#Men can't have babies

[coochiequeens]

No where in this article do they refer to the gestational carrier as a birth mother

PUBLISHED FRI, JUN 23 20239:54 AM EDTUPDATED FRI, JUN 23 20231:18 PM EDT by Courtney Reagan@COURTREAGANWATCH LIVEKEY POINTS

Almost two-thirds, 63%, of LGBTQ+ people plan to use assisted reproductive technology, foster care, or adoption to become parents, according to a survey by Family Equality. Gay male couples typically face a more expensive journey, as surrogacy or adoption are their primary choices. While more employers are offering fertility benefits, many of these packages are limited when it comes to covering surrogacy. Gay men face more challenges and higher costs to start family.

Bret Shuford and Stephen Hanna knew from early on in their relationship they wanted to raise a child together. But the married couple didn’t think a biological child was a possibility. As freelancers in the creative arts, Shuford and Hanna don’t always see steady income, even when working on Broadway. The Houston-based couple, known as the “Broadway Husbands,” thought having a child with a donor egg and gestational carrier “seemed like it was something that was only available to people who were very wealthy,” said Shuford, 44.

It’s a safe assumption that having a child with a surrogate, now most often called a gestational carrier, is cost-prohibitive. While expenses vary widely due to a number of medical and legal factors, “the average cost of surrogacy in America has gone from $75,000 five years ago, to anywhere between $150,000 and $250,000 today,” according to Dr. Brian Levine, a reproductive endocrinologist who founded surrogacy matching platform Nodal.

In the U.S., there are only about 5,000 successful surrogacy journeys per year, Nodal estimates.“That’s only about 8% of met need,” Levine said. “In plain English, 92% of the people that dream of starting or growing or completing a family with surrogacy will not be able to do so in America due to the sheer time and cost constraints that are there today.”

Why gay male couples face higher costs

Alon Rivel always wanted to be a father. “As I grew up, I realized I was gay,” said Rivel, 34. “So I thought, this will never happen for me. I don’t have the money, but I wanted it desperately.” "We were shocked when we started to look into [having a biological child] and realized nothing is covered by insurance unless you can prove that you’re infertile,” said Rivel, who lives in Arlington, Massachusetts. He and his husband believed that “this is complete discrimination on the insurance company’s part because we are gay men.” “It is not a choice,” Rivel added. “We were born this way and, thus, we are actually infertile.” Experts say the demand for surrogacy relationships has grown since same-sex marriage became legal in the U.S. in 2015. Gay male couples typically face a more expensive journey, as surrogacy or adoption are their primary choices. In contrast, same-sex female couples are often able to carry pregnancies to term on their own, though they may possibly have to pay for donor sperm and fertilization.

"Sadly, we do see in some states that there are laws that discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community". Betsy Campbell CHIEF ENGAGEMENT OFFICER FOR RESOLVE: THE NATIONAL INFERTILITY ASSOCIATION

Donor eggs are exponentially more expensive than donor sperm largely because the egg retrieval process is more invasive and complicated. While costs, again, vary wildly, donor eggs and the associated costs can range between $20,000 and $60,000, according to fertility marketplace GoStork, while donor sperm can be from as little as several hundred dollars to around $1,000. Donor eggs, meanwhile, are only one of many expenses.

Shuford and Hanna’s health insurance covered only the tests done on their sperm samples. Their remaining expenses, they estimate, ran between $150,000 and $180,000. That included around $40,000 for donor eggs, the medical costs to create, store, test and freeze embryos, medical insurance and out-of-pocket medical costs for their gestational carrier, her compensation, and other expenses. The couple used savings, credit cards and high-interest loans to cover that tab. Rivel and his husband’s journey to parenthood ultimately cost $220,000.

“We’re taking money away from our child’s college fund,” he said. “We’re taking money away from our mortgage.”

“Compared to [many of] our friends, our baseline is $200,000 below where they started,” Rivel added.

Employer fertility benefits offer limited help

More employers are starting to offer fertility benefits, often through a specialized fertility benefits manager such as Kindbody, Carrot, Progyny or Maven. In 2022, 40% of U.S. employers offered some type of fertility coverage, up from 30% in 2020, according to the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. Fertility IQ, which keeps a workplace index of employer fertility benefits, found the average amount of fertility coverage in 2021 was $36,000 per lifetime, flat from the year before. But while more companies are offering fertility benefits, many of these packages are limited when it comes to covering what’s needed to build families using non-traditional methods. Almost two-thirds, 63%, of LGBTQ+ people plan to use assisted reproductive technology, foster care or adoption to become parents, according to a survey by Family Equality. Yet fewer than half of employers offering fertility benefits provided any benefits for adoption, and only about 10% provided benefits related to surrogacy, according to a 2021 survey from Resolve: The National Infertility Association and health-care consultancy Mercer. And state laws requiring employers of a certain size to offer fertility benefits often leave out coverage for third-party reproduction such as a gestational carrier or the purchase of donor eggs or donor sperm.

“I honestly believe that employers don’t realize there is a gap in their benefits. And they often don’t know this until an employee points that out,” said Betsy Campbell, chief engagement officer for Resolve.

She said many employers she speaks to have “the best intentions” but don’t understand how gestational surrogacy works or how family building benefits fall short.

Will Porteous, 39, became a father through gestational surrogacy before joining Maven as its chief growth officer. He and his husband tabulated their parenthood path cost at close to $175,000. “No employer in the entire country that I’m aware of offers anything greater than $75,000 a year, and so that only covers a portion.” 

But Porteous, who lives in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, said full coverage isn’t necessarily what LGBTQ+ couples want to see. “The expectation is to have equitable support to your other co-workers and seeing that your employer cares about that journey,” he said.

That employer support, Porteous said, “really means a lot and it shows that you as an employer care about your employee, regardless of how they’re going to build their family.”

Fertility benefits can help recruit, retain talent

While fertility benefits manager Progyny’s first clients were largely West Coast “Silicon Valley-type” businesses, according to CEO Pete Anevski, it now works with employers in 40 industries.

“There’s a flywheel effect happening,” he said, with more companies realizing benefits need to include family-building coverage “to be competitive, to attract and retain talent in what is still a tight labor market, an inflationary economy, even with concerns around a looming recession.” 

Fertility benefits manager Carrot said it has around 800 corporate clients and 80% of those offer their employees a benefit for surrogacy. “We have seen an increase in surrogacy claims year over year at about 250%,” said CEO Tammy Sun. 

Offering these types of benefits can be key factors for a company when job candidates are making decisions about employment, said Taryn Branca, chief revenue officer at Kindbody.

“I can’t tell you how many of our clients will call us, we will get on the phone with potential candidates that they’re recruiting, or we will provide information to support that recruit coming there because they are asking for very specific information before they’ll accept the offer: if they have surrogacy benefits, if they have donor benefits,” she said.

More than half of respondents in a new Progyny survey of LGBTQ+ community members said they are actively looking to build their families. Of that population, 79% would consider leaving their current job for one that offers better fertility and family-building benefits, and 80% would consider taking a second job to receive those benefits.

“This is not a ‘nice to have,’ this is a ‘need to have’ benefit,” Anevski said.

Rivel’s husband is an early employee at Massachusetts-based Beam Therapeutics. At Rivel’s insistence, he asked his human resources department to look into including surrogacy benefits. Eventually, the company added a surrogacy reimbursement benefit, which at the time Rivel and his husband used it was worth $10,000. 

While $10,000 was a small dent in the couple’s $220,000 surrogacy journey, Rivel said it’s better than nothing. “It’s really admirable that they have it,” he said. “I think it’s a really smart benefit for recruiting more people.”

Adoption also comes with high costs, risks

Adoption is certainly another family-building option. “It’s not for everyone ... it’s not without its costs, and the laws vary by state,” Resolve’s Campbell said. “Sadly, we do see in some states that there are laws that discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community, so that’s definitely a consideration.”

The average nonfoster-system adoption costs between $25,000 and $60,000, according to the Child Welfare Information Gateway. As with surrogacy relationships, the adopting parents cover related expenses for all parties, from medical to legal, plus living expenses if a match is made in advance of a birth. And, of course, there are no guarantees.

Shuford and Hanna decided adoption wasn’t a path for them. “There’s a lot of risks involved that we weren’t willing to take,” Hanna said. “We had heard of stories involving birth mothers changing their minds, and children having birth defects that without [genetic embryo testing] weren’t known.”

Like many gestational carrier stories, Shuford and Hanna’s was far from easy or straightforward.

Their first carrier dropped out of the process shortly before the embryo transfer was scheduled to take place but well after contracts had been signed and medical assessments and travel had occurred. The Covid-19 pandemic delayed the process with their second gestational carrier; then, after the first embryo transfer, the pregnancy ended in a devastating miscarriage. The second embryo transfer worked, and their surrogate gave birth to their son, Maverick, in 2022.

“So many times, we felt very excluded,” Shuford said. “We want to be able to have a family and raise our child and have that child be biologically related to us, and we have a right to do that, and we have a right to feel seen and validated in that process.”

But for Shuford, “in the end, it was totally worth it.”

“I mean, Maverick is amazing,” he added. “And we’re so lucky to have a healthy baby and also having someone like Crystal, our surrogate who carried our child.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced that kind of love in my life,” Shuford said. “So it’s really a powerful experience.”

[nnnn99999]

I want to share my interpretation of FadelStyle's sex scenes in the storage room, but before I get to the actual scene I need to establish FadelStyle's relationship arc so far. I won't go into detail about their attitude towards each other in episode 1 and 2 because @airenyah did such a great job of explaining Style's journey in this post and I wholeheartedly agree with everything she said.

To summarize, by the end of episode 2 Style is starting to sense something is off about Fadel and he is starting to want to connect to him, whereas Style manages to make past Fadel's defenses and enter his mind, albeit as a sexual fantasy. At this point neither of the two actively dislike each other as they used to before. Fadel still finds Style very annoying, but he is already starting to get used to it. Style still thinks Fadel is grumpy and rude, but he is intrigued by what lays under Fadel's mask. They don't really like each other, but they don't exactly hate each other either.

This dynamics continue in episode 3. As they meet each other more and more, Fadel softens up to Style as sees more of him. It's hard for Fadel to completely ignore the genuine care, concern and sincerity Style throws at him again and again. Style also starts to become even more intrigued by Fadel as he realizes just how deep the man is hiding himself. Not to mention the physical attraction between the two that very much exists and makes its presence known in the form of sexual fantasies.

When they actually hook up for the first time, there is only physical attraction that is driving their actions. As I mentioned before, they don't dislike each other, but they don't really like each other either. There is an emotional disconnect between the two. And I believe this is the reason this experience was not very fulfilling for either of them. Both of them seem to be the type to believe in having proper relationships instead of casual hookups, so sex without any sort of meaningful connection might be pleasant because of the physical attraction, but it's far from being able to make either of them feel content.

Comparing FadelStyle's first time to KantBison's first time makes this more evident. KantBison didn't even know each other's names when they jumped into bed together. But that didn't stop them from having a great time. They have no problems in finding sexual satisfaction without any emotional attachment. FadelStyle on the other hand seem to be unable to do that. It's a matter of preference, neither is right or wrong. The lighting choices in the two scenes also reflect the mood of the couples. For KantBison, it's a bright red-glaring, intense and passionate. The lighting is not warm, it's burning hot actually. Whereas for FadelStyle, the lighting is a cold blue, with no hint of warmth to be found.

In Fadel's fantasy, Fadel thinks about Style's interest in himself (his name and his tattoo). In Style's fantasy, Style imagines Fadel serving him with direct eye contact maintained at all times. Both of these fantasies further indicate to me that both of them crave a deeper connection with the other. And it's only when they find that connection that they can truly find sexual contentment.

I don't think Fadel meant to be that tender and worshipful with Style. I think he just couldn't help himself. Now that Style has had a taste of what it could feel like being with Fadel, he is not going to give up trying to make Fadel his. And Fadel has no way to defend against that kind of Style.

[dkettchen]

[eddis-not-eeddis]

I keep seeing this thing where guys swear up and down that they want a good Christian girl, but then balk if that means she wants to be anything more than a wife and mother. Like, my guy, you do realize that there's a lot more to Christian women than being married or having babies? Yeah? What about a woman who works among the homeless, or runs a bible study, or volunteers to teach refugees a new language, or who takes part in the prison ministry, or who spends a lot of her spare time in another city street preaching? I see a lot of guys who claim they want "a girl who loves Jesus" but don't want anything to do with a woman who does more than just go to church and lives a life of active ministry outside of her home.

[benoitblanc]

making an emily-arc gifset and screaming internally. why the fuck did they do that to scully

[inbetweenknacksandnooks]

Just started the newest ZZZ special episode and... it's giving me 2nd-hand rage.

You know how in cartoons (usually comedy ones) a character will have a bunch of garbage happening around them, but they're not mad because they feel like they 'shouldn't be', so you, as the viewer, get mad for them.

Anyway that's how I feel about Yanagi's story so far.

Yanagi is essentially raising 3 children in the form of her colleagues.

Soukaku is mildly forgivable, only because my personal headcanon is that her mental growth has been stunted one way or another, and it's revealed why Yanagi takes care of her in Yanagi's teaser. So I can forgive that well enough.

But Miyabi is a different case. It's stated that she passed on all the paperwork to Yanagi, and constantly tries to get out of meetings. I know that meetings and paperwork is unpleasant, but you're the CHIEF ffs! Take some responsibility!

While Zhu Yuan had boundaries in the workplace, such as not working overtime when her job was done, Yanagi seems to have the opposite

Miyabi doesn't seem to stop or suggest stopping this kind of thing to keep her health intact either!

Harumasa isn't as bad as Miyabi, but he's not great either, as he constantly wants to slack off whenever possible.

This is the equivalent of having to do a group project with 3 unmotivated people that want to dilly-dally and sidetrack every possible conversation to avoid doing work, and ultimately, you have to take on the whole damn thing by yourself.

I'm not trying to say that the rest of Section 6 don't love or care about Yanagi at all, they obviously do, and if Yanagi had a heart attack from underlying cardiovascular disease (due to her immense work stress), the three would likely visit her hospital bed (if she was still alive, anyway, since women die from heart attacks more frequently, and she's often left either on her own, or with what is basically an incompetent child who wouldn't know the first thing about strokes or those kinds of problems)

But I don't think Miyabi would learn that this toxic asf work environment is the thing killing her, and would go back to not caring about Yanagi staying late after the first month or two of the incident.

I think the thing that peeves me the most, is how all three of them act like whiny children with Yanagi around.

As I mentioned, Soukaku is mostly excusable, since she has stunted mental growth.

But fucking Miyabi, crying about not wanting to attend a meeting, or Harumasa who faked a fucking stomachache to skip work?!

This is your job, not Elementary School! I hope one of your vacation days were snatched!

I make a big deal out of this, because I don't think that anyone should have a parent-child relationship with their colleagues, unless there is an underlying condition wherein you are the person's caretaker (Soukaku)

I would never want a parent-like relationship with a spouse, nor one with a friend. Hell, I don't need a parent-like relationship at all, since I'm an adult.

Likewise, a child's parent shouldn't be a bosom buddy.

I might just be projecting a little bit, or getting too personal, because I never want to have kids ever, and I've seen people with this kind of lifestyle where they baby everyone around them, and get fucked with little-to-no freetime, heightening blood pressure due to stress, and a lot of pent-up feelings because they can't communicate to their friends, because they treat their friends as children, and their friends treat them as a parent.

Anyways, I'm not very far into the Special Episode, so maybe Yanagi snaps somewhere or has an emotional breakdown where Section 6 (specifically Harumasa and Miyabi) can see how much Yanagi is doing, and they help to rectify this, by eventually creating a much better workplace to live in.

A lifestyle like this can't go on forever, and I hope the negative effects are shown.

[d3vilishd00dles]

figured I'd draw him since I've been getting so many of his tiktoks

and did Aphrodite too

[weebleroxanne]

There are not enough transfemme Buck or transfemme Eddie fics in 911 fandom. There are quite a few absolutely wonderful transmasc Bucks and but only maybe a couple Eddie, but this fandom needs more transfemme firefighters

[isawthismeme]

[karinyosa]

i can't go into the tag rn bc i'll get spoilers but the other show i'm going insane about is blue eye samurai and oh my god. the scene where mizu has a flashback to the fight w taigen while watching a threesome. my god

[coochiequeens]

A woman wanted to have a relationship with the child she gave birth to. And the men's response "was to insist that their son had no mother — only a surrogate — and that the child’s identity was as part of a motherless family." But the kid was created from her egg. She is the kids biological mother.

5 June, 2024 By Julie Bindel

This article is taken from the June 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

There is a contradiction at the heart of the international surrogacy industry. Its participants pretend that surrogates’ feelings for the children in their wombs do not exist, whilst simultaneously trying to prevent them acting on those feelings. Many commissioning parents broker the babies in jurisdictions that allow restrictions on surrogates’ rights.

In the UK, this contradiction was recently laid bare in a Family Court case (citation number: [2024] EWFC 20). A gay male couple were engaged in a long-running legal battle with their son’s surrogate. Rather than vanish after handing over the child, she wanted a role in the boy’s life. The men’s response was to insist that their son had no mother — only a surrogate — and that the child’s identity was as part of a motherless family. There was “no vacancy” for her to occupy in his life, they claimed, and it was prejudicial to gay families to suggest otherwise.

At the start of this story, G, the surrogate in question, was a 36-year-old single mother of a teenager and naive about what surrogacy entailed. The commissioning parents were friends of her sister but not people she knew. Aged 43 and 36 and married, they were members of an agency, Surrogacy UK, and very familiar with its protocols — which included a “getting to know you” period — and support. However rather than go through the agency, the men chose to fast-track the process with an independent arrangement with G.

Following a failed transfer of a donor egg, the trio decided to use G’s own egg. The men agreed that G would have contact with the child, but none of the parties properly considered the implications. The relationship between the three deteriorated during G’s pregnancy. G gave birth to a boy in September 2020.

After the birth, G would not initially consent to the parental order, under which she would lose parental responsibility as she feared being cut out of the child’s life. But during a lengthy online hearing in which she was alone and unrepresented — unlike the men — G was pressured by the judge to agree to the parental order along with a contact agreement called a child arrangements order.

After obtaining parental responsibility, the men quickly reneged on the agreement. When G turned up at their house for a pre-arranged visit they threatened to call the police. She recorded the meeting. The Family Court judge later declared of the recording “what was said has rightly been described as ‘horrendous’”. The men told G she was “harbouring a desire to have an inappropriate relationship” by wanting the boy to recognise her as his mother and accused her of having “rejected the role of surrogate”.

In January 2022, the men refused to allow G to visit her son and applied for the contact agreement to be changed. G then made her own application for the parental order to be overturned. She won her case in November the same year. This restored her parental responsibility for the child and removed it from the man who was not the child’s biological father.

The men redoubled their efforts to remove G as a parent, this time applying for an adoption order. During court proceedings, they claimed their son’s identity was that of a child of same-sex parents being raised within the LGBT community and that he belonged to a “motherless family”.

As a lesbian who came out in the 1970s, I’m only too aware of the history of demonisation of lesbian and gay couples. Parents who conceived children in heterosexual relationships were often denied custody and contact if they came out as gay after separation. Foster and adoption agencies were openly prejudiced. But times have changed, and same-sex parents are now a common sight at the school gates in some parts of the UK.

Claims that the children of same-sex parents are disadvantaged in some way have largely been defeated with an expanding body of evidence (e.g. Zhang Y, Huang H, Wang M, et al., BMJ Global Health, 2023) showing their outcomes are similar to those of heterosexual families. Gay rights are robustly supported in most public institutions and private organisations. For a gay couple to call on historic prejudice to justify excluding a mother from a child’s life is unforgivable.

In any case, the men’s argument was fatally — and obviously — undermined by its own logic. If the boy did not have a mother, there would be no need for the court case.

As the jointly-instructed clinical psychologist in the case recognised, the driver of the men’s case was the “elephant in the room” — G’s existence as the child’s legal and biological mother — and the men’s fear of her maternal bond with her son. The men had difficulties “accepting the reality” of the child’s conception, the psychologist found, and considering what sense the boy might make of the situation as he grew up.

“They have strongly held to the surrogacy agreement and the narrative of [G] being a ‘surrogate’ because in that narrative there are no, or hardly any feelings from the surrogate for the baby,” the psychologist wrote. He described the men as attempting an “erasure of the mother”, which he said was not in the child’s best interest as it did not reflect reality.

Refusing an adoption order that would likely have resulted in cutting G from her son’s life, the court ruled that G should have direct and unsupervised contact with him. The judge criticised the men for blaming G for everything that went wrong. The judgment also raised questions about how an adoption order would be explained to the boy, given it would have been made without his mother’s consent.

To some extent, history repeated itself in this case. There are multiple examples of legal battles involving lesbian couples who created a child with the help of a sperm donor who later inconveniently insisted on contact or on playing the role of father.

As the Court of Appeal ruled in one such case in 2012: “What the adults look forward to before undertaking the hazards of conception, birth and the first experience of parenting may prove to be illusion or fantasy. [The couple] may have had the desire to create a two-parent lesbian nuclear family completely intact and free from fracture resulting from contact with the third parent. But such desires may be essentially selfish and may later insufficiently weigh the welfare and developing rights of the child that they have created.”

What’s concerning in this case is the language used — the “erasure” of the mother

Contested surrogacy cases are little different from these wrangles and, indeed, from any other contact disputes. What’s concerning about G’s case, and what makes it different from the case of the lesbian parents above, is the language used. The psychologist explicitly referred to the men’s attempted “erasure” of the mother. They simply refused to acknowledge G’s existence in any of the forms in which she fulfilled a maternal capacity: legal, genetic and as the person who gave birth. They were supported in this illusion by the professionals who weighed in on their behalf.

In the space of a few years the term “motherless” has moved from an emotive description of absence to a positive identity argued for in court. This shift is entirely consistent with the narrative that surrogacy participants feed to the public.

When celebrity couples introduce their surrogate children on social media, the women who gave birth to them are rarely mentioned. The new babies are “welcomed” as if they have been sent by special delivery. That is in line with the attitude of the international surrogacy industry, which reduces the role of the birth mother to that of a “carrier” or rented womb.

For commissioning parents, it must be very easy to regard the woman who bore their child for nine months as a mere service provider, someone to be gratefully forgotten as soon as the final instalment is paid and the product handed over.

Meanwhile, parts of the NHS are determined to de-gender childbirth, routinely referring to “birthing parents” rather than mothers. As an example (there are multiple) the Royal United Hospital Bath’s “information for families” on labour induction refers to dads, but there is no mention of mothers — only birthing parents.

Feminists have long campaigned for gender-neutral language to reflect roles that are indeed, or can be, gender-neutral. But the uncoupling of sex from the necessarily female processes of pregnancy and childbirth is a step towards a dystopian future. In 2015 Victoria Smith wrote, “Gender-neutral language around reproduction creates the illusion of dismantling a hierarchy — when what you really end up doing is ignoring it.” I would go further. Gender-neutral language around reproduction — just like any language that obscures reality — reinforces and helps establish hierarchies of oppression.

To the men, G was simply a surrogate womb to a motherless child. But to G and to Z, she was his mother. As the psychologist said, “‘Motherlessness’ does not exist. The child was born from two people, biologically, and from three people, psychologically … The mother certainly played a part, biologically and psychologically, in the conception of the child.”

The case — unremarked and unnoticed by the media — will do nothing to change popular opinion of surrogacy. It is likely to encourage intending parents to explore dubious overseas jurisdictions, where surrogates have fewer rights. The surrogacy profiteers will continue to cheerlead wealthy couples in their exploitation of impoverished and naive women.

As for the word “motherless”: in time it may lose its negative connotations and become solidified as an identity. Will it become a badge that straight children can use to signal their connection to LGBTQ+ community? Or an oppression card that can be deployed by the children of wealthy men to explain bad behaviour towards women? Either way, Disney and Dickens are going to need a lot of rewriting.

[thelibraryofsylphide]

Pantheon, Atreus, the Man

Pantheon Moodboard series: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

[invisible-pink-toast]

i don't understand why everyone thinks you have to be one thing.

[jinnies-lamps]

it's where I post rn

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Illyana Rasputin/Magik is such a mainstay of X-Men now you wouldn't think she was practically gone from the comics for like 20 years. 1988-2008 was a depressing time to be an Illyana fan with 1993 being just the absolute fucking worst.

[harpielady]

self improvement content for women really fucks me off because it always equates excessive grooming and beauty with personal growth