Royal College of Midwives

Incidentally, Mili is on the Feminist Current podcast this week.

Just saw this on Twitter and my jaw dropped to see them tag Milli Hill. She has had so much vile abuse and the RCM must be braced for that too.

I welcome the RCM's actions. A tiny part of me wonders if the fact that JKR has publicly tweeted about and included Milli Hill has played some part in the RCM's action, turnaround, and apology.

Just saw this on Twitter and my jaw dropped to see them tag Milli Hill. She has had so much vile abuse and the RCM must be braced for that too.

What was the men's charity a while back who just held their hands up and said 'we know there's other people this applies to but we need to get the message out to as many men as we can so this is what we're doing' and nobody batted an eye? Could this be the moment it's finally okay for a women's org to do the same?

Fantastic that they have apologised and are putting it right. It wasn't an oversight, though, was it - it was a conscious Stonewall-pushed decision, and the resulting reaction has jolted them back to reality.

My only concern is that they're clinging to the word 'oversight'. Oversight is something that happens accidentally, and I really don't see how not using the word 'woman' could have been accidental. Surely the word would have cropped up again and again?

Someone wrote it deliberately. They need to address why they wrote it that way and address whatever incentivised them to write it in that way. Since they are Stonewall Diversity Champions, I can but wonder if Stonewall gave them feedback (similar to what they gave the Scottish Government) nudging them to remove 'gendered language' if they want to rack up those points.

I'm starting to see it as an opportunity.

All the women's services who have so enthusiastically embraced the needs of male clientele can carry right on with their focused interest and do a great job of that. But their funding can be proportionally split according to population number and demand, and new services set up who will employ staff who's focus and interest and passion is female needs. And do a great job of that.

The male midwife service however is likely to find they need to get quite creative.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09589236.2021.1952406

I couldn't bring myself to read the whole thing, but the gist seems to be that midwife is pro-blem-aaaaatic (natch), but erm, lets just draw a veil and pretend it's not.

The word "midwife" means "with woman", which is a fairly clear summing-up of what the job is. So if anyone wants to eradicate sexed language from childbirth, they should probably start with midwife.

You just know that somebody is going to seize on that opportunity to rename the profession in line with the new century and new ways of thinking.

Yeah artichoke

Imagine midwives removing word women

And not being noticed. By them

Good thing they're re thinking this - because really once you erase women from childbirth, really your service needs to close because you've got no one left to serve. As with refuges and rape crisis centres, the point is fast coming to re allocate funding to new organisations and services who actually want to work with and serve female humans and are prepared to do so.

Looks like the grownups may be re-entering the room. I'm hoping that we will soon be hearing that the RCM is leaving Stonewall.

The categorical & quick statement suggests an official policy. Not just that they don't want to erase women from discussions around birth, but that at some point they realised that this was going to come up, sat down, and made a decision on the organisaton's stance.

Yes I know its all mad that they had to say this, but this war of ideas has ripped through birth and breastfeeding worlds, and this is a clear line from them which I hope will give other organisations the confidence to do similar.

Praise good behaviour.

Hopefully they can now disassociate themselves from Stonewall

I LOVE that they tagged Milli Hill. I'm so relieve they're standing with her because we know that it's not a given from these orgs.

How do we contact them to say thank you (if we're not on twitter)?

I used to give quite a lot of money to Birthrights. Not getting a penny from me now.

Fantastic. We should all write and say thanks to RCM for keeping women in the frame where so many organisations have erased them. It’s very powerful that they’ve acknowledged this openly.

I find it reassuring after that March for Midwives debacle the other week where they appeared to be allergic to the word women

I see they tagged Milli Hill. Brilliant. A sharp contrast to the nonsense from Birthrights, who publicly denounced her.

They want to 'ensure that women are never erased from the narrative around pregnancy and birth'.

Yes, it's great that they have the courage to write an apology using those words. But bloody hell, who would the fuck would have ever thought that the Royal College of Midwives would have reaffirm that they weren't going to erase women!

They can't exist without women.