‘Mother’ a word to avoid - why this is so wrong

I would imagine the putting it under that label. Might be the reaction of those who thought things like. Not calling female colleagues darling. Having to watch their language when referencing certain groups of people. That might seem the same sort of thing from their viewpoint.

Not just political correctness.

Probably pc gawn mad!

And I suppose. If you only were aware of the pronouns thing. That would be fair enough.

But if you're posting on here then you would know a lot more surely

Anyone who thinks this is 'political correctness' doesn't understand the politics of this at all.

Do any of them alter words that exist in all languages to describe a fundamental and universal concept, leaving none to describe all those people as a group?

The word mother is not an offensive term, mother is a biological and legal descriptor. Banning the use of mother is not same as banning the use of racist or disabilist words.

I honestly don’t see why left wing feminists are getting so wound up about this?

Using political correctness to enforce changes in the language to avoid offending others is something the centre left have done for as long as I can remember and for as long as I can remember feminists have tended to vote for these political parties and sneer at those who have in the past objected to political correctness.

Can’t have it both ways. If we are going to accept changes in the language to avoid offending others as principal and then ask others to change their language when we find ourselves offended by it then we shouldn’t be surprised to find that one day we are the ones being asked to modify our language because others are offended by us.

This just looks like centre left politics/principles 101 in action to me. It’s just getting what you vote for and getting the logical outcome of the principles you endorse.

Brilliant posts MarshmallowSwede
Unbelievable that we should find ourselves here. But... it will never catch on - not really. Just in the language of the terminally stupid.

@tiktok

It’s all about validation. It is not society’s responsibility to validate anyone’s self image. And demanding that we change language to protect the feelings of overly sensitive people who can’t validate themselves is ridiculous.

Childbirth is still very dangerous for women. How are we ever going to improve maternity care if we can’t even speak about mothers and women as maternity patients? How are we going to address the health needs of pregnant women when we can’t even say the word woman?

I’m so sick of these people. All this dehumanizing language being thrown around for women. Basically they are serving us shit and telling us to like it.

I’m happy to give them my pregnant ass to kiss while I wear a “mother” pair of huge pregnant pants.

Calling women mothers being seen as offensive should tell people exactly how much disdain these people have for women.

You are so narcissistic that you think maternal care shouldn’t even mention the very group of women it serves? Wow.. the utter disdain for women, for mothers is palpable.

All of the mental gymnastics these people do to justify not saying mother is ridiculous. I’m personally going to continue to say women and mother.

English is not my mother language and I’m not going to play these nonsense games. Words matter. Words have meaning. I’m not going to go around saying birthing people.. this is the most ridiculous, redundant thing ever. We have a word for this.. it’s called mother. Or a woman who is pregnant.

Thank you OP for posting this. It's really well-written

I read the original letter, and I had to ask: what the hell are they talking about? I mean, really?

If you are healthy and the pregnancy is conventional, you are looking at two ultrasounds and a clutch of antenatal appointments that are mostly about checking blood pressure and listening to the baby's heartbeat. You go into labour, give birth usually in a midwife unit or labour ward, you might get an overnight stay, you go home and see the health visitor a few times.

And that's it. A lot of pregnant women don't even get that, and if it is your second, third or fourth baby, you are mostly likely to just get your scans and that's pretty much it.

So what exactly do they want? What's missing here for them? How exactly is the process not supportive of LGBTQ+? In a normal and healthy pregnancy, there's no ante-natal or postnatal time to be anti-LGBTQ. What can a midwife say or do that is anti-LGBTQ in a ten minute physical check appointment?

But then you get to "support for lactating non-gestational partners" and that's when you realise what they want. They want to be able to access ante-natal and post-natal services without actually being pregnant. They want to centre themselves in a medical service that has bugger all to do with their own physical condition.

That letter strikes me as a bunch of people who define themselves by their difference to others, "normies", and expect that difference to be recognised everywhere, even in conveyor belt medical services such as maternity.

Yy nice gerbil. All that.

I DO however agree that-

There should be no barriers to creating/ updating medical records due to eg sex/ gender being different

The fact that various permutations of who is what has changed and often recently.

No trans man should experience difficulty accessing services when Pg.

No I don't agree with surrogacy at all. But as it is happening, the relationships and services do need to be understood. A surrogate may well not want to be referred to as mum all the time and if not then that should be done imo. No need to cause issues with actual patients on the ground iyswim.

In short the patient should be treated as an individual. Exactly the same as (I hope anyway) when eg a 16yo is having a baby, a woman who has suffered multiple losses is pregnant, a woman who has had their parent leave while pregnant etc.

The sad fact is on NHS it's a conveyor belt. In maternity it's so different to other areas. IME you are a mum in a line of mums. Background, experiences, fears. No time for that. Bish bash bosh.

And the point about bf support for non birthing mothers (mother is fine to use in that context apparently). Unless things have changed there is no support for anyone. You get lectured and pushed when Pg. Then zero help when it's action time.

Pah.

Sorry for spamming.

Another ???.

The letter starts by saying this is a letter written by those who work in the area of pregnancy and childbirth.

Later on it reads as a letter from LGBTQ+ people who are talking about their experiences with pregnancy and birth.

And of course plenty of people both work in the field and have babies.

I am however struggling to see that people who work IN THE FIELD would have real problems accessing services for their own pregnancy.

I mean apart from anything else won't they probably know many of them if they work in same area? Know of them? Maybe even at same hosp.

And I mean if a sodding midwife can't access care when she's pregnant for any reason that means there's massive problems. Because if they can't get looked after properly then everyone else is fucked.

'We aren’t calling for the eradication of cisgender heterosexual parents.'

Um. Well that's a relief then?!

What they mean surely is that people who work in maternity services assume their services will be assessed by people who are FEMALE. And that's a problem.

'who have assumed that all perinatal care will be delivered to cishet people.'

Really?

Well they are shit at this if they think that 'cishet men' need perinatal care

People is used because it's illegal to say women, or even cishet women...?! And for some reason the shiny new options of gestator/ people with wombs/ ovulators etc is no good either. Why? My guess is that it sounds crass. Because it IS crass. And so in the end it's better to say something at best inaccurate and at worst nonsensical.

They mention that lesbians are having more babies.

Ok fine etc.

They then say that staff aren't trained in how to handle lgbtqi etc.

Lesbians have always had babies fgs. They are female. Hence it's hardly a shocker that there can be babies. All you need is some semen and with much there you go. And semen is not exactly a substance in short supply.

(Leaving for another thread the fact that it's usually IVF now which is expensive invasive etc...).

Hello Jane how are you? This is Clare my partner. Hello Clare. Ok Jane pop on the bed and let's see if we can find the heartbeat.

Tricky? Erm no.

The fact is they are using lesbians only in order to illustrate something they want to say about other people.

Not RTFT sorry.

Just reading the letter that was sent originally.

Big question.

The term perinatal has come up a few times.

I would have thought this term is exclusionary?

The phrase natal woman is definitely not acceptable according to those who fight for trans inclusion.

That has be a bit confused.

Next. This really gobsmacked me.

'We are now seeing more people come out into their true selves based on a variety of factors including protection in law, access to services, social media, peer to peer support as well as popular culture moving away from only portraying LGBTQ+ folk as light entertainment or for pornography only. '

This came out of their mouths.

This utterly outrageous statement totally casting aside all the massive gains made over the years around acceptance for gay and lesbian people. And esp gay men.

I've been working in the financial sector for 30 years and EVERY ONE of my what. 6 or 7 jobs. Has had visible gay men including at senior mgnt level. Lesbians are still less visible which is a different thread however I have worked with out lesbians as well. Maybe in 4 of those jobs.

My current workplace has only 100 and 4 or so of my friends there are openly bisexual.

Yes I have no doubt that there is discrimination, homo and biphobia. Some horrible colleagues. All that stuff. But things are so much better.

These large corporates all also have as standard LGBT+ groups. Organise stuff for pride and have done for yonks. My sector has an LGBT + industry group that is excellent. The organising group are all LGB (Don't think any other letters) and the top person is a lesbian.

They get really highly profile speakers from within that community. Like people with massive responsibility, hugely high profile. Who come and share their experiences etc. How it was when they started out. Changes as the years went by.. Situation now. How they work to support others.

I mean WHAT?

how dare they casually say that it's all about light entertainment.

And porn??????

A bunch of 'perinatal experts' or whatever it was saying oh yes you only see LGBT+ people in PORN???!!!

I'm genuinely angry about that.

They think that coming out with that shit. That sounds like they're living in the 70s and have got are you being served and Larry Grayson on.

Making shit up by ignoring the massive strides made over the years in order to make a fucking argument for all this? And referencing PORN?!

Flabbergasted.

[quote tiktok]@EdgeOfACoin, these changes in terminology (as the blog post points out) are imposed on us. No one has checked if people understand them, if they welcome them, if they lead to better maternity care.

Just as, historically, pregnancy and birth interventions have been ‘done’ to us without assessing if they do good or ill.[/quote]
I am convinced the use of openly dehumanising language will only exacerbate the pre-existing issues of women in labour being treated as vessels to extract a baby from.

Language matters. If it matters so much for some people not to be called women that to do so is literal violence, what does it do to the midwifery profession when they are trained to use language like "birthing bodies"?

How can I trust a midwife to treat me with respect about interventions and to be patient-centred, f I can't trust her to respect my personal wishes about words I find dehumanising?

It's quite scary that all of these changes to maternity literature are happening because of just one transman. At least, according to Sky, Freddy McConnell was the first British transgender man to give birth to his own child. So, no, I don't think a transman has ever been turned away from a maternity ward since it surely would have been captured in Freddy's documentary about giving birth.