USA; in the largest midwifery study group on Facebook, a senior midwife was chastised and silenced for using the term “female body.”

[MrsSnippyPants]

twitter.com/joandark11/status/1061724941358260225

I've been watching this thread on Twitter. I'm just grateful I no longer work as a midwife as it would take me about five minutes to get sacked and sent to the gulag for re-education if I was told to use gender neutral language and embrace this shit. They'll be talking about assigning a baby its birth sex next and worrying about doing it coercively. If midwives can't be counted on to stand up for women there is no hope. Though I would like to think a few pregnant women would tell any woke midwives where to jump with their gender neutral language.

Is the language of obgyn's being policed in the same way, or is the focus only on destroying traditionally female-led professions? I can make a guess.

Blythe, interesting point. My guess would be a big fat no!

Ffs

Isn’t the use of midwives a lot less mainstream in the US?

Most people use an obstetrician- opting to go for a birth centre and midwives isn’t the same as UK women opting to go to the local MLU. It’s seen as much more crunchy or lentil weavery over there. As such, I think it’s a much more liberal/ leftie crowd running the shop so they’re much more susceptible to this nuttery.

That's chilled me. It is so cult-like. How did we get here?

How did we get here?
People didn't speak up early enough.
It built.

Fucking depressing. And chilling.

gendercritter

"That's chilled me. It is so cult-like. How did we get here?"

Remember when you first heard about intersectionality and thought it was a good idea?
That was when you were inside the club, now you are well and truly out.
What percentage do you think of all feminists of all ages, including the thousands currently undergoing their indoctrination at University, agree with this lunacy.
Apart from here every feminist I have spoken to about it has well climbed on board. It's a hive mentality.

TRAs ''it's reductive and offensive to reduce people down to a body part'''

Also TRAs ''ZOMG, you can't say females give birth, people who give birth are known as vagina or uterus havers''.

This is nothing to do with transwomen and everything to do with transmen. Saying "women" and "female," they believe, excludes that category of people who can give birth but do not identify as women.

where are people referring to transwomen

Transpeople know they either have a male or female body though. I mean, pregnant transmen don't actually believe they are male with all the reproduction that goes along with being male.

They are female. It's always the female of the mammalian species who is pregnant and gives birth to live young.

Dopregnant transmen really want to be called "pregnant people"or "uterus havers". And even if they do, does that mean all pregnant people need to be referred to that way for the teeny tiny number of pregnant transmen that might object to being called that themselves?

There are hardly any pregnant transmen. Does it really matter if they feel excluded occasionally? (even when they aren't being excluded because they do have female bodies).

There are hardly any pregnant transmen. Does it really matter if they feel excluded occasionally? (even when they aren't being excluded because they do have female bodies).

I'm 60 and like a few others who post regularly on MN, never had children.

I don't expect MNetters to 'adapt' what they talk about to spare (what they think might be) my feelings.

This is nothing to do with transwomen and everything to do with transmen. Saying "women" and "female," they believe, excludes that category of people who can give birth but do not identify as women.

I'll believe that when the language of male medical problems is similarly dehumanised.

Midwifery in the USA is culturally extremely different from the UK and most of the rest of the world.
'Midwife' isn't a protected title - anyone can call themselves a midwife. Practising as a midwife has been dubiously legal in many states in recent decades. Even today, less than 10% of births in the USA have a midwife involved. It is now possible for midwives in the USA to go through training and registration into practice in a way we'd recognise in the UK, but it is still seen as 'fringe', not a routine part of maternity care.
The USA has probably the worst mortality rates for mothers and babies in the rich world.

This twitter post links to a YouTube video of 4 American midwives who are raging after attending an abortion duala training session where women/female is being erased & they were kicked out because they wouldn't drink the koolaid. It's worth a watch.

Unless they only cater to the wokest of woke crowds, referring to vaginas as "front holes" will only cost them business.

If a trans man decides to do the exclusively female thing of gestating and giving birth to a child then that particular individual can inform their midwife or doctor that they wish to be referred to as "uterus haver" or whatever. They don't get to define how 99.99999% of pregnant women are addressed and silence anyone who disagrees with them.

I agree that this has a lot to do with the different role/perception of midwives in the UK and US.

I mean, it's obviously batshit crazy but I can see why midwife types in the US are more prone to it.

I'm in a part of Canada that is ground zero for this batshittery. Many midwives no longer refer to women but to "birthing people", indeed our provincial association has expunged their website of any mention of the word woman. This has all happened over the course of last couple of years- I'm in some groups where I have seen the subtle change in language happen almost imperceptibly. Although midwifery here contains a lot of woke SJW types who are susceptible to this kind of group think, it is also a regulated profession and a fairly mainstream care choice. And worryingly the obstetricians are starting to go down the same road. They are currently working on an "inclusive language" policy. And the new antenatal notes created by the ministry of health include an optional field for preferred pronouns.

I have also definitely noticed this sort of gender neutral language creeping into the doula community in the UK. Luckily UK midwives are a fairly no nonsense bunch but I think it is something to watch out for.

BlytheSpiritsSpirit

Good question. This isn't definitive, but a review of literature indicates that there's been no corresponding pressure put on US ob-gyns/gyns to radically remake the terminology they employ. There have been articles in the mainstream press, medical press & professional journals about how practitioners of this medical specialty should treat transgender patients, but no doctrinaire demands - or even call - to totally revamp the language they use for women & female parts universally so as not to exclude or offend a small number who are transgender.

I can't understand why women would accept this language when they are pregnant. I would be outraged to be referred to as a pregnant person or any of the other crap and I'd give any midwife/obstetrician an earful for denying the wonderfully female womanly thing I was doing, having a baby.

stillathing I'll believe that when the language of male medical problems is similarly dehumanised.

To be fair, it's not being dehumanised, it's reference to gender and not humanity that are being changed. With pregnancy, the language is being changed to refelect the tiny number of pregnant transmen (not to spare the feelings of transwomen). For prostate cancer, changing your gender marker means you might miss out on being screened, because women are not being called. Erasing sex or conflating it with gender is the cause of this problem. The NHS database group recommends storing gender and sex separately, but it does that by having a Y/N for "gender matches sex assigned at birth" which does not work for people who do not identify as men or women. That's why it's so important to record actual birth sex and trans status in medical records. A transgender person who has had no surgery or hormones is effectively the same as a non-transgender person for most medical purposes.

I only wish that female/male was used inclusively and unambiguously for sex. Even if you think "women" should include transwomen (and I know most of you don't) this is vitally important for medical reasons.