Midwives told to stop using terms such as 'breastfeeding' and 'breastmilk'

[MissMoped]

because it’s not gender inclusive language, I believe with particular reference to the transexual debate.

This is at Brighton and Sussex nhs trust btw, good to know NHS money is being spent wisely btw, poring over the “incorrect” use of language.

The word “mother” apparently should not be used on its own; instead “mother or birthing parent” (um, isn’t that a mother?).

Breast milk and breastfeeding is to be replace by “breast/chest milk” or “milk from the feeding parent”. “Woman” should be replaced with “woman or person”.

Gobsmacked.

Everybody has breasts male and female alike. So why the need to make up a nonsense term like "chest feeding" ? For whose benefit is this?
If the rationale is that because in our society breasts are fetishized by some male people and that this renders them disgusting in some people's eyes, then you are saying that women are in some way disgusting. Therefore by changing this common expression you are agreeing that it is ok to be misogynistic and sexist.

I think the newspapers are stirring this up unnecessarily. If you look at the actual guidelines, they mostly retain current usage but add options midwives might want to use if someone is trans

Did you read the full document? Accidentally using the wrong words for a patient Midwives and hcps may result in disciplinary action.

So you know what thang kind of additional pressure would be like for a busy midwife who’s priority should be keeping her patients safe, not trying to remember their pronouns and whether they prefer unnatural unscientific terms for their bodily functions.

The midwives are going to end up using the same terminology for everyone to protect themselves.

When I see a really bizarre derail or non-sequitur going on, I always wonder "what work is it doing in someone's argument?"

So last night's derail of "at least half of you aren't even mothers" - what did the poster feel they were achieving with that completely nonsensical assertion? That we're in fact spinster flower arrangers at the local fundamentalist church, inflamed by the Daily Mail? Or right wing trolls funded by American Evangelicals? Or Russian bots in a troll farm in St Petersburgh?

I presume the point of the exercise was this - it's a fundamental tenet of the new puritan orthodoxy that you cannot question people's lived experience. So when you have a large group of people (mothers, in this instance) saying "respect our lived experience and call us women, because us being women has a profound practical and political impact on the barriers and discrimination we face in everyday life" what - within your own world view that people's assertions about their own lived experience must not be challenged - is left to you as an arguing position? Presumably only an assertion of "You're not really mothers at all, you're pretending to be for evil reasons."

Or I guess the other strategy left to you is to deflect. Hence the frankly bizarre side-track into mother's day cards.

"Okay so you can't talk about how women's biology is weaponised against them systematically by a male dominated system - you can talk about individual disembodied body parts and bodily functions - menstruators, birthing persons, people with cervixes - but you must not connect the dots and say 'all this shit is happening to the same group of people - women, because historically women have always been treated as second class human beings.' But don't worry, No one's going to take away your mother's day cards... Now calm down dear."

I suppose my TLDR version of this is - when someone's talking shit, don't assume that it's because they're stupid (though they may well be) - ask what work the shit is doing in their rhetorical position.

In this instance it's about denying that woman and mother are not just fluffy self-descriptions, they have profound practical, political and economic consequences for women. Consequences which you can't identify your way out of by saying you're a transman, and consequences which don't bludgeon you over the head if you're a transwoman.

Ok that's a starter for 10. This is not trivial stuff. [...]

Exactly. The world population of women has dropped from 51% (its been >50% since stats were gathered, men kill each other as well as us) to 49%.

That took global femicide. Or more accurately huge numbers of "small" measures which attack and control women. Even in "modern", developed UK misogyny is rife both in delivery of medical and social services.

I am so sick and tired of being told to "be kind", "be nice" whilst the definition of the root of this structural inequality is erased.

So I don't give a shiny shit about flowery cards from Waitrose. What actually matters is the continual attack on the definition of what it is to be a woman, the erasure of sex as a protected characteristic (now supported by several of our main political parties) and the notable lack of such incursions on the definition of "male".

Its notable that primogeniture is still protected from trans legislation, men's health services are still targeted at "men" not people with prostates etc.

These attacks disproportionately hurt the poorest and most disadvangated women firist. But who cares about them eh? Certainly not the lobbyists whose objective is "defeating" women, far more than supporting non conforming or gender dysphoric men and women.

I am fine with this language shift, which I know is not the general view on this thread. I have a suggestion for them:

What about nipple feeding? Does anyone have a problem with that? People might quibble about whether men have breasts and trans men in particular may be uncomfortable with the term, but chest feeding might get confusing.

I vote nipple feeding! going to insist on calling it from now on, I'm sure to the horror of my MIL

When I see a really bizarre derail or non-sequitur going on, I always wonder "what work is it doing in someone's argument?"

Yes. And in a debate so absurd that one has serious doubts about some people’s grasp of reality, the derails and non-sequiturs can be bizarre indeed.

Well there’s a good one right there, unless spectacularly naive.

Nipple feeding is ridiculous. Babies do not feed from the nipple they feed from the breast.

If a baby only took the nipple in its mouth then it could not feed properly and the mother would be in agony.

Breastfeeding is what it is.

I breastfed two children for a total of 3 years, donated surplus breastmilk and trained as a peer breastfeeding counsellor / buddy so feel completely qualified to say that if you tell women to nipple feed what you are actually doing is setting them up to fail at breastfeeding.

Brava @C8H10N4O2

Your whole post is spectacular. THis is particularly scary

The world population of women has dropped from 51% (its been >50% since stats were gathered, men kill each other as well as us) to 49%. That took global femicide. Or more accurately huge numbers of "small" measures which attack and control women. Even in "modern", developed UK misogyny is rife both in delivery of medical and social services.

@QueenoftheAir

Brava *@C8H10N4O2*

Your whole post is spectacular. THis is particularly scary

The world population of women has dropped from 51% (its been >50% since stats were gathered, men kill each other as well as us) to 49%. That took global femicide. Or more accurately huge numbers of "small" measures which attack and control women. Even in "modern", developed UK misogyny is rife both in delivery of medical and social services.

Worth doing the maths, too.

2% of 3 and a half billion women is 70 million.

That's 70 million women lost to femicide, female infanticide, sex-selective abortion.

*am fine with this language shift, **

What makes you fine about a language shift which implies that institutionalised misogyny and sexism s ok ?

I suppose my TLDR version of this is - when someone's talking shit, don't assume that it's because they're stupid (though they may well be) - ask what work the shit is doing in their rhetorical position.

Excellent point Cara, I’m just catching up with the thread this morning and I did find it a rather strange path to be taking and didn’t really understand the point it was trying to make.

As with many arguments that attempt to ignore or refute simple facts and truth, the justification for the position becomes ever more complicated as it tries to battle against inconvenient reality. (I’m learning so much about analysing arguments and critical thinking on here)

In all of this situation when people try and take it off at a tangent to suit their own ends i just ground myself in the basic realities that women and girls need single sex spaces for safety and privacy (although some may decide that they don’t want them, which is entirely their prerogative) and we also need to protect our words and language to describe ourselves because without that we can’t communicate clearly about our needs.

We don’t wish bad things on anyone and we don’t want to be unkind to anyone. Anyone who tries to frame women protecting their rights and safeguarding for children as being unkind is the one in the wrong.

This sums it up from fair play for women

These statistics

The world population of women has dropped from 51% (its been >50% since stats were gathered, men kill each other as well as us) to 49%. That took global femicide. Or more accurately huge numbers of "small" measures which attack and control women. Even in "modern", developed UK misogyny is rife both in delivery of medical and social services.

@littlbrowndog

This sums it up from fair play for women

It's a great graphic.

But the real situation is even worse than that portrayed on the right.

We'd need a group of little people. One labelled menstruator, one labelled endometriosis sufferer, one labelled birthing person, etc. etc. etc.

So that when someone says "it's shocking that menstruator issues aren't taken seriously by the NHS" and another says "endometriosis is misdiagnosed, underdiagnosed, and largely ignored by the NHS", and a third says "services for birthing people are often inadequate, and their concerns are minimised or even ignored by HCPs" - no-one is allowed to connect the dots and say "hey, this is all happening to the same group of people - the menstruators, the endometriosis sufferers, the birthing people - they're the same group of people."

"Didn't we used to have a name for them? Wimpund, wimpud? Something like that."

Before I started looking into all this I was labouring under the misapprehension that women’s rights in this country were in a pretty good place. Most issues I’ve come up against (unequal pay, casual sexism, medical discrimination etc) I’ve just assumed were down to my bad luck or my fault and tbf weren’t so terrible that I sought to do anything about it, I just assumed that’s how things were.

Now I realise how bad it is, how so little has improved since I was in the workplace in the 90s/early 2000s - in fact it is going back so quickly it is unbelievable. The structural changes being out in place now (continued attempts to bring in self id, undermining freedom of speech, making sex discrimination easier by ignoring sex) will be playing out for years to come - I worry for our daughters so much.

We had to make laws to prevent discrimination against women because many employers will get away with everything they can. The current proposals and practices undermine those laws by refusing to respect the sex categories that cause the discrimination. Therefore companies will see loopholes and ways around things they don’t really want to do and women will suffer.

The marginalised groups mentioned above (bame women, disabled women, young mothers etc)are all being ignored by hospitals apparently putting all their Diversity and Equality resources into one tiny but loud group.

When you have major policy influence on the government, Schools, most Police forces, CPS, Ofcom, BBC, most print media, councils and local authorities, the entire NHS, ONS, Scottish (and Welsh) government , England Rugby and many sporting bodies, Girl Guides, all major political parties as the trans lobby does, I think a group can no longer be described as marginalised.

Women and women’s groups on the other hand, are being cut out of major decisions and policy making that affect then, often to huge detriment (think Ministry of Justice putting male bodied sex offenders into women’s prisons without consulting women) - who has the balance of power here?

I know

What was it we used to be called ?

“Happy You Day”. The perfect card for a narcissist.

Before I started looking into all this I was labouring under the misapprehension that women’s rights in this country were in a pretty good place.

Covid has shown how easy it is to for an external incident to disrupt women’s rights - from access to birth control to maternity care to employment.

Women are by no means the only group affected. All health services have been disrupted and infection control impacts differently on different groups, e.g. masks make communication difficult for hard of hearing.

Different groups are impacted differently, so rights are a constant negotiation.

We can only protect our rights with clear accurate language. The best that can be assumed of people who think it’s ‘kind’ to use euphemisms is that they just don’t think.

Women and women’s groups on the other hand, are being cut out of major decisions and policy making that affect then, often to huge detriment (think Ministry of Justice putting male bodied sex offenders into women’s prisons without consulting women) - who has the balance of power here?

This👆

Every Equality Impact Assessment that I have ever read has never considered the impact these policies have on women. " Invisible Women" indeed!

I had a transgender 'friend' who said to meet I have 'gender privilege' (akin to white privilege) because I was born biologically female, and therefore I have no say in how gender identity is discussed because I have no idea of the struggles she experiences as a trans woman.

But I do have a say surely; when I'm not allowed to be referred to as a woman anymore. I do have a gender identity, and my gender identity is that I'm a woman and frankly I would be insulted were I denied that

I don't doubt her struggles but my god that comment infuriated me! I only used to see her at pub meet ups, thankfully not seen her for a year now lol

Ahhhh but it's 'inclusive' because nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean?

Even in the best case it's patronising as hell.

They know they mean women, they know we know they mean women, but they're not able to say it. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

We've all got a belly button, linking us back to the woman who gave birth to us. A chain of women, of mothers, going back thousands and thousands of years.

We know.

I thought the NHS was supposed to use clear language.

To be fair I don’t think trans ideologists would have any quibbles with anyone identifying as a woman. It’s sex that they want to obscure.

Interested to hear on the Today R4 programme today Stella Creasey being interviewed about maternity rights and making the case that the legislation and how the proposed legislation misses out whole cohorts of women.

The legislation (or ammendment - can't recall which) uses "pregnant person" rather than "pregnant woman". When asked why, Creasey tried to defend this because we shouldn't get "hung up" on language. Despite having spent the whole interview accurately talking about the disproportionate impacts on "women" during the pandemic and the lack of protection for maternity rights.

She effectively undermined her whole position right there - supposedly defending women's rights in a party which denies women internally to acknowledge even the need to discuss areas where rights may conflict.

Labour needs to work out what its bloody position on women really is. Do we exist or not?

sorry that should be making the case that the legislation favours wealthier, professional women