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.

YANBU

Only women can get pregnant. Only women can be mothers. Women are adult human females. This should not be up for debate, it’s fact.

Page 5 and we're onto conspiracy theory level already, that's pretty good going, is that some new kind of record
Can you please provide the answer to my questions if you know them?

What, do I know if there's a great big Underlord somewhere?
No I don't, sorry

I heard on a TV show that an area is trying to change all their paper work to say pregnant person and chest feeding to not offend the tiny few of people born as female who live as men but become pregnant. But as a medical person argued you can't chest feed. It is anatomically incorrect. Men have breasts too and can get breast cancer. It is the breast that feeds the baby not the chest. If these individuals want specific terms and paperwork not to offend them fine but don't wipe all of us pregnant /birth mothers out doing so. I am finding a lot of people just find this a step too far and are not being sympathetic to this as it is just too much.

In what way is mother not a perfectly acceptable term for transmen too?

Is it because motherhood is less interesting, more mundane than pregnant-personhood? Is it because having to fall in with terminology that has historically been the domain of mere women is abhorrent to someone who identifies as the higher status creature, 'man'?

YANBU. Woman is not a dirty word. Mother is not a dirty word. I was actually surprised today when my workplace "gender equality team" or whatever the fuck they call themselves sent round an email about International Women's Day today. Shocked in fact. Why? Because usually when they talk about things that concern women (pay gap, mental load, impact of pandemic on working parents) it is studiously gender non-specific.
If we can't name what we are we can't fight for what we need.
Woman, Mother. Girl. Not Parent, Cervix Haver, Gender non-specific person. FFS. Any woman happy to give away words that describe us is a collaborator and not worthy of my time.

It's balkanising what it is to be a woman. I was a pregnant person for 9 months. I'll be a mother all my life. Has my life been affected by the things that happened as a consequence of being a pregnant person? Yes, on so many fronts. Is it still affected? Yes. Is my husband - also a parent - affected in the same way? No, not even close. 'Mother" encompassed and links all these experiences. 'Pregnant person' doesn't. I want that word, 'mother', because it joins the dots. I want the law to join the dots too.

@slashlover
We nearly lost the word mother and all that comes with it?
Surely the 26 page thread that's been in trending all day would do that?

Ah, was that in the main boards though or just FWR?
Because there's some sort of drive on at the moment to fill all the boards with trans threads.
Starting to realise why the first thread originally got moved, seemed bizarre to me at first but becoming clearer lol

It is getting ridiculous, chest feeding. Ffs

@indemMUND

Wait until they get to "menopause".. conundrum to come

You made my day (or night)

At some point, we're going to have to compromise or negotiate.
Why??

@AnnaPotter

So women aren't allowed to refer to themselves as women or use the usual womanly terminologies now??

Of course you fucking are. Where does it even remotely suggest that you can’t? Stop making shit up to suit your agenda.

Pot. Kettle.

How many pregnant trans men are there likely to be in parliament? It's not even about the general population. Why the hell do we need to be inclusive when people who give birth are legally mothers and there aren't going to be any real life people going through the 'violence' of being referred to as mother as a result of this.

@Labobo

In what way is mother not a perfectly acceptable term for transmen too?
Is it because motherhood is less interesting, more mundane than pregnant-personhood?

I'm not trans, but if you're a trans man, surely you can see that it's not because they think they're being well edgy or something and want to be more interesting than motherhood, just that as a trans man they should get to be seen as one?
Or should they be told not to be so bloody daft, you're not a trans man, get over it, you're a woman?

I find it astounding that some still don’t understand the importance of the definition of a woman and the legal protection it affords. Women are still far from equal and without a clear identity, issues that affect women cannot be recorded accurately, studied and addressed. Affirmative action and hiring processes exist for a reason. Women’s only sport ( and the attached scholarships in the US)exist for a reason.
Calling anyone concerned about this transphobic is missing the point entirely.

YANBU. It baffles me that people can't see how important this is.

I would be more than happy to call a trans pregnant person a pregnant person. I would be happy to say they were chest feeding. There should be respectful and appropriate guidance that ensures that trans people are appropriately looked after with dignity and care.

But, let’s not forget that trans birthing people are the absolutely minority.

The correct language should reflect the overwhelming majority of people who give birth. Women, mothers. If we are able to/want to, we feed from our breasts not chests. The chest is a general area of the body, the breast is the specific area which a mothers milk is made.

Why is language being altered to suit the needs of the absolute minority at the risk of deleting the majority. This was a good decision in the HoL.

Well @AnnaPotter, I am quite happy that we are not going to call all my years of feeding my baby ‘chest feeding years’ after all because, bless them, my boobs have suffered and need some recognition for their service. I don’t want to give that word up, thank you very much.

[quote Mockolate]@slashlover
We nearly lost the word mother and all that comes with it?
Surely the 26 page thread that's been in trending all day would do that?

Ah, was that in the main boards though or just FWR?
Because there's some sort of drive on at the moment to fill all the boards with trans threads.
Starting to realise why the first thread originally got moved, seemed bizarre to me at first but becoming clearer lol[/quote]
Why is it such a problem for you to keep the words 'woman' and 'mother' in legislation relating to maternity rights? What's wrong with those words - in your view - are you able to say? Are you still ok with calling it 'maternity'?

Only 50% of people can get pregnant

• so do we need whole dedicated hospital wards, work place legislation, etc? Maternity is linked to women, paternity to men but can’t we just remove those terms because people get pregnant? When it comes to abortion all people have rights.

100% of females (as a class) get pregnant

• so maybe we need abortion rights as they will affect 100% of women. We will need workplace targeted legislation around pregnancy to protect 100% of women. We will need dedicated health care, etc, etc.

I love all the I am not trans phobic people on mn. You are. Do all of you know there's trans people on mn? How awful for them to listen to this rubbish weekly at least.

Sigh. Really we are not all transphobes. Any more than JKR is a transphobe. She's not. I'm old enough to remember this from the first time around. Men at uni coming up to me and asking why feminists hated men. Having to explain we didn't. We weren't campaigning against men, We were campaigning FOR women. For women's rights. For their creation, protection and validation. Why, every time that women fight to protect our status in the world are we told we hate other people? Why are we told our campaigns to protect ourselves are about attacking others. They are not. In the 1980s it was men who thought we hated them for wanting a tiny slice of their pie. Now it's transwomen who think we hate them for not wanting to hand over the tiny slice of pie. I've heard it all before and the iterations are astonishingly similar.

"Because there's some sort of drive on at the moment to fill all the boards with trans threads."
This is not a trans thread.
Its got absolutely zero to do with transwomen, seeing as its about a maternity bill.
There are a handful of trans men who have given birth.
Trans men who give birth are mothers in law.
How many have actually done that? 3? 15?
No way should we be changing or removing the legal definition that ties a mother to her child for the sake of a handful of peoples feelings.

[quote SomersetHamlyn]@risefromyourgrave

You are right.

Black people are people.
Disabled people are people.
Children are people.
Refugees are people.
Jews are people.
Uighurs are people.

We specify words, subsets of humanity, when we want to acknowledge and discuss the specific experiences of those particular groups of people.

To erase the specificity and the possibility of addressing issues that affect those groups of people is regressive and oppressive. The same goes for denying women the ability to talk about our specific experiences.[/quote]
This!!