Transgender man wants to be named as father...

One eyed Jack wrote: »

It's not challenging biology at all. It's challenging the law. The law currently states that the person who gives birth is registered on the birth certificate as the mother. It's similar to cases involving surrogacy where the person who gives birth is registered on the birth certificate as the mother even though the child may possess none of her DNA as the embryo was implanted in her womb. The law can be changed and that's what's being challenged here, not biology.

That doesnt change the fact that it was the mother who gave birth to the child and now that same mother wants to try and change it and claim that she's the father of the baby that she gave birth to why is this insane idea even been remotely contemplated it should be put into the dustbin where it belongs .

TheChizler wrote: »

You can't change the biology, but you can change the meaning of words, which I suppose is the entire argument here.

The words mother and father aren't strictly aligned to whether you contributed sperm or an egg to a new human, just look at adoptive parents or people using surrogates/sperm/egg donations.

If not is it then aligned to your gender at time of conception, or is it aligned to your biological sex at time of conception, or is it something that can be changed retroactively depending on your current circumstances? Those are the questions that it's no harm asking and getting an answer for. Maybe they don't need to be answered. Maybe there's no need for those words, maybe "parent A" and "B" would do.

So what we are asking for is more precise language that doesn't come with extra "baggage"?

As you have correctly pointed out, adopted kids will very often use "mother" and "father" to describe their adoptive parents. So it's not like "mother" strictly means "the person who gave birth to the child".

If we went with a new system that referred to, say, and XX Type Parent and an XY Type Parent then you could have birth certificates maybe saying "Parent XX" and "Parent XY" and this would remove the extra meanings that are associated with "Father" and "Mother".

Over time though the "XX" and "XY" descriptors would pick up baggage of their own, I think? At the end of the day no matter how you describe the biological parents one of them gave birth to the child and one of them can't give birth to children at all.

How would this feed into teaching about pregnancy etc in school?

It looks to me at the moment that when we teach kids about reproduction we teach them that there are 2 biological categories of human and one of each type of parent is needed to produce a child. That's what they get in school and that makes sense if you want them to understand how things work practically.

Then when these kids reach college or university you have people who want to teach them that "there is no such thing as biological sex" and that seems like an ambitious attempt to deny something that is pretty fundamental to how homo sapiens reproduce and survive.

Ultimately if you did manage to get rid of the "Man" and "Woman" descriptions you are still going to have to teach kids about reproduction at some point and when that talk happens the idea that you are either a "Type A Human" or a "Type B Human" on a very fundamental level has to be dealt with.

Like, they are going to know that they belong to one group or the other as soon as you say "some of you have a penis and some of you have a vagina" because the number of kids who have neither or both is going to be close enough to zero.

How would you stop society from assigning extra "meaning" to the terms Parent A and Parent B when 99% of a specific type of human is a Parent A and 99% of another specific type of human is a Parent B?

"So what if an Aman wants to identify as Bwoman anyway? The terms are just words why not just use Parent 1 and Parent 2!?"

*wait some years*

"So what if a Oneman wants to identify as a Twoman anyway? The terms are just words after all, why not just use Egg donor and Sperm donor?"

*wait some years*

"So what if an Eggman wants to identify as a Sperman? The terms are just words and have a lot of extra baggage attached to them. Why not just refer to them as Mother and Father?"

We could probably go round like that forever.

I think if someone gave birth to a child but doesn't want to be referred to as the "Mother" then I think referring to them as the "biological mother" solves the problem. Unless the person has some personal issue with the word "mother" specifically then I think they just have to get over it.

LLMMLL wrote: »

This nonsense argument raises its head again?

Nobody actually believes they are a tomato/unicorn etc. A large number of people are trans.

There is no slippery slope here.

When it comes to identity though why should anything be out of bounds?

How do you know that NOBODY believes they are are a tomato/unicorn etc?

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/pittsburgh-man-thinks-dog-boomer/story?id=20801512

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/its-catching/201607/the-man-who-thought-he-was-cat

Clinical Lycanthropy : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_lycanthropy

I guess you could believe you are other things. I don't have time to look it up.

What are the rules for identifying as... well anything really?

I get it, saying "I identify as an attack helicopter" undermines and makes fun of trans issues but what are the basic "ground rules" for any claims of identity?

Could a guy get out of paying child support by claiming to not identify as male or female and therefore not falling under the category of mother or father?

Or would we just say "no that's too far, pay up or go to jail"?

How far is too far?

seamus wrote: »

Right, and we shouldn't.
In this case though the guy legally identified as a man at the time of birth.

So he's not trying to change the record retrospectively, but to get information recorded which is not currently recorded.

yeah I don't know....

I think I could go for the 'gender at time of birth' perhaps....

But the way I see it is that the birth cert is really only a recording of how things are at that particular point in time.
And if you're just after having a baby come out of you then you are, by default, that baby's mother.