A hot take on the Cass report courtesy of Freddie McConnell

[GenderBlender]

Not quite sure what to make of this one. Freddie welcomes the report and totally agreed with it apparently, but also thinks it has the fingerprints of transphobia on it. Seems vexed that Cass has not unambiguously said that trans kids exist, and that the neurodiversity and mental health challenges are in addition to a teams identity (no explanation given as to why they are so often co morbid).

Seems to be going with the, it's all about waiting lists line that mermaids at al have been spouting.

Totally doesn't get the concept of a systematic review, says lots of research not included, that will be because it was reviewed and found to be shite so not included.

"Cass bemoans the lack of a peer-reviewed evidence base for trans healthcare. Right there with you, Doc (although there is plenty of research you decided to exclude)".

No comment made on the withholding of data by the majority of gender clinics making generating this evidence base impossible.

No comment made on why girls are now presenting much more frequently.

"If the Cass review was held under a black light, we would see the fingerprints of anti-trans ideology. I don’t believe Cass shares this way of thinking, I think she believes in evidence-based healthcare and that trans children exist. However, allowing her review to be so heavily influenced by bias is a critical failure that is hers to own."

So, the battle front is drawn, it isn't actually about gender services, we all totally agree on that apparently. This is about whether we all agree that there is such a thing as trans kids.

I think this is an unwinnable argument, like arguing whether god exists. In my view, from a medical stand point, the starting position has to be that the goal of any treatment for gender confused kids is to help them be more comfortable and live with the body they have. Only when compressive attempts at this have failed, should medical transition even be considered. I don't think this proves that trans kids exist either way, but I think perhaps for a very small number of kids this is the most effective way of relieving their distress.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/11/hilary-cass-trans-children-review

Reading Freddie’s vice articles made me wonder what happened in Freddie’s life to make him need attention so very badly. Maybe his mum knows and that’s why (it sounds like) she is overcompensating so much now.

Whatever the reason, the result is that Freddie seems to have completely lost sight of the fact that other people also matter.

”de facto” sterilisation (which isn’t sterilisation at all as evidenced by Freddie having two kids) is bad but chemical / surgical sterilisation of young people is ok?

Also, the article on how trans people need home births. I certainly felt like I needed a home birth after having a traumatic birth with my first kiddo (in common with a sadly very high proportion of first time mothers) but despite preparing for months it couldn’t happen and ultimately my wants and my psychological comfort didn’t take precedence over clinical decisions or resource levels, and nor should they have.

I would have thought that a trans man who has undergone any kind of medical transition is unlikely to be a good candidate for a home birth.

There's a detransitioned woman on Twitter who is now pregnant and has been advised not to even attempt a vaginal birth due to testosterone-induced atrophy of her vagina and uterus.

Where I live it's almost impossible to have a home birth and the closest thing is an independent midwife led unit which is not attached to a hospital. Even if you've had a previous C-section you're considered too high risk to give birth in one.

Yep.

Any mother who has taken exogenous testosterone is surely likely to be categorised as too high risk for a home birth? Or will be as more data is collected. Freddy’s second time sounds very traumatic, according to Freddy’s Instagram.

Just had a look at a leaflet for our local NHS home birth service and they state they have a 45% transfer-to-hospital rate for home births for first babies (12% for second) so Freddys little dream of transmen being able to birth without getting misgendered in hospital seems a bit unrealistic.

Which sorta aums Freddy up really, I wonder how being a lone parent to two babies close together has been? Especially without any child maintenance from second parent? No
wonder Freddy swallowed Freddy’s pride and crawled back to writing opinion for The Guardian.

Poor old Fred. She’s wanging on again about birth certificates today.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/27/equal-marriage-lgbtq-people-equal-parenthood-families

This is how the government justifies not recognising parents like me, trans men who give birth, as fathers or simply parents: they say, although experts disagree, that I am male for most purposes but female – ie my gender recognition certificate becomes null and void – for all of parenthood, not just birth. Does this mean I am legally both sexes simultaneously?

Poor me, poor me! Sod my validation pets children, they must allow me to falsify their birth certificates to say father.

Does Freddy instead to use her children to promote trans issues all their lives?

It would seem that way.

She does go on a bit doesn't she?

Well obviously Freddie is not in any way male. Freddie is a female with strong gender feelings.

I can respect that. My gender feelings are also very strong. They tell me "gender is a bag of dicks, fuck gender".

Thats the whole point of a GRC though, they are allowing you a legal fiction but if you then do things to disprove that legal fiction then what do you expect.

A GRC doesn't change biology, it doesn't suddenly mean that men can give birth getting a GRC means that you are committing to living as your intended sex if you do things that that sex cannot do then you have broken the fiction of the GRC not the other way around

Or perhaps it was convenient for her self-important crap documentary. Look! I’m a man and I’m having a baby! See how special I am!

She reeks of internalised misogyny and narcissism.

I sometimes wonder if FMC ever reads their copy before pressing send.

Someone who went to court to try to have a lie recorded for all time on their child’s birth certificate writes “ it is crucial that our birth registration system provides clarity about a child’s conception and birth.” In the future Freddie’s child’s descendants will be able to see clearly that the person named as mother on a child’s birth certificate was, despite the male name, a woman. What’s not clear about that?

In the article Freddie, who if I recall made appointments at a fertility clinic when the ink on their GRC was still wet writes ” I am male for most purposes but female - ie my GRC becomes null and void - for all of parenthood.” The person who voided your GRC Freddie was you Freddie, having deliberately lied as you signed a document declaring your intentions of living as a man for all time.

I wonder what the other “most purposes” are when Freddie needs to acknowledge their female body. I hope it is healthcare, I hope Freddie has regular checks on their heart, on their bone density and possible symptoms of osteoporosis and on vaginal atrophy, because these are the crippling and painful consequences of having a woman’s body subjected to years of testosterone.

Reading this article is a grim reminder of the way that Stonewall and others take truths and twist them in a way that seems convincing but doesn’t stand up to inspection. Despite the call for “clarity” FMC wants children's birth certificates to be riddled with lies, lies which not only deny children and their descendants the truth about their conception and parenthood, but which clearly have the primary aim of validating their parents choices rather than providing clarity for the child. I think the judge in Freddie’s court case made it clear, birth certificates are for a child’s benefit, not a parents.

"birth certificates are for a child’s benefit, not a parents"

When you read it written down it seems so obvious, and incontrovertible.

An article that raised my hackles. I was petty enough to count; 7 mentions of child/childhood/baby, 29 mentions of parents/parenthood/mum/dad. Freddie's priorities. But of course the mother who gives birth subject to a surrogacy agreement has FAR too many rights.

I expect that at some point, there will be gender certificates available to Freddie's specifications for parents who want them. Fine, as long as the birth certificate continues to record the mother and the father, because in common ground with FMcC, I want children to know the truth.

Perhaps Freddie could sell them on Etsy.

The thing is, there are and always have been lies on many birth certificates: the identity of the father. In the case of illegitimacy the name of the father was usually omitted, and when a child is born within wedlock the husband named on the birth certificate is not always the genetic father of the child. In the case of sperm donation, the father’s name is also missing. But obviously in reality everyone has a father. The one thing that is never lied about is the identity of the mother. Freddy is clearly the mother of her kids as she gestated them and gave birth to them, and I’ll assume they are from Freddy’s own ova. The genetic father of Fred’s kids is a private matter.

How Freddy chooses to style herself is irrelevant: how would the care of Freddy’s kids differ if Freddy identified as ‘Mum’ instead of ‘Dad’? Would a different person be changing the nappies, or cooking dinner or doing the school run? Fred’s parenting decisions are also a private matter, provided the children are happy and cared for and I have no reason to believe they are not. But all this has no relevance to the birth certificate.

The father box on a birth cert has always, in practical terms, indicated ‘second adult who is fiscally responsible for the child’s upkeep’, hence married mums not needing dad to be present and it being a fairly easy legal change to make that second adult a woman (if the child was conceived in conditions that confirm the sperm came from an official donation, so no
fiscally responsible male exists).

A blank (again in practical
terms) means ‘no second adult has been identified via marriage records nor by turning up to register with mum’.

Whereas the ‘mother’ box has always meant ‘woman the baby came out of’ even if a court order (eg adoption) transfer her parental responsibility elsewhere later, the OG birth record stays in existence, it’s just superseded by the new adoption cert.

Freddy wants Freddy’s offspring to have a blank ‘mother’ box, which surely in the past has only ever happened in the case of foundlings? And even then I would imagine they have something more like an adoption certificate than a blank birth cert?

Maybe there is an argument to add more info to a birth record and long form certificate (eg donor conceived) but I cannot see an argument to ever remove ‘woman the baby came out of’ (especially as many countries need that info to decide the babies citizenship status)?

The only argument in favour of recording Freddy as a father instead of a mother is Freddyself’s own ego.

Short form birth certs don’t display any parent name so no kids, including Freddy’s kids have to out their mother when applying for a school place or job
(and it’s not as if Freddy has guarded anyone’s privacy thus far)!

I feel really sorry for those kids. What a mess.

No idea who Freddy is

Freddy is the star of Channel 4 Documentary ‘Seahorse’.

https://seahorsefilm.com/

Freddy also writes columns for various publications, which Freddy sometimes quits from (and then quietly crawls back to).

Freddy is determined to change the law so
that Freddy’s 2 children do not have a mother.

Edit for correction: Seahorse was part funded and premiered by the BBC, not C4.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008bxb

Me too. I didn’t want my child to be in the same school as these poor children. I don’t want these crazy ideas affecting my children.

I still don’t understand why Freddie’s GRC hasn’t been revoked. Declaring you’ll live as a man forever and then doing literally the most female thing possible is bizarre.

I also feel desperately sorry for those kids born into a family where the parents are unable to put their needs first - which is parenting 101.

The trajectory seems to be headed towards transmisia. FMc is participating in and upholding a binary which seems to be either an example of transmisia or asserting the right not to be subject to transmisia by virtue of asserting male identity and seahorsing (giving birth).

I'm still getting my head round tranmisia (if that's not obvious).

Transmisia (also called Transphobia) is prejudice plus power; anyone of any gender can have/exhibit gender-based prejudice, but in North America (and really worldwide), cisgender people have the institutional power, therefore Transmisia is a systemized discrimination or antagonism directed against transgender/nonbinary/genderqueer/agender persons. Transmisia and cissexism are rooted in a desire to maintain the gender binary (i.e. the categories of 'male' and 'female'), a social construction which seeks to assign gender based on a person's declared sex at birth. Transmisia, as well as the gender binary from which it extends, obscures the reality of the spectrum and fluidity of gender and marginalizes the identities and experiences of persons whose gender does not align with their birth-assigned sex and/or who do not align with either category of male or female.
Trans folks can be agents of transmisia as well (particularly when acting as representatives of cis-dominated systems, such as higher education) by perpetuating the notion of gender binary or "passing" superiority and using it to discriminate against other transgender people. For example, a trans woman at a company may refuse to hire a genderqueer person because their gender presentation might "confuse" customers, or a trans male administrator at a traditionally women's college may deny the application of a non-passing trans woman for not "transitioning enough."

https://simmons.libguides.com/anti-oppression/anti-transmisia 

Because there is no mechanism for revoking a GRC.

You have to swear that you intend to live as your acquired gender for the rest of your life, but there are no consequences if that turns out not to be true.

If I remember correctly it is actually more difficult for detransitioners to change their legal sex back to their birth sex.