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We aren't 'mothers' anymore?

17 replies

bkgirl · 01/02/2017 02:04

This has left me beyone furious.
I am a mother.
Will mumsnet have to change it's name to something more PC? It's not political correctness, more political foolishness.

Don't call pregnant women 'expectant mothers' as it might offend transgender people
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/29/dont-call-pregnant-women-expectant-mothers-might-offend-transgender/

OP posts:
bkgirl · 01/02/2017 02:06

It is now being reported in the news in the USA. :(

OP posts:
Out2pasture · 01/02/2017 02:10

Okay there was a thread on this topic last week.
My impression was it was the recommended term when physicians address their transgendered clients/patients NOT a recommendation to address all clients/patients in this manner.

venusinscorpio · 01/02/2017 02:18

No, actually it was a diktat to all BMA staff that they must use these new Orwellian terms internally about all mothers, not a direct recommendation to use them with their pregnant patients. But that's quite a nice distinction.

bkgirl · 01/02/2017 02:24

Sorry, hadn't realised there was a prior thread.Who in the BMA came out with such a diktat?Do we have a name. I feel like protesting at their door! (I live too far away).
Mother and all it's derivations should be protected in law.

OP posts:
Babasaclover · 01/02/2017 03:36

It's bloody ridiculous.

At work the other day they announced that our board of directors has voted to rename our women's network to balance as it is discrimination to not allow men in. It is a network where successful women share their hardships of women in a mans world - which men are now allowed to join.

The word has gone mad and doctors have enough to think about!

JamieXeed74 · 01/02/2017 09:52

Does it really matter what we call it, its just a label and doesn't change what we are.

LumelaMme · 01/02/2017 09:56

You need to read the other thread, Jamie. Then you might understand the irritation/rage/fury.

namechange20050 · 01/02/2017 09:59

jamie if it doesn't really matter then why is it changing?

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 01/02/2017 11:31

If the intention of this were to remind doctors that a pregnant woman is still a person in her own right, not just a vessel for her unborn child, I could see the point. But in that case, 'pregnant woman' would achieve exactly the same thing, without appearing to wipe out the woman in the equation.

I remember my mum getting very cross if a doctor called her 'Mum', during any appointment to do with pregnancy, labour and delivery, the postnatal period or when taking either dsis or I for an appointment. She felt - and I agree - that there was far more to her than just a mother, and that by failing to acknowledge that, by using her name, the doctor was depersonalising her and reducing her to just a mother.

It wasn't that she didn't know she was a mother - but she wanted to maintain her own individuality as well.

So a policy that made doctors think 'this is a woman who is pregnant, but she is not just the vessel for the baby, she is still a person in her own right', might be no bad thing - but if it is in response to trans activists demands, then I agree that it is a very bad thing indeed.

I have said on another thread (the 'chestfeeding' one) that I fear that a certain section of the trans activist community is trying to advance their own cause by wiping out the identity of cis women (a term I hate, but use here because it describes the group of people they want to vanish).

That thread is about wanting to relabel breasts as chests, this one is about relabelling pregnant women/expectant mothers as pregnant persons - but the effect feels the same to me. This is what I said on the other thread:

"This feels as if some trans activists want women - cis women - to disappear. We don't fit in their narrative, so we are not wanted. We should be made to give up anything and everything to the trans active community, and simply not be, any more.

Taking away our terms for our body parts feels like wanting to erase us completely."

TheBogQueen · 01/02/2017 11:37

How can you feed a baby with a chest?

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 01/02/2017 11:53

Good question.

TheBogQueen · 01/02/2017 16:01

Surely Health professionals are capable of adapting language to suit the patiemt?

Surely you can produce trans pregnancy guides with language and info specific to the experience of being a pregnant trans man?

That way you can provide proper advice for women and for transmen?

PuppetinParadize · 01/02/2017 16:32

Does thatmean all medics will calling wimmin Mum when discussing child of said woman in clinics?!

PuppetinParadize · 01/02/2017 16:40

And of course I meant STOP calling .......

Blastandtroph · 01/02/2017 16:43

Will be interesting to see how this pans out for our 'women's services' directorate Hmm

Prawnofthepatriarchy · 01/02/2017 17:36

There won't be any women's issues any more. If men can have babies and chest feed then I assume they'll have to relabel maternity anything - clothes, leave, pay - to parental. Maternity won't exist any more. And it will not be possible to prove sex discrimination any more, because it's been replaced by gender, which is voluntary.

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