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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   27084 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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Let's have some more CW over trans issues, because we can never have enough of those, right?

Now, I've been gently chided by other commenters on here about my attitude regarding transgender activism. It's only a few edge cases and nothing to do with the reality of trans people's lives, I get told.

So here's a story I stumbled across that is happening in my own country. I'm hoping really hard that this is just a legal stratagem and not a guy who is now a gal claiming "I am too the biological mother of this child" for realsies:

A British trans woman, who used her frozen sperm to have a baby with her wife, has been granted permission to bring a High Court challenge against a refusal by the State to grant Irish citizenship to the child on the basis that she is not the biological mother.

The woman – who has Irish citizenship while her wife does not – submits that if she has to claim to be the “father” of the child as part of the application, it would be an “offensive, discriminatory and unjust attack” on her person, gender identity and legal status.

...The woman is seeking a declaration from the High Court that she is legally and genetically a parent of the child.

She is also seeking an order compelling the State to register the child on the Foreign Births Register and for the child to be granted citizenship under Section 7 (1) of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1956.

Persons born outside of Ireland who have an Irish national grandparent born in Ireland may obtain Irish citizenship through registration with the Foreign Births Register, which is maintained by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

In submissions to the High Court the woman, who was born male, states that she is a UK resident but with Irish citizenship through her own lineage.

The submissions state that the woman had stored sperm with a UK fertility clinic, intending it to be used at a future date. She changed her name and transitioned from a man to a woman under UK law, receiving a UK gender recognition certificate.

The woman married her female partner and frozen sperm was then used to have a baby with her wife by an IVF procedure at a UK clinic.

The woman says she fears any UK withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights would mean her family could lose its protections and status in that country.

It is submitted by the woman that her child was refused entry into the foreign births registry – thereby denying Irish citizenship – as the woman was not the biological mother of the child and because her wife, who gave birth to the child, was not an Irish citizen.

The woman submitted that the Department of Foreign Affairs informed her that “under Irish law, as applied to date, the mother of the child is the woman who gives birth to the child and therefore the child would derive their citizenship through that mother”.

It is claimed by the woman the department’s position is that, because she is not the biological mother of the child, she therefore does not meet the requirement of an Irish citizen parent and the application cannot proceed.

The woman further submits that she could have claimed to be the “father” of the child and “could have possibly obtained citizenship by descent that way”.

“I feel it would invalidate me as a trans woman, invalidate my legal status as a woman and invalidate my same-sex marriage,” she said.

The woman submits that if she had to claim to be the “father” of the child, it would be an “offensive, discriminatory and unjust attack” on her person, gender identity, legal status and on same-sex marriage.

I'm trying to be sympathetic here, but my well of the milk of human kindness seems to have run dry. If this person applies as the father of the child, the child can be granted Irish citizenship and this will recognise the parent as "legally and genetically a parent of the child". Otherwise, they are asking our High Court for a ruling that (a) the child has two mothers and no father (b) being trans means you are biologically a woman (c) even if she didn't bear and give birth to the child she is still a mother not a father (d) in future such cases, the mother of the child is "whoever wants to call themselves the mother" and not "biological mother".

Remind me again about how, silly normies, gender is not the same as sex and we're not making any claims that biological sex is the same thing as preferred gender, so just shut up and give in on our totally reasonable requests? I don't care if this person calls themself daddy, mommy, or XibablaMakiNooNoo as parent of the child, what I do care about is precedent that "trans gender you identify as is now the same as your biological sex, now if you're a trans woman you're a mother even if you're the father because calling you the father would be offensive, even though you are a father not a mother" for future cases. If the precedent is set, it won't be limited to "parent of child wishing to be identified as legal mother not legal father".

EDIT: I think my main objection here is the twisted logic on show: "You can't call me a 'father', I'm a woman! women are not fathers!" Yeah, but people with functioning male reproductive systems that are capable of getting cis women pregnant can be women. Uh-huh.

I'm a little confused. Does Ireland not give birthright citizenship though the father's line? Or is it that he had the option to pass on citizenship rights as the father but refused, and claimed to be the mother which wasn't accepted?

It does, yes. The person is entirely able to obtain citizenship for the child by identifying as the 'father' of the child. It is, of course, a true biological fact that this person is the 'father' of the child, if by 'father' we mean 'the source of the sperm that contributed 50% of the child's genetic make-up'.

This is a purely semantic dispute. The person is the biological parent of the child, but wants to be referred to legally as 'mother' of the child rather than 'father'. No actual facts are in contention here.

I see, thanks for clarifying.

My gut reaction is that this issue should have been resolved earlier because it is analogous to the situation of a child adopted by a same-sex married couple (which while not exactly common, is something that happens often enough to be legible to bureaucracies), or to a child born by IVF (with donor sperm) where the mother's lesbian partner is a legal parent (which is routine).

I wonder if lesbians are happy to just fill in the online form as "father" but transwomen are not.

It isn't quite analogous since adopted children don't automatically get citizenship. With most same-sex couples this isn't an issue because a typical scenario in e.g. the US would be that both the biological parent and the adoptive parent are US citizens and the child is born in the US. If a man who is a US citizen living in Europe marries an Italian widow and adopts her son, and an amended birth certificate is issued recognizing him as the father, the child will not be considered a native-born US citizen as he would if the man were the actual father. The child could get US citizenship through naturalization, but that would require the family to be living in the US. By the same token, the kid in the case in question could probably get Irish citizenship if they were actually living in Ireland, but they aren't and there's no indication that they ever plan to.

It looks like the adoption form is very specifically about Parent #1/Parent #2. I'm not able to find much information about lesbian IVF specifically, but some sites are claiming that there's a version specific to that case which recognizes them as 'parents' rather than mother/father.

At least from other jurisdictions, every pretty butch lesbians tend to complain a lot about having to id as 'fathers', even on far-less-formal paperwork, although it doesn't seem as philosophically aggravating at it is for transwomen.

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