

I love that story - I remember it from the old place.

😳

I noticed that Alex Drummond character on my Twitter feed today, demonstrating an ability to use chopsticks. Amazing. Anyway, it led me to rewatch this old clip by the late, great Magdalene Berns.

https://twitter.com/Silvietta79xx/status/1647973025642426374?s=20

Good old Bandwith.

Ooh, what's AD's twitter handle, @bignosebignose ?

Not sure if s/he has one, it was someone else tweeting this that initially caught my attention:

https://twitter.com/drfletchington/status/1647967473856126977?s=61&t=Q6bG6UpgNNK6wBpPUj7sDg

Blimey! Wow! He can use chopsticks!

So can my daughter, how amazing!

I think I'll make a video of me, I can use a knife and fork! All hail ME!!!

Or go meh.

Yes but does your daughter find the time between chopsticks lessons to grow and maintain a tidy beard like Alex Drummond (or Noel Edmonds)? Thought not, joke’s on you.

I'm amazed he didn't claim to be widening the bandwidth of being East Asian.

AIBU surrogacy thread if anyone is interested?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4787421-to-think-that-a-surrogate-mother?page=1

Those of us who object to baby buying are already being smeared as right wing, Christian fundies 😬

Those of us who object to baby buying are already being smeared as right wing, Christian fundies 😬

To be fair, sometimes the Righteous add a couple of weasel words to that description e.g. "aligned with" "platforming"

I read the full 40 pages of a recent thread on surrogacy and it was eye-opening. I always used to think it was the greatest gift woman could give, what saints surrogates were, but had no idea of the baby’s point of view, being taken from the only person it recognises.

Me too, Mavis. And then when I learned about the couples who treat the woman,usually overseas, as basically a portable baby factory, I became downright opposed.

Oh yes, the stories I’ve read from India are heart-breaking.

I read that surrogacy thread too and while I take the point about the issues with surrogacy I was less impressed with the point raised several times about the evils of egg and sperm donation. This could be because my two beautiful granddaughters in the UK, currently aged 6 and 3, resulted from donated egg and sperm as both my DD and DSIL had fertility issues and two IVF attempts using their own genetic material failed. The two girls are genetic sisters as they were both from the same batch of donated eggs and sperm, so they look very alike, but the younger was in cold storage for a couple of years. Weirdly, since there's no genetic relationship, they look a lot like their dad and his sister - his face shape, her eye colour. There's no family secret about it - my daughter has a book that explains it in child-appropriate terms, which has been read many times to both of them.

Yes, same here, Brit. It’s the removal of the baby from the mother who grew it, the mother it knows, rather than the genetic composition of the child. And of course the horrible baby-selling industry.

I’m not sure my mind/opinions were ever changed at The Other Place, but in my 5 months on MN I’ve become a TERF* and anti-surrogate.

*More of a MEF, really.

Anti-surrogacy, sorry, not anti-surrogate.

I believe the process of egg harvesting is pretty brutal, not at all like wanking into a cup.

@IcakethereforeIam - yes it not pleasant, though i think "brutal" is an overstatement . My daughter underwent it twice on the NHS for failed attempts, then had a miscarriage when she became pregnant with a donated embryo. They then ran out of NHS funding and paid privately for IVF using donor egg and sperm. This was very expensive - I think in the region of £18k for the two rounds, the second being cheaper because the extra embryos from the first successful attempt had been frozen. I'm not surprised that women are willing to donate eggs to reduce costs if they have enough eggs harvested for their own needs. Of course the recipient of the donated eggs has to go through most of the same procedures as the donor to make their bodies receptive to the embryo once created.

My granddaughters probably have half siblings somewhere in the world either on the sperm donor side or the egg donor side, but my daughter is fully prepared to help them track these down once the children are 18, if that's what they want to do. They are beautiful little girls, very happy and well loved, and the epigenetic factors mean that there is a real physical link between them and my daughter and our family, so I don't share all of the expressed concerns in the surrogacy thread.