She was literally just a vessel
It’s just right below the surface. Sometimes a mere scratch will reveal it.
It takes my breath away.
A woman gestated twin babies for a gay couple, and Pink News calls the babies “their” (meaning the two men’s) daughters. A woman goes through all the exhaustion and discomfort of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth, and Pink News refers to her daughters as belonging to two men who have done no work so far apart from one ejaculation.
And then some bystander guy says “they aren’t her kids” and “she was literally just a vessel.”
A vessel is something like a pot or vase or urn, an inanimate object that can contain liquids. A vessel has no mind, no body, no feelings, no pain, no fatigue, no longing to be able to sleep comfortably. A pregnant woman? Not so much.
I never can get used to it, the contempt men have for women – the failure even to grasp that we have minds.
“I value women for their uterus alone.” – That guy.
The comments, as ever, are breathtaking.
She probably wasn’t ‘just a vessel’ anyway. She probably provided the egg, since men only have sperm. In short, even if one of them provided the sperm, she is the mother.
And it isn’t just exhaustion and discomfort, though of course I’m aware you know that. There is actual risk to the woman’s health. There are changes to her body that can be difficult to recover from.
I remember a play I saw at a contest a couple of years ago, a play that was a prize-winner. It was called “Breeders”, and was about two gay men and the strain on their relationship from waiting for “their” baby. In this case, neither of them was the father, but they were adopting. The way they talked about the woman was…enough to take my breath away. She was a breeder to them, a vessel, and their language was nasty and misogynistic. This was seen as a wonderful play, because it presented the difficulties of gay men so well. Yeah. The woman, on the other hand, was coupled with a pair of hamsters who were also expecting. She was, literally, compared to a rodent.
iknklast,
It is an ugly story in a lot of ways, but yes, she did provide the eggs. Biologically, they are her children by one of the men. What jumps out to me, though, is the fact the girls were born at 28 weeks, so two months or so premature. That doesn’t suggest an easy pregnancy at all.
Does this shed light on a related goal of the radical-trans agenda? ie that because they identify as women they have a right to have children, and someone had better supply them . . . or as they will start to say “having children is a human right”
32 weeks is considered full term for twins. Human bodies can’t support twin pregnancies for as long so they’re always born early. It’s unfortunate but a 28 week twin pregnancy is pretty common.
I don’t know why people think the surrogates they use don’t have every parental right anyone else who gives birth does. Same deal with pregnant women intending to have their baby adopted. Until the kid is born and papers are signed, it is their child. There’s even a period of time after birth women are entitled to change their mind and any legal proceedings to give someone else parental rights to the child are tossed in a lot of countries.
Also, why is this case being reported as if not getting the babies resulted in debt for these men? They’re in debt because they couldn’t afford the costs associated with surrogacy. That would be the case whether they’d been given the kids or not.
One of the dudes will have parental rights to the kid. The other will be their stepparent. They’ll have to co-parent with the woman they thought would just be their surrogate. Oh well. This is being reported as if their human rights have been violated. It’s absurd. They took a gamble. It didn’t work out ENTIRELY in their favour. They won’t be able to erase their kids’ mother from their lives. Oh well.
BUT THEY SPENT MONEY AND NOW THEY’RE SAD BOOHOOOOOO!
OB:
Ahem. Present company excepted I hope. (I have two of your books in my library. Correction: one. Some bastard seems to have pinched ‘Fashionable Nonsense’ with J. Stangroom.
Understandable, I suppose.).
Marinerachel,
It is even weirder and uglier than that. They are in debt because of the legal expense of the fight, having refused to pay an additional £3K they then spend ten times that on a legal battle.
Surrogacy is a complicated issue, but it is pretty clear that the laws and regulations that govern it need a complete overhaul. Too many jurisdictions work with a fundamentally property-based contract model that runs into a clash with rights that we do not allow to be contracted away. Regardless of what some troll asserts on twitter, the mother cannot be just a vessel.
Really, Omar, if you’re going to not-all-men, at least make it funny.
Without more context, I took the comment by Megatastic Voyage to be decrying the way women are treated in this transaction. That is, saying women are treated as mere vessels, implying but not stating it’s wrong. I could be misinterpreting, of course, I know nothing of this MV person, but that’s how I read it.
Sackbut, I was curious about that myself, so I checked. Nope.
Here are a couple more responses to comments regarding the original.
Magetastic Voyage
@MagetasticV
·
16h
She is a SURROGATE. Meaning she had them for someone else. They are not hers. She is evil for taking them from those who paid her to have them and paid for her bills. If she want’s to keep them she owes the gay couple a ton of money
Magetastic Voyage
@MagetasticV
·
16h
She was PAID. Thats not slavery. She offered to do it for money, was paid, then went back on the deal taking the kids and the money. She is a thief and a homophobe. Much like the rest of you.
The surrogate is a homophobe for choosing to keep the babies she bore. I guess if the couple were straight, the surrogate would have said, “Welp, here you go, then. Thanks!”
I suspect that at some point during those long months, or gradually, the mother came to realise just what misogynistic narcissists those men are, and made the entirely admirable decision to protect her daughters from them. What mother wants to see her daughters becoming mere trophies, to be shown off? To be raised by men who regard people of their sex as less than human?
Seth:
Had a bad day so far?
Don’t tell me: all your chooks have died. Or you lost a quid and found threepence.
;-)
Re #11
Yep, that’s clear. I withdraw my previous preliminary charitable interpretation.