AIBU to tell every mother on mumsnet...

[LastRoloIsMine]

We nearly lost the word mother and all that comes with it?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4176497-History-in-the-making-Watch-Parliament-Live-at-2-30pm

The maternity bill wanted to remove the word mother/woman and replace it with pregnant person.
Those words are important and women have fought for a century to be recognised yet we were nearly wiped out in favour of belief not fact.

I wont say "I am not transphobic" like some sort of plea! I dont actually have to I am just fighting for womens rights no need for me to explain myself any further.

I saw this on the FWR board and was very pleased!

There clearly is a difference in the wording between ‘people’ and ‘mother’ because that is what has caused a huge debate in no less a place than the Lords. Not to mention the debates on here about the erasure of sex-based language. That it matters to many is equally obvious, because that is what we are arguing about.

I don’t get why a specific group of people think they have any right to tell women what should and should not matter. The way they are trying to deny the reality of so many women in every way is scary.

What I don't understand is what the definition of a woman is? To me it's just a human that happens to be female.

If you can't say that women are females, or that women are people with female reproductive organs, then what are you saying? Women are people who wear dresses, make up and heels? Women are anybody who says they are female? What about being female are they saying they are?

The idea of living as a female is what- living as the negatively prescribed societal stereotype that women have been fighting against for centuries? Dies that mean the women not wearing heels and dresses are lesser as women? Who came up with this new definition of woman?

I also don't understand how you can live as a male but get pregnant. That's not living as a male, that's living as a female, because pregnancy happens in female reproductive organs. You can do it in jeans and a t shirt and short hair (like thousands of other women), but that doesn't make you male. It makes you a woman in comfy clothes and practical hair.

Why do we need deginitions at all? Why can't males be men and wear wtf the want including dresses and heels, and females can be women and wear trousers and shirts and comfy shoes.

Why are we pandering to these outdated stereotypes of what the sexes should be wearing or how they should act? Can't we just be people who are male or female, men or women, and accept that some men wear dresses (as men) and some women wear dungarees. Why the need to redefine two entire groups based on the validation of unpleasant stereotypes?

Sorry about the typos

@Facultymeatings

Darn it time for a name change. Just checked snopes. Slinks off cussing

Sorry!

I taught a lot of sport history for a while.

I also debunked a few other bacronyms in a unit on sexism in sport. Whilst making up lots of others 😁

@AnnaPotter

You’re being ridiculous. Your experience isn’t defined by legislation. If you consider ‘mother’ to be the right word for you then use it freely, as is your right. Whether legislation is trans-inclusive it not doesn’t affect your ability to do so in the slightest.

Your experience may not be defined by legislation but your rights under the law certainly are. What a ridiculous statement! The wording in this bill had little to do with being bloody trans inclusive and everything to do with affording men the right to make decisions about women's bodies you bloody fool. I despair of fucking idiots like you.

Was the argument for replacing those terms completely

Yes it was. The wording options mentioned were "pregnant person", "woman" or "mother". They went for "mother" although some peers said they originally preferred "woman". "Mother or other pregnant person" wasn't mentioned.

Only one peer spoke in favour of "pregnant person". She seemed very knowledgeable and she didn't say that using "mother" alone would mean that a pregnant trans man would be denied the maternity allowance.

the reality of biology means that only men need a prostate exam and only women need cervical scans etc.

True but maternity rights are still an interesting problem. I can't imagine women with prostates or men with cervices that need scans, but I can imagine developments in the not too distant future when a man - any man! - could gestate a pregnancy in a pouch taped to his side and even feeding the baby from his own bloodstream. When/if that happens, there could be practical reasons to give maternity rights to "pregnant people". But not yet.

but Icanimagine developments in the not too distant future when a man - any man! - could gestate a pregnancy in a pouch taped to his side and even feeding the baby from his own bloodstream.

Who would want to imagine that? It's horrific, humanity playing God level of insanity. I posted the same earlier- if anyone can imagine a way for males to gestate a baby and work on it as a scientific possibility, why on earth would they not try and sort female health issues first?? Women have suffered and died from medicine ignoring our female health for millenia, yet in a few years of this brave new world people are already imagine how men can safely grow a baby because it's 'kind to be inclusive' .

"a man - any man! - could gestate a pregnancy in a pouch taped to his side and even feeding the baby from his own bloodstream."
What a gross idea.
Why would anyone even imagine this let alone waste time and money trying to make it happen.
The word mother is ancient, it has an ancient meaning that everyone the world over understands.
It is a word that has a meaning in law, that ties mothers to their children by law.
Anyone trying to undermine that link is suspect.

And at some point in the future it is highly likey that everybody will be able to fly without need of an aeroplane.

So let's start rewriting laws in anticipation of that evolutionary / scientific advancement.

Pshaw!

BiBabbles - thank you for your post - you raised very pertinent points and explained the DSD clearly.

We women are astounding and all the women who stand up and say "no" to changes in language and rights are warrioresses.
Thank you.

I've nothing to add to the topics which have already been discussed but I would like to point out that many of us are standing against TRAs (trans rights activists) and not the regular trans identified person who recognises that the EA 2010 gives them all the rights that are needed to live their life without discrimination.

On the subject of the word “mother”, I refer to Lord Winston’s comments yesterday:

”I recognise that “maternity” comes from the Latin “mater”, meaning “mother”, so it would be fairly ludicrous to exclude the possibility of “maternal” and other such words not being feminine”

@LastRoloIsMine

Its taken over 100 years for the word woman to have legal rights.

You can only vote because women generations before you fought and died so that the word woman mattered. You can get a bank account, a mortgage, contraception and decent healthcare all because women made the word WOMAN legal. Before then we were just non men.

This.

but I can imagine developments in the not too distant future when a man - any man! - could gestate a pregnancy in a pouch taped to his side and even feeding the baby from his own bloodstream.

Jesus, don't go giving them ideas!

If you have a womb and get pregnant, you are a woman, whether you like it or not. If you can’t bear the reality that you are a woman, then remove your womb and ovaries when you get your breasts removed. When talking about people who can only live their lives as their “real” selves with the help of radical plastic surgery and a lifetime of artificial hormones, it’s really that simple, imvho. Why willing only to go so far??? If you can not only cope with having a womb, but also with carrying a developing baby in it, then you are being a woman and doing something only women do. Just like only men ejaculate semen from their penises, so if you ejaculate semen, you are being a man whether you like it or not. Until men produce eggs and women produce sperm, human beings need two genuinely different sexes for reproduction.

The idea that a man could carry and birth a child is repulsive to me for so many reasons including the disastrous impact this will have on women because our uterus will be required. As for gestating in a pouch I just think that is so detached and will most certainly cause issues for the child.

Where is the fetus going to gestate, would you keep it in a box?!

But PersonWhoBirthedAChildsNet is such a mouthful 😫

[quote TheChampagneGalop]Where is the fetus going to gestate, would you keep it in a box?!

[/quote] Always a classic, and very prophetic!

@YerAWizardHarry01

But PersonWhoBirthedAChildsNet is such a mouthful 😫

Oh I dunno, doesn't this have a nice ring to it?

Or this, perhaps?

@PlanDeRaccordement

"Scientists estimate that DSD is as frequent as red hair or green eyes among humans. Do ginger people then not deserve rights? Or those with the rarest eye colour of green?"

In response to the red hair comment.

That is often argued and has been thoroughly debunked. A good article below by a developmental biologist adressing just that point:
colinwright.substack.com/p/intersex-is-not-as-common-as-red

I actually have a degree of sympathy with your gender abolition stance (articulated earlier), but gender abolition and sex abolition are different, and you seem to be confusing sex and gender. Gender abolition would kind of be the same as the view that if gender is a spectrum with extreme masculinity on one end and extreme femininity on the other, since few, if any, people are the ideal embodyment of either, we are all "non binary". If we are all non binary, there is no gender binary, therefore gender is meaningless, that to me is the same as saying gender doesn't exist.

That is not the same as saying sex doesn't exist. Sex is just dimorphic bodies. As well as confusing sex and gender, you seem to confuse genetic sex (chromasomes and gametes) with sex characteristics (primary (external and partially internal genatalia and secondary) which is strange because you understand about phenotypes.

Then you confuse intersex with trans. Very few intersex people consider themselves trans, they are just people with a DSD.

It feels like you are working very hard to justify you beliefs, when in reality it is quite simple -:

Humans have 2 sexes. Male and female. Sometimes things go wrong developmentally. This is not the same as being transgender .

Gender is sterotypes, no one fully embodies the ideal stereotype. Trans people feel more aligned with the oposite sex stereotypes for lots of reasons. That's absolutely fine but they can't have sex based rights that aren't theirs. SIMPLES

@fastwigglylines

Or this, perhaps?

That's the one!

I can imagine developments in the not too distant future when a man - any man! - could gestate a pregnancy in a pouch taped to his side and even feeding the baby from his own bloodstream.

What like selotape or packing tape? Maybe Duct tape would be more practical?

Would they have to take it off at night and then put it on again? Because I'd worry about that. Men can be quite easily distracted and forgetful, you know they put something down and can never find it again?

I think you need to put a bit more thought into it Amarylis

*To those struggling with why this is important, it's actually fairly simple.

If I say 'some people' are discriminated against in employment, healthcare, the justice system or anything else and it needs sorting, the first thing that should be asked is which people and for what reason.

If my response is just some 'people' are denied access to effective healthcare, some 'people' are denied jobs, some 'people' are denied suitable housing or some 'people' are denied access to justice, how effective do you think the solutions will be?

You can't solve discrimination and oppression against groups of people if you don't know who they are or can't describe them accurately*

This ^

Most importantly in research too?! When will it end?!