Insidious Loss if Language: Examples.

[Backintheclosit123]

I'll start. I was helping a mate apply online for a NZ Birth Certificate. The word Mother has gone now.

Gah. Of not in obvs. The worse typos are in thread titles huh?

Father has gone too.

Father has gone too.
Well yes. This too. But it's the FWR board after all.

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. There are a lot of children with two mothers or two fathers

A lot of people really struggle to fill out forms and this kind of nonsense will make it a lot more difficult for them.

Sorry - I didn’t mean to sound snarky- you asked for examples and I was adding one.

Sorry - I didn’t mean to sound snarky- you asked for examples and I was adding one.

Nah, my bad.

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. There are a lot of children with two mothers or two fathers

Yes I kinda agree, but would always want to know my mother (egg) and father ( sperm).

Oh gawd im gonna get slammed I feel. 🤷‍♀️

There are a lot of children with two mothers or two fathers

This is a birth certificate: a factual document. It should refer to the biological parents surely?

Yes I kinda agree, but would always want to know my mother (egg) and father ( sperm).

All children need to know two things in this regard.

a- Every single human being that ever was or ever will be has one mother (egg) and one father (sperm). All children should understand biological reality, in an age appropriate manner.

b- Not everyone is brought up by both, or either, of those biological parents and there is nothing wrong with you or your family if you are adopted, product of IVF, from single parent household, live with step parent, have same sex parents.

Where loss of language is problematic as in the birth certificate example is that it undermines the understanding of a, both in terms of children figuring out their place in the world and in terms of the authorities accurately recording and planning.

This is a birth certificate: a factual document. It should refer to the biological parents surely?

As a dabbler in genealogy, this is where my feelings lie on this.

A birth certificate is a record of the birth of a child.

We could add extra, non-biological, parents who wish to have parental responsibility and record that as well as the factual information. I think that would be a better idea. However I don't know enough about adoption to know whether that would be suitable in all circumstances.

Also, family medical records are relevant.

I actually object to the “other parent” bit.

It puts one parent firmly in a secondary role as “other”.

Also agree with the genealogists. What if both parents have gender neutral names? How do we know if they are biological parents?

If we don’t know if parents are biological, tracking genetic diseases becomes impossible. Colon cancer, breast cancer, so many genetic issues investigated because the family tree showed an inheritance pattern.

Also, family medical records are relevant.

They are... but in the 21st century, covering all the bases on a simple form may be tricky.

Biologically, who do you put as the mother if there's a donor egg? (Not always down to surrogacy, maybe best not get into that!). Father... not always known for various reasons.

Perhaps on an electronic form there could be a multiplicity of hidden options to cover those sorts of options as alternatives to the default (which would be biological mother and father).

And then for the 'parental responsibility', actually I think multiple 'parent' is probably needed to accommodate same sex partnerships.

I guess my initial point was that I showed you ONE example of how our language is removing the word Woman especially.
I have seen lots of other examples and thought it would be good to show them on one thread.
One previous poster showed me her baby book - with the mother listed as 'birther' or something similar.
The descriptor 'woman' is disappeaing.

Sexed words generally are being removed at the behest of a very vocal but very small minority. I'm not sure that necessarily means the language is removing them as the vast majority continue to use them in every day life but they are being undermined by officialdom to the exclusion of all those people who aren't knee deep in postmodernism and queer theory. To me this is a new form of etiquette which serves the same purpose as the old, excluding the plebes.

Words undermined include, male, female, man, woman, mother, father, daughter, son, sister, brother etc.

We have also lost to a large extent 'man' as the neutral as in 'mankind' or 'chairman of the board'. I personally have always preferred 'Madam Chairman' to 'chairperson' but am aware others disagree on that point.

A birth certificate should document the biological parents of the child. It doesn't matter if there are 2 mums or dads only one of them can give birth/provide the sperm to create a child.

It saddens me that we are losing the word mother, once again a woman's role is being diminished. If I were to be pregnant again I would write the word mother where it says 'pregnant person' or 'birther' utterly fucking ludicrous. It makes me rage.

Recently a gender neutral breastfeeding policy was released in the civil service by the women's network. No mention of mother or woman in the whole document.

One previous poster showed me her baby book - with the mother listed as 'birther' or something similar.

Bloody hell. No excuse for that.

There are contexts in which the replacement of a sexed word with a neutral one is positive, when the sexed word had the effect of 'gendering' an activity rather than being related to biology. Eg Playgroups for small children would have once have been 'mother and toddler groups' - now more likely (I hope) 'parent and toddler group'. The former reinforces the stereotype that looking after little kids on a weekday morning is strictly women's work.

Recently a gender neutral breastfeeding policy was released in the civil service by the women's network. No mention of mother or woman in the whole document.

That's the counterpoint to the parent&toddler example - in this case the activity is sexed and therefore the correct sexed words should be used.

Another area where language is undermined is the naming of body parts.

The ridiculous 'chestfeeding' being an obvious example. Breast and chest are different body parts. Conflating the two serves no useful purpose.

Also using the word vagina for surgically altered penises and scrotums or penis for a tube of skin attached to the pubis mons. No wonder young people are confused when sections of the medical profession can't even use accurate terms for body parts.

When you go to get married, you are asked if you are related. There are good reasons for the original form of the birth certificate.

"Non-trans women" on a Canadian site about cervical cancer screening. True, this is specifically the "trans" page and elsewhere on the site it does refer to women.
But pandering to transwomen by calling real women "non-trans women"
is an encouragement for them to take up this kind of language generally -- and as we all know, the trans agends is quick to set the gold standard for language.

Backintheclosit123 To make it worse and add to the confusion, there is nothing on that Birth Certificate Application form to suggest that "Parent" = "Mother" and "Other Parent" = "Father".

There do not seem to be any "Guidance Notes" for the online application but at least they ask for the Sex of the child, not sodding "Gender":

smartstart.services.govt.nz/register-my-baby/child-details

I could not get any further than that viewing the online form without actually starting to Register my fictitious NZ bairn!

A Search for Historical Birth Records reveals - Voila! - Mothers existed in New Zealand 100 years ago!!
www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/Search/Search?Path=%2FqueryEntry.m%3Ftype%3Dbirths

Examples of the disappearance of "Sex" in favour of "Gender" in the UK and elsewhere would be too numerous to list

Recently a gender neutral breastfeeding policy was released in the civil service by the women's network. No mention of mother or woman in the whole document.
Are they still called the women's network? Surely if they are removing the words mother and woman in documents they'd remove it from the group name too.