what will it mean to you if we lose the word "mother"

I think what she means is that we can use the word ‘mother’ to suggest a sexist stereotype that anyone might claim. We can’t use a noun which might recognise the bloody, messy reality of being a female mammal, even in a maternity policy.

It will be interesting when they come up against the commercial world with a lot invested in the word Mother. Some how I can't see millions of cards with "Happy Birthing Parent Day" being big sellers with most people. Perhaps the activists will choose their battle and give this one a swerve.

Also here's the head of Stonewall claiming that they didn't mean to erase the word 'mother'....
lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/11/jonny-best-on-nancy-kelleys-womans-hour-interview-barnett-zeroed-in-on-a-series-of-salient-issues-and-kelley-rarely-had-any-straight-answers-to-offer-sometimes-the-more/
Could also be called Stonewalling....

Beautifully put, thank you. The moment I became a mother, I felt as if I had passed through a portal from living as a teenager to living as an adult - from living in emotional black and white to living in full colour. When this is sad chapter is over, one of the greatest losses will be for those children whose medical treatment resulted in lifelong infertility, that they can never have the faintest idea of what this feels like.

To be a mother - to become a mother - has been the purest joy and the greatest achievement.

The fact that they seek to delete this word and find it 'offensive' to their ideology says all we need to know about them.

It's an agree to disagree situation.

In these days of “Any View That Differs From Mine Means You Are Evil!” I love an agree to disagree!

Ok, all those things are wrong of course and shouldn't be happening.

But I STILL think saying mother will disappear from common language is overstating.

It won't, it's too powerful.

It shouldn't disappear from official language either and I will fight that.

I'm not disagreeing that language matters I'm just saying I don't think mother will disappear.

If you don't agree then fair enough but you won't convince me otherwise on this, my mind is made up.

It's an agree to disagree situation.

Did you ever think that men could insert themselves into woman’s sports and take their wins and accolades?

Did you ever imagine that a woman could be publicly threatened and drummed out of her employment at a university for holding views that only ten years ago we all agreed with and knew to be true?

Did you ever imagine we’d be giving medication to children that would leave them infertile and with no sexual function, who will never experience an orgasm?

This is one word. We will keep it alive as long as we are but as it is removed from official record and documentation the generations who come after will not see it as so important. In fifty years it will be gone.

It is a beautiful opening post OP. You should be proud to have written it

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

I've just re-read your opening post. It truly is a work of wonder and beauty.

You have managed to encompass the spectrum of experience in a way that I've never read before.

Without cliche or sentiment, your own, incredibly personal and highly subjective experience has echoed and reverberated with everyone else's. That's a gift.

And if they want to erase the word mother, they'll have to get through us lot first.

Lovely words OP. Apologies I haven't rtft.

I can't speak for every woman but when I yearned for a baby there was a physical ache in my ovaries. I actually referred to my ovary ache when joking with DH.

I have one surviving daughter and one daughter born too early whom we lost.

I felt them both kick.

I still get ovary ache occasionally, but at 46 that ship has sailed. I don't know how it feels for men, but can't believe that any physical ache is present, given their lack of ovaries.

I am a mother. I have earned my title and I will help to defend it. Please let this madness pass.

The term 'mother' matters hugely to me, and I have no words this early in the morning for how much I despise Stonewall for promulgating its eradication, and then lying about it.

Stonewall's influence, documents and edicts are still out there, embedded in so many policies and 'workplace index' submissions it'll take a long time to unpick it. Scotland seems lost.

As for the people in workplaces who've gone along with this vile crap - what were they thinking? It's been like one big Stanford experiment, with its de-individualising aims for all parties.

I say this modern philosophy (post modernist clap trap) is backwards because its anti scientific. It creates in mind a desired object or outcome and brings into being phantom things that seem to eradicate facts.

Man has been up to this nonsense since man created in their minds a male creator. A male god. It is indeed blasphemous to eradicate mother. To eradicate a word is to eradicate the concept, and in our idealistic backwards and modernist philosophy to then eradicate the physical or scientific proof of such a thing. Language matters.

Here's a better image.

We all come from our mothers. It's why mother is an enduring word through time, culture and loss. I'm hopeful it won't go away, but it would be losing thousands and thousands of years of a shared language and understanding.

I am a daughter and a mother. Everyone on the planet has a mother.
We may make accomodations to language to change with society but I really don't think this one will go away.
I for one will not stop using it.

I will have to agree to disagree with you on this, I just don't have the same fear that it will disappear from everyday language.

That doesn't mean I won't continue to object that it's not being used in other language and I will still be raising it and writing to organisations.

I don't share your optimism.

It's already been banned by stonewall (and yes I know they've done a reverse ferret because Kelley denied it) and midwives and doulas are picking up on that.

When it becomes politically incorrect to use a term, people who are keen to show they're up with common parlance will stop using it.

I think you're wrong. If the word mother stops being used in official documentation, then I think it will eventually fall out of use among the population.

Of course language matters

But I don't think mother compares to the other words and terms you mentioned

It's too ingrained and deep in all of us.

I absolutely abhor the way mother is being erased in official language, it's hurtful and damaging , I just don't agree that it will fall out of use beyond that.