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Cake and eating it

So, interesting case here. Guardian journalist transitions to being a man. Then has baby – apparently the sperm was used up 10 days after the documents confirming the gender change came through. Having gestated and given birth to the baby, she tries to register as the father. This is, obviously enough, denied.

Interview with The Guardian here.

The dad who gave birth: ‘Being pregnant doesn’t change me being a trans man’
Freddy McConnell with his son, Jack (not his real name). Photograph: Manuel Vázquez/The Guardian
Transitioning meant that Freddy McConnell finally felt comfortable in his skin. Then he began a quest to conceive and carry his own child

Freddy McConnell takes out his phone and shows me a film of his baby snoring contentedly. Jack is gorgeous, with blond hair, blue eyes and heavy eyelids, and McConnell is the classic doting dad – albeit more hands-on than most. It’s many months since he gave birth to Jack, an experience he describes as life-changing. He has also made an intimate and moving film about that experience, from the decision to have a baby, through pregnancy and the delivery. Everything is documented in close-up, including Jack’s arrival in a hospital birthing pool.

That last probably proving, in more detail than we might want to know, that she’s not the father.

But, you know, we’re liberals, no third party harm so whatever. And no, that the kid is going to have an odd parent while growing up isn’t enough. Oddity among parents isn’t enough of a third party harm.

Then:

A transgender man who is fighting to have his child be the first in the UK to legally not have a mother made a documentary showing his child’s face whilst arguing that his family needed court anonymity to protect them from harm.

Freddy McConnell, who was born a woman, launched a High Court battle against the Government earlier this year after the General Registrar Office (GRO) refused to register him as the “father” on his child’s birth certificate.

Mr McConnell and his child were previously protected by a court anonymity Order preventing the publication of their names’, location and the child’s gender – meaning they could only be referred to as “TT” and “YY” in media reports.

That is cake and eating it, isn’t it.

24 thoughts on “Cake and eating it”

  1. A transgender man who is fighting to have his child be the first in the UK to legally not have a mother

    I don’t know whether our media truly believes in all this shit or is just cruelly encouraging it all as a public 24/7 Bedlam.

  2. @Rob

    Mencius Moldbug’s “Cathedral” at work. Check out the book “The New Right” by Michael Malice for a much better explanation than I could offer.

  3. Sorry, but I think some of these people are mad.

    If you want to take some hormones grow some hair in the right place and live like a man, well OK. But why are you pushing one out? How are you embracing being manly?

  4. The Meissen Bison

    and McConnell is the classic doting dad – albeit more hands-on than most

    Awww, bless! But dads, doting or otherwise, do not emerge from birthing pools like Botticelli’s Venus.

    Amusing to note how the guardian delights in the child’s aryan blond hair, blue eyes and Hugo Boss designer nappy.

  5. I’m sure being raised by a mentally deranged exhibitionist is unlikely to have a positive effect on the child’s development. Whether this would be better or worse than having the child raised by the state is debatable, but children have been removed by social services for less reason.

  6. Peak cuntery.

    You keep thinking we are there, and there’s another, even more cuntiferous.

    I feel sorry for the kid who is going to grow up so fucking messed up.

  7. It is personal madness enlisted in the service of socialist evil.

    Whatever sex some idiot considers themselves to be is of little concern–save for the damage that will be done to the kids mind.

    Any leftist scum involved in or attempting to involve themselves in this or any other such caper is another matter.

    The most severe responses need to be applied to said leftists and they need to be compelled to make public announcements regarding the evil nature of their subjectivist trickery and their ambitions for such tactics.

  8. apparently the sperm was used up 10 days after the documents confirming the gender change came through

    It’s like women in the army, etc.: they kick up a big fuss to be allowed in on the grounds that they’re equal, then the minute they’re in, they revert to type.

  9. “For many reasons it is absolutely a no-brainer”

    Ask the Yanks – ethanol attacks the plastic & rubber components of many fuel systems, so tough shit if you run an older vehicle (or mower, portable genny, etc). It also absorbs water which is bad for anything used infrequently.

    “Cars aren’t going to all switch to battery power overnight and if they did there isn’t the capacity in the National Grid to power all of our transportation

    It’s about time that a member of HM government has realised what the rest of us have known for ages…

  10. “Whether this would be better or worse than having the child raised by the state is debatable”: I’d say that the burden of proof has always got to fall on those who want the state to do it even when the parent is at least partly loony. If the parent isn’t fit, I’d incline to pass the child to Granny, or Auntie, or even Mum’s best friend: anything rather than the Social Work Department, which will itself be full of nutcases, witches, idle slackers, and people who avoid all responsibility for anything, all acting under an incentive structure that is not devoted to the interests of the children.

  11. I’m very tempted to propose a law as follows:
    1) No MP may travel in a car propelled by anything other than electricity.
    2) No MP may travel in a car at all within the M25.

    After all, if what they want to impose on us is sauce for the goose, surely it’s sauce for the gander?

  12. JuliaM +1

    Oddity is my Mum’s golliwog doll collection, or my Dad’s high-functioning alcoholism and love of bizarre conspiracy theories.

    Mum growing a tache, cutting her boobs off, and pretending to be Dad is slightly more disconcerting, kinda like a male work colleague turning up in a red gingham dress and talking through a penguin sock puppet called “Mr Flibble”, that threatens to kill you.

    This, like a ska band fronted by Suggs, is madness.

  13. The Meissen Bison

    dearieme: anything rather than the Social Work Department

    Which reminds me of the recent case of foster parents whose own child had opted to ‘transition’ from boy to girl and where a foster child subsequently wanted to make the same choice which was upheld by some deranged judge sitting in the family division.

    And the not so recent case of UKIP-supporting foster parents whose fostering was terminated on that account.

  14. Time to toughen up the rules, kind of like the chicken and the pigs attitude to breakfast.
    If you want to be a man then you can legally transition after you are no longer capable of giving birth as that is a defining female characteristic.
    Maybe once we ask for a bit more commitment they will reconsider their position.

  15. interesting that he’s described as more than the normal doting dad, almost as if some sort of maternal instinct was at play

  16. A birth certificate is a legal document legally documenting who’s womb you came out of and who’s sperm was believed to have caused the conception, solely that. The first part is indibutable fact, the second part is assertion, but are still biological event-based legalities, lying about any of which is a criminal offence.

    This is the main reason parents of children borne by a surrogates or through donation have to go through legal processes to adopt their “own” child.

  17. ‘A birth certificate is a legal document legally documenting who’s womb you came out of and who’s sperm was believed to have caused the conception, solely that. The first part is indibutable fact, the second part is assertion, but are still biological event-based legalities, lying about any of which is a criminal offence.‘

    Likely there lies the problem, wants to be on the birth certificate for legal and parental rights purposes, but wants to use their new identity and doesn’t want it under mother but under father, I’m sure putting them under mother with their new name wouldn’t be an insurmountable problem and it just the insistence of being listed as father that’s the issue.
    Been similar issues with gay couples adopting where the govt forms have mother/father fields rather than parent1/parent2 and the advice is just fill them in and don’t worry about it, but then someone gets hung up and complains about being listed as the mother etc.

  18. “Guardian journalist transitions to being a man.”

    Oooh, wait, I know this one.

    It’s George Monbiot, isn’t it?

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