Gay men and surrogacy - the new “be kind”?

[Tootingbec]

Just seen a LinkedIn post from a gay man who is writing a book about the surrogacy “journey” he and his husband went through. Cue gushing comments about how amazing this is…..

It has really upset me. The sheer fucking privilege of gay men to buy babies and then be lauded and praised for it like they were super heroes. And untouchable to criticism due to blinkered “be kind” beliefs about the poor gay men who just want a family like heterosexual men.

Where do people think these babies come from? Do you think people delude themselves that all these gay men just have kind, altruistic female friends who happily have a baby for them? As opposed to exploiting vulnerable and desperate women in India, Mexico and the like.

I feel so angry - women are just fucked over and abused time and time again by men and it is all dressed up as progressive when it is the exact opposite.

When I was a younger women I loved having gay men in my social circle. They seemed like “nicer” more lovely men than most straight men. Now I realise that underneath it all they just the same sexist, privileged tossers as many straight men are. They want a baby? No problem - buy one! They want to invade women’s spaces? No problem - just reinvent yourself as “the most vulnerable in society”!

It’s like the scales have fallen from my eyes.

It’s controversial but I actually completely agree. In the context of the commercialisation of pregnancy and birth, it is really starting to feel a bit Hand Maids Tale. The only acceptable surrogacy imo is completely altruistic, and even then there are real ethical issues with creating innate separation trauma in an infant who can’t consent. I hate that more and more surrogacy seems to be viewed as a right, that anyone is able to pay for if they don’t fancy pregnancy or can’t have kids naturally. It’s so reductive to the entire thing and to women. Often couples are going to the US or countries with fewer protections to reduce the rights of the surrogate and “guarantee” they can take the baby, but we’re supposed to think it’s only positive and fantastic. It’s awful, and particularly irks me when it’s men who don’t seem to understand the huge physical and emotional cost of pregnancy and birth, or celebs who seem to want to avoid the work and bodily changes.

(I think gay couples can be fantastic parents, just as straight or single parents can. The issue here is surrogacy)

Yes, I completely agree with you that all surrogacy is bad. But this thread was specifically about gay men. If we normalise gay men using surrogacy then it makes it more normalised across the board. They are the ones posting about it, not straight couples, who want to keep it a secret if possible so that they blend in further down the line. And they are creating babies with no known mother, which I think is a sorrow. And like I said, I'm not against gay adopters (I know several).

This. This. And this. The main issue in my eyes being the infant who starts life in a terrible trauma at the deliberate will of the "loving parents".

ETA: having gone through two pregnancies (and three births), of which one was the result of IVF with my own ova, I 100% feel that it's my pregnancy, not my genes, who made me the mother of my children from the very first minute. I abhorr surrogacy notwithstanding the status of the "intending parents" (two men, two women, a man and a woman)

I think we all have a mother, whether we like her or not. The idea of not even knowing her name seems bizarre to me. In adoption in the old days, children were denied this info, and we changed that because of the harm it was doing. Yet here we are, allowing men to do the very same thing just because they want to.

Gay and single men are having babies by exploiting 2 women. At least straight couples are usually only exploiting one.

And I am just as against a single man using surrogacy as a gay couple. Imo it is dystopian, heralding a world where women are of no value. It used to be that men married women partly becausecthis was how they could be fathers, risking their assets in the case of divorce. Now they don't need to. Just send off a sperm sample, pay your money, hire a nanny. All interactions with women purely transactional. They don't need women in any meaningful way and gay men and rich men like Musk are leading the way.

Well as I have said I think it's best to oppose surrogacy broadly rather than focusing on specific groups, and I have seen plenty of cases of straight couples talking openly about using surrogacy too and also of them behaving very badly.

You've lost me there how are gay and single men exploiting two women whereas straight couples are just exploiting one? Either way there is a surrogate who is being exploited which is the other woman you are talking about?

I think by other woman exploited the PP referred to the woman who gave her gametes. Most of the time it's not the mother (by which I mean the woman who carries the baby) so as to have the "right ethnicity" and minimize the mother's attachment and claim to the child's.
In a hetero surrogacy the gametes usually come from the adoptive parents, not a third person.

The egg donor who has to go through stimulation to provide eggs. It’s usually not the same woman as the surrogate.

Ahh I see! I hadn't realised that.

That doesn’t address my point though, which is that you say that surrogacy by a gay couple is worse than surrogacy by a straight couple, because the former leaves a child ‘motherless’ (it was your word).

But of course anyone having a child through surrogacy - straight or gay - is raising that child without their birth mother. I’m not sure why you think that is worse if it’s a gay couple than if it were a straight couple?

Unless by ‘motherless’ you mean that children of gay male couples are lacking in any type of mother - whether birth mother, genetic mother or adoptive mother?

I do think babies and children should have mothers unless there is an absolute catastrophe.

Adoption is one, where the child can't stay with the birth mother. I support gay adoption because it is a response to a difficult situation.

I don't agree with creating babies who are deliberately going to be motherless.

I put single men into the same category as the gay couples on this one.

I know we are both adopters but we seem to view the importance of birth mothers differently. That's just how it is - i think it matters more than you do.

In a gay male partnership where a surrogate has been used to produce a child, by the nature of conception, only one if the men will be genetically related. Therefore the male partner will not be related. There is no evidence to differentiate these men from other unrelated male caregivers.

But again what do you mean when you say ‘babies and children should have mothers’?

Are you just referring to birth mothers? Are you referring to genetic mothers? Are you referring to adoptive mothers?

If you just mean birth mothers then there is no distinction between gay couples and straight couples. Both involve the child being raised by people other than their birth mother. So I’m not sure why you’d say gay couples using surrogacy is worse than straight couples on the basis of leaving a child ‘motherless’ - if you mean birth mother then both couples are the same.

If you mean genetic mothers that’s fine - but of course not all straight couples uses the intended mothers egg for various reasons so there’s nothing inherent in straight couples that means a child being will be raised by their genetic mothers.

And if you mean, as I suspect, that a child should have a mother, you mean that even where a the child cannot be raised by either their genetic mothers. That even then it is preferable for a child born of surrogacy to have an intended mother with no biological connection to them than to be raised by a gay couple, one of whom has no biological connection to them?

But gay people can conceive. Being gay doesn’t equate to being infertile.

What you mean is, they want something that’s a biological impossibility, so they purchase it.

Their ‘want’ is more important than a child’s ’need.’

im sure they’d be very pro-identity politics and woukd applaud anyone wishing to celebrate their gender of sexual identity - whilst simultaneously creating a child who will likely never know 50% of their actual heritage identity. Such irony.