In previous videos I’ve predicted that we would see increases in both feminist and tradcon efforts to leverage their golden uterus syndrome against men, both heterosexual and homosexual, who decide to use surrogacy as a means of reproduction. Numerous feminist and traditionalist conservative initiatives already exist as precedents for any looking to ascertain the feminist and tradcon position on surrogacy, specifically surrogacy that allows men to bypass obligations to women in the process of reproduction, the most notable of which being the famous Baby M case that involved the parental rights of surrogate mothers contractually obligated to relinquish these rights upon childbirth. The wiki synopsis explains:



In re Baby M was a custody case that became the first American court ruling on the validity of surrogacy. William Stern and his wife, Elizabeth Stern, entered into a surrogacy agreement with Mary Beth Whitehead, whom they found through a newspaper advertisement. According to the agreement, Mary Beth Whitehead would be inseminated with William Stern’s sperm (making her a traditional, as opposed to gestational, surrogate), bring the pregnancy to term, and relinquish her parental rights in favor of William’s wife, Elizabeth. After the birth, however, Mary Beth decided to keep the child. William and Elizabeth Stern then sued to be recognized as the child’s legal parents. The New Jersey court ruled that the surrogacy contract was invalid according to public policy, recognized Mary Beth Whitehead as the child’s legal mother, and ordered the Family Court to determine whether Whitehead, as mother, or Stern, as father, should have legal custody of the infant, using the conventional ‘best interests of the child’ analysis. Stern was awarded custody, with Whitehead having visitation rights. At birth, Mary Beth Whitehead named Baby M. Sara Elizabeth Whitehead. She was later renamed Melissa Elizabeth Stern, after William Stern was awarded legal custody.

The feminist heavyweights of the day, Including Gloria Steinham outwardly protested the notion that a surrogate mother could be forced to relinquish custody of Baby M, and they decided to compel the courts as “impartial” observers, in hopes of getting them to allow this woman to breach contract and maintain custody of baby M, here are the details from Feminists Fight Court Ruling in Baby M Decision : Steinem, Friedan, Chesler, French Among Supporters

Declaring their opposition to “commercialization of reproductive technologies,” 22 prominent feminists have joined with the Foundation on Economic Trends here to file an amicus curiae brief in the Baby M case.

Among those lending their names to the brief–filed by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Foundation on Economic Trends, a public-interest organization that examines the social, environmental, economic and ethical impacts of emerging technologies–are Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Phyllis Chesler and Marilyn French, author of “The Women’s Room.” Foundation president Jeremy Rifkin called the effort “the first public policy statement by leading feminists in the United States on a biotechnology issue.”

The question worth asking here is why it is the business of feminists to infringe upon contractual agreements between individuals surrounding the custody of a child? Why are they attempting to influence governments, controlled according to them, by a biased, sexist patriarchy, toward inserting themselves in private matters concerning the custody of children born via surrogacy in favor of establishing a precedent that sides with the mother by default? I suspect it’s because feminists want to resist the commodification of the human womb. The words “commodification” used in the same sentence as the word “womb” is bound to raise suspicions in our society, but human beings have a long history of commoditizing the act of reproduction and its various derivatives. Pornography is the act of taking an aspect of reproduction(sex), controlling that reproduction via contraceptives, and selling the sex on an open market for consumption by other human beings. Prostitution, the oldest profession, has been with us since at least the birth of civilization and probably much longer, as evidenced by studies that show that primates, when introduced to the concept of currency, will shortly afterwards begin to exchange money for sex. This will not change, prostitution will be with us for eons to come, despite what some feminists or their puritan traditionalist conservative counterparts have to say about it.

Thus, if we commoditize sex, why would we not commoditize reproduction? The answer is that we already are, and we are doing so in increasingly sophisticated ways, with markets emerging dedicated to peddling Ivy league sperm and ova, perhaps we’re not quite at the gates of Gattaca just yet, but give it time, we’ll get there. This Baby M fiasco was a symptom of our society’s fixation and reverence of the womb, what we know in the manosphere as the golden uterus syndrome, a descriptor for our society’s tendency towards hypersensitivity regarding anything having to do with the female ability to incubate life. We revere the female ability of pregnancy so much in our society that when we developed the technology, we gave women complete control over when they reproduce via abortion. We did this under the guise of the right to female bodily autonomy, but the fact that men haven’t been granted legal paternal surrender when a woman seeks to keep a pregnancy against the fathers will suggests otherwise. What does it suggest? That this never was about lofty aspirations for female bodily autonomy, but instead designed for maximum ease for women, at the expense of maximum burden for men.

We should expect the same level of hypocrisy surrounding surrogacy laws starting with this baby M case, and popping up again, most recently with an article titled We need lawmakers, not angry couples and grief stricken mothers, to make rational decisions over surrogacy which opened with the following:

Breast is best. We’ve been told it for years. Babies thrive on mother’s milk and there are few sights more natural, more reassuring, more life-affirming than a woman feeding her baby.

Unless, that is, a court decides that the baby belongs not with its mother but with the man who fathered it – and forcibly removes the infant despite the fact it is still nursing. It’s a violent, dramatic image – all the more so because there’s no intimation that the woman is an abusive or even neglectful mother. Immediately you’re greeted with this fine bit of emotional manipulation: Babies thrive on mother’s milk and there are few sights more natural, more reassuring, more life-affirming than a woman feeding her baby.

While there are indeed some benefits to breastfeeding that an infant receives from his mothers breastmilk, this is due to an imperfect understanding of the chemical cocktail that makes up breastmilk, an issue that will eventually be rectified completely. If it becomes understood that breastmilk confers onto the mothers infant, beneficial gut bacteria that eventually is incorporated into its micro-biome, we can recreate that in the lab and eventually develop technology where we can decipher which micro-biome flora and fauna will be most beneficial to an infant according to his genetics and provide this to him or her, it may be possible even, that we’ll eventually improve on the chemical cocktail that the mother is able to give the infant through breatfeeding and/or find a way to allow mothers to confer these traits into their infants that for one reason or another cannot breastfeed or even produce breast milk. Once this is a reality the possibility of incorporating the fathers micro-biome will become a reality. Given all of this, one much more simple question remains unanswered, if this mothers milk is so integral to a new born infants development, can she not relinquish custody and travel to the father and breastfeed? While there, can she not also provide him with breastmilk she obtained using a breast pump? Why does a surrogate mother need custody in order to breastfeed? The answer is she doesn’t, and she’s using the golden uterus syndrome that infects our society in order to acquire sympathy, sympathy that she wishes to use as capital for breach of a surrogacy contract.

It’s just another instance of “the best interest of the child” being used to discriminate against men and appeal to a social privilege that women enjoy surrounding children. You will never, for example, hear these same women talking about how there are “few sights more natural” than an infant boy with an intact penis, or that mutilating an infant baby boy for what amounts to female aesthetic preference regarding the male penis is the exact opposite of “life affirming.”. These women aren’t interested in protecting our most vulnerable human beings, they are interested in maintaining their motherhood entitlement, and upholding the societal belief that fatherhood is somehow below motherhood, and thus should take a backseat to all things maternal having to do with children. The article continues:

When the mother changed her mind and wanted to be the prime carer, the man took legal action, and the court backed him, simultaneously placing a gagging order on her preventing her from talking about the case. There are many strands to this cat’s cradle of claim and counter claim. Many details of this disturbing case are unique. Some have been taken into consideration by the judge, others have not.

The father’s sexuality has, quite rightly, been deemed irrelevant. But so, too, has the altogether more salient fact that he and his partner are unmarried and have not committed to a civil partnership. On the other hand, the mother’s intemperate outburst in court when she made “homophobic” accusations, has contributed to the weight of evidence against her. The fact she changed her mind about handing over the child that she carried and gave birth to appears to be of no import.

First off, to the gay man who took action to defend his right to parent-hood.

Good…

Good on you for suing this woman who thinks it her right to agree to provide her services, at what was I’m sure great expense to you, in order for you to enjoy the act of reproduction without having any legal or romantic ties to a woman. Gay men are truly pioneers in this regard, and are paving the way for us heterosexual men who might wish in the future to reproduce without any legal or moral obligations to the female sex. Notice that when this woman didn’t get her way in a court of law, she resorted to homophobic commentary. There is a gag order in place so I cannot know what she said specifically, but i’d wager that it was some kind of appeal to her female privilege, something on the order of -Why should a homo get more access to MY child than me? I’m the mother, I’m the normal one! waa!-

Also, this bit interests me

The father’s sexuality has, quite rightly, been deemed irrelevant. But so, too, has the altogether more salient fact that he and his partner are unmarried and have not committed to a civil partnership.

So what? so fucking what? why does this man have to be married in order for his parenthood to have legitimacy? Notice this woman says nothing about single mothers on government assistance which want nothing to do with the father of their children? Notice no comment about women who refuse fathers access to their children while demanding child support from them, are they not “legitimate” because they’re not married? It’s interesting to see how quickly women like this, who on the surface claim support for gay rights, try to denigrate the right for a gay man to become a parent in anyway he so chooses, resorting to hurling the marriage card like reactionary conservative tradcons when women are being left out of parenthood as per contractual agreement.

Further down the article says:

Unlike the US, where surrogacy arrangements are governed by law, here in the UK we find ourselves bogged down in a quagmire of confusion as social mores and scientific advances outstrip the slow accretions of the statute book. But – and here’s the silly sentimental fool in me – what is truly horrifying is that at the centre of this particular case is a child, a baby. A baby being treated as a commodity and argued over like a disputed possession.

As the Baby M case proves, American laws regarding surrogacy is not quite as regulated as you would think, but again, we see a resort to the “omg there’s a baby wrapped up in all of this you monsters!” trope. These concerns magically disappear when a man raises the point that the vast majority of custody disputes are rewarded to women, and that this has caused much dysfunction and interruption in the lives of children. I for one hope to see many more men pursuing surrogacy, as well as legal protections for fathers that have used surrogacy as a means of procreation, so that women like this cant deprive fathers of their children. This is the first part in a continuing series of articles surrounding these topics, stay tuned.