‘Woman or person who gave birth’

What a nasty, patronising turn of phrase

Gone to the gym!

It costs nothing to be nice

Did you read that in a Christmas cracker? How absolutely wrong you are. And, on that note, I'm off to the gym

you're

Easy really, innit?

What a nasty, patronising turn of phrase.

I get the issue about the erasure of women, I really do, but this wording explicitly avoids that.

Pregnancy is hard enough as it is, without feeling like your somehow trapped in the wrong body or whatever. I like that it is being made slightly more inclusive for those that don't identify as women, whether they are "deluded" or not.

I truly believe some people are desperate to be offended, and look for it everywhere

Well, there seems to be a hell of a lot of us. We could all be wrong but, you know, somehow I don't see it.

I’m so glad to see others on this thread feel the same as me.

Precious few, thankfully. If you want to identify as a 'man' then go right ahead but …. men do not give birth. Easy really, innit?

@Wereallsquare

Go you. May I join you, please?

I honestly do not understand why there is so little empathy for a person identifying as a man who is pregnant. I cannot comprehend how emotionally difficult this must be for them but can fully appreciate the want to have children so desperately. I prefer to have empathy for these parents In what must already be a difficult time and if using the word person on a form helps a little then that’s fine by me.

I’m so glad to see others on this thread feel the same as me.

But there’s no material difference between them not considering themselves a woman and them considering themselves a man or a unicorn or a sea lion. They are wrong. Both on what they say they are not and on what they say they are. If they are pregnant they are women. I’m sorry for them if they hate that fact but it is a fact.

Yep. And if truth be told, I think that the majority of the population believes that. But people are scared to speak the truth because of the potential consequences: to their job security, safety and so on.

Women.

The problem with saying that "people" give birth and phrases like "pregnant people" is that they mask the fact that the physical burden of human reproduction falls exclusively on one sex class,

This.

And if anyone thinks this is the work of a vanishingly small number of pregnant transmen, you're not paying attention.

Transmen, being women, don't have the power to force institutions to piss off 51% of the population. Especially the tiny number of pregnant ones. (And if they are pregnant, they certainly don't have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment as they have breached the terms by doing the opposite of living as a man.)

The power dynamic is exactly the same here. as elsewhere. It's women who are being erased.

Trans ideology demands that we ignore biology when defining women. Separating women from their biology and blurring the lines is necessary in order that the word, indeed the very concept, encompasses women with male biology.

Get a life. What a stupid thing to care about.

I have a pregnant ‘ man’ as a patient!!! Really struggling with it tbh. Obviously I treat him with respect and kindness. It’s very hard to talk about birth with someone who feels they’re male when they got pregnant through their vagina and the baby is coming out that way!

So, your patient 'feels' like a man? But wants to give birth to a child?

Apologies that I'm simply too thick to square that circle

It is not nice or kind to refer to a human female as a birth giver to appease someone who deliberately gets pregnant whilst insisting they’re a man.
It’s incredibly insulting to women. Why does the tiny minority need to be pandered to, and women everywhere told to stop being big meanies by calling themselves women?

Precisely.

But there’s no material difference between them not considering themselves a woman and them considering themselves a man or a unicorn or a sea lion. They are wrong. Both on what they say they are not and on what they say they are. If they are pregnant they are women. I’m sorry for them if they hate that fact but it is a fact.

The wording puts woman first and foremost then "person" (not man), so covering anyone who, for whatever reason, might not consider themselves a woman.

I don't see a problem.

Mother has many meanings but when any animal gives birth it is a mother. Being a mother is a physical state of being, so a transman who gives birth is a mother, regardless their identity.

Elsie there is no such thing as a pregnant man. That's always the thing with transmen isn't it?They always get pregnant and bleat on about how it "triggers" them. Don't go and do one of the most female things that can be done then love

I agree. If a trans man is pregnant, they can’t possibly be “living as a man”

My point is, there is no reason why a trans man can't use the noun mother. They will mother the baby. A trans man can be a mother.

"Mothering" is not dependent on giving birth.

Removing the word mother from maternity documents is unnecessary and pedantic. It makes the mistake that only birth mothers are mothers, which is obviously not true.

We don't need to take it out. I am a mother. I mother my baby.

Single fathers mother their babies, as do adoptive parents, kinship carers, foster carers...

bingbangbing mother is most commonly a noun but can be used as a verb - the first and second dictionary definitions of mother are the noun form.

It's a title meaning female parent (and has multiple other noun meanings too, listed before the verb option)

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/mother

I'm sure you know that. No native English speaker seriously believes mother is only a verb - and indeed the word functions the same way in most languages.

it’s really not that big of a deal as it affects no one but them.

Clearly it does affect the OP, otherwise she wouldn't have started the thread.

It costs nothing to be nice,

Apart from our language, single-sex spaces, same-sex HCPs, right to be same-sex attracted, sex-based rights, privacy, dignity, safety, and ability to identify male desire to exert control over female bodies as the root of all misogyny. So yeah, actually, it costs women a lot to be nice.

life is difficult enough

Try being female.

• In Ethiopia, teen girls are doubly-incontinent because of obstetric fistula after being married and impregnated before their bodies are ready to bear a child. British female prisoners have been locked up with convicted child abusers and rapists who can force them to be pregnant* through rape.
• Around 300 "pupil on pupil" (read boy on probably a girl) rapes are reported to the police every year in English and Welsh schools. And we all know that over 90% of rapes are not reported to the police, so lord knows how many thousands the true figure is.
• Somalian girls are held down whilst their clitorises and inner labia are cut and scraped off and their outer labia sewn shut.
• Women in the UK are wanked on ridng the train to work, yet rail companies keep removing guards from trains to save on wages because profit is deemed more important than women's safety.
• The Rape of Berlin by the men of the Red Army is just one example of wartime rape.

I could go on for pages with that list§, but I need to sleep. These things are done to us because we are born girls, not because we identify as women. "Woman" and "man" are sex class and political class designators, not identities. To believe otherwise is to betray all women.

§ And one day, when I'm in a strong enough state of mind to cope, I will start a thread to do just that. I've been planning it ever since I saw a video of Hibo Wardere speaking and was in tears.

The problem with saying that "people" give birth and phrases like "pregnant people" is that they mask the fact that the physical burden of human reproduction falls exclusively on one sex class, females. We must demand that we retain clear language (like 'woman') to talk about this, otherwise we can't analyse the impacts pregnancy and childbirth have on females and how this disadvantages them relative to males. Women's role in reproduction is absolutely the basis of our inequality with men, and if we can't talk about that without using utterly contorted language then you are basically kneecapping feminist analysis from the start.

It's not inclusive to make women literally unmentionable in the context of pregnancy and childbirth.

Correct me if this is wrong but didn't a baby die because a nurse misinterpreted a person's medical records and didn't realise they were in labour?

Personally, I think the medical staff have got enough to do and the baby should be the priority.

Having experienced trauma I understand what 'triggering' is but I would never dream of saying to someone 'you've just triggered me'. The word is in danger of becoming meaningless.

Middleagedmidwife
Thank god I'm not a midwife any more. I do hope you won't find yourself obliged to use terms like "front hole".
Maybe you can find subtle ways to reinforce biology by referencing the wonders of nature and our natural bodies or something along those lines. I genuinely mean that, not out of unkindness or passive aggressiveness - quite the opposite. Rather an opportunity to come to terms a bit more with their body and understand how it works. They will get through labour better if they are able to give themselves over to the instincts that we are all endowed with.

"Persons" who are not women cannot give birth, so you're quite right to be annoyed. All this linguistic contortion to protect a tiny number of people from reality.