‘Woman or person who gave birth’

[Fooffmalooff]

I have recently been given a survey to fill in regarding care during pregnancy and birth. It’s an NHS survey.

One of the questions asks how you are related to the baby, be it birth partner, family member or ‘the woman or person who gave birth.’

I don’t know why but this has really annoyed me. Women give birth. ‘People’ (read- transgender men) do not. Absolutely fine if you identify as a man etc etc but even if you live like a man, look like a man, think like a man... if you are pregnant and having a baby, you are biologically a woman, no matter how you think/feel/look on the outside.

I just feel a bit weird about the inclusion of this on a survey which is intended for women regarding the most fundamentally female thing you can do.

Thoughts?

[happytobeheresparkl]

Worms give birth we were born with the tools to do it now men.. if it stated person that would boil my piss ... I have periods once a month and suffer them to give birth this makes me a women! The world is fn mental !

[Nofoolfornoone]

@Wereallsquare Turning to insults due to a basic and polite challenge is very unhelpful to your cause but at least you made me laugh

[Wereallsquare]

Nofool, You don't have the reading comprehension skills needed to carry on a sensible discussion. Keep reading, though, and keep an open mind.

[Nofoolfornoone]

Does it matter how much of a statement is true if there are errors?

Poster 1: abcdefghixxxmnop

Poster 2:Hold on, I don’t agree with xxx. I think that’s incorrect.

Poster 3: Oh but you chose to wilfully ignore abcdef.


It’s not a logically response.

[Nofoolfornoone]

Yes I chose to address those parts as they make no sense to me, as someone whose studied fgm for my profession. I wasn’t aware that I had to perform some kind of literature critique of every post you made in order to comment. I understand it’s annoying when trying to come across as knowledgeable if someone identifies points you’ve made as incorrect but that’s not the fault of the person who highlights it.

[Wereallsquare]

Nofool with the ironic nickname, those examples are "peak trans" moments that I have personally experienced with men who claim to be women. They have happened to me and my child.

And you choose to address those parts of my many posts? You willfully ignore the more nefarious problem of Trans Rights Activism being part of Men's Rights Activism? You choose to ignore the fact, and it is a fact, that the goal of TRA and MRA is to diminish the rights of women and erase womanhood.

[Binterested]

No it has nothing to do with being trans and everything to do with being male which all transwomen are.

[Nofoolfornoone]

@ahumanfemale I didn’t say I only have empathy with the trans community.

@Wereallsquare your argument about fgm or flashing makes no sense to me. Anyone who flashes or denies fgm is abusive requires challenge. It’s not got anything to do with being trans. You are far more likely to be cyber flashed where it’s very hard to trace than to be flashed in a retail changing room where cctv will show who entered and exited.
Fgm is performed mostly by females already. So why are the trans community going to make this worse if they have a view already held by many females and males in certain communities? I don’t follow.

[bd67thSaysReinstateLangCleg]

Do you realise how small the population is that you're feeling empathic towards?

The women who try to opt-out of female oppression by claiming to be men and then find that they can't opt-out of reproductive labour when they want children are a much much smaller group than the women who do not attend smears because they've been raped or sexually assaulted. I do not see the NHS addressing sexual assault in its patronising smear test posters. I do not see the people who want us to surrender our language to accommodate gender dysphoric women showing anything like this level of compassion to rape victims who cannot face their smear tests. This is something that men inflict upon us and we are left to face it alone.

[Datun]

Absolutely. That's how they got Miranda Yardley banned from Twitter. And people like Debbie Hayton are vilified.

[Thisismytimetoshine]

So they turn on their own if they don’t toe the party line?!

[Datun]

They do understand it minge and they're furious with them for it. Hence coining the term 'truscum' to describe them.

[MingeofDeath]

@ Weareallsquare.

Your trans friend is the sort of transperson that we would unequivocally support as they know to stay in their own lane and not encroach into women's spaces. I wish the lunatic TRAs would understand that.

[Wereallsquare]

Exactly, ahumanfemale, because the Trans Rights Activists are actually Men's Rights Activists. Do the "allies" realise that?

I certainly didn't. My personal experience of trans is a close friend I met in a support group. This friend identifies as a woman but never attends women's meetings of the support group. This friend is respectful of the difference between trans women and women. Therefore this friend attends LGBT meetings. This friend lives as a woman but is not interested in being in women's spaces. This person uses mixed-sex toilets. This friend does not sponsor women in the support group. This person sponsors other trans women and gay men.

I really thought my friend was typical of trans women. A gentle soul who never pushes boundaries and just gets on with life.

What a joke. I see now that my friend is the exception and that MRA and TRA are pursuing the same agenda. When will allies see this?

[ahumanfemale]

Wording has to be written like the questionnaire, otherwise men get angry. Not trans men, because nobody really listens to them. It makes the men leading the online trans movement annoyed, and their hangers-on.

[ahumanfemale]

I honestly do not understand why there is so little empathy for a person identifying as a man who is pregnant. I cannot comprehend how emotionally difficult this must be for them but can fully appreciate the want to have children so desperately. I prefer to have empathy for these parents In what must already be a difficult time

Do you realise how small the population is that you're feeling empathic towards? Not that being small renders them irrelevant, but I'm just wondering why you're comfortable excluding women who are blind or partially sighted, women in wheelchairs, women with deafness, or women who've undergone FGM? These women all get pregnant and have unique challenges that never seem to be granted empathy?

What about women who were abused by their mothers who are freaking out about motherhood, despite being pregnant, or pregnant women who have been raped or sexually assaulted at some point in their lives who are freaking out about birth?

Where is the empathy towards all these women?

Where are their special mentions?

Where are their voices being heard at a national level?

What about all the minorities that I haven't listed?

Why do we not see these women listed anywhere, unless someone is using them to make a point (just like I am now, and I fall into a couple of these categories, so I'm only sort of taking liberties..)?

If you're going to deconstruct the biological category of women to empathise with some, then why are you not mentioning the other women who deserve empathy too? Or are they not special enough?

I don't understand why people have so much empathy for so few, to the point that they support changing language and organizing systems in a way that triggers other women. I don't understand where the empathy for women as a class has gone, why it's disappeared, if it was ever there, and why the only comeback appears to want to insinuate that anybody not pandering to a tiny minority is unkind.

I do understand where the idea of shaming women for being "unkind" comes from though.

[ErrolTheDragon]

It shoehorns those other than women (men, that is. Surprise, surprise) into the process of pregnancy and birth. Which is, and has always been, by the simple fact of human biology, about women.

And it's this simple fact - that women are the class, the half of our species, who can give birth but men can't, which is behind most structural sexism. It's absolutely fundamental to any understanding of feminism.

[Thisismytimetoshine]

I get the issue about the erasure of women, I really do, but this wording explicitly avoids that
It shoehorns those other than women (men, that is. Surprise, surprise) into the process of pregnancy and birth. Which is, and has always been, by the simple fact of human biology, about women.
Not women and whoever. Women.

[auslass]

I agree its a bit over the top. I don't want to be referred to as a "birth person" or a "person who menstruates". Gender is a social construct, biologically, only women can give birth.

[ErrolTheDragon]

There are some quotes in the piece linked to in this thread which lay out starkly what some TRAs agenda is- the section I c&pd and the one after.


www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3838009-Alex-Massie-in-the-Times-Scotland

[Wereallsquare]

When will trans "allies" begin to understand that your "empathy", "kindness", "coolness", and "niceness" is allowing TRAs to undermine the rights of women and girls and force people to accept trans ideology?

Why should I lose my job or risk arrest for not going along with the delusion that you can change your sex? How are trans people a poor, oppressed minority group when they have the power to change the language everyone uses? When they have so much political influence? Just how?

Stop being "nice" for a minute and consider the ramifications of so-called "inclusion".

Don't you realise this is an insidious way for men to strip women of their power with women's consent and support? Wake up!

All of you "allies", capitulating to the will of trans tyranny, you will reach your peak trans moment at some point. Maybe it will be when some poor, oppressed trans woman is proudly flashing your child in the changing room. Maybe it will be when some poor oppressed trans man is arguing that FGM is not mutilation, but a right to alter one's genitals. Or perhaps it will take abolition of the word "women" for you to wake up.

[Datun]

Don't see transmen asking for, or succeeding in, getting people to say mxn, do we?

Course not. They're women, they have zero power to get men to do anything.

[Lordfrontpaw]

They can shove their x.

[Datun]

International Womxn's Week
International Womxn’s Week is a time to celebrate anyone, past and present, who identifies as a woman in society. It is recognised internationally as a day to celebrate the achievements of womxn and the impact they’ve had through their political, cultural, artistic and scientific work.

Women's week is person's week. It's about anyone.

For the posters who think they're being kind and inclusive to women. No, you're not. We're being led by the nose into a world where the sex class women doesn't exist. And it's not vulnerable transmen who are wielding this power.

[Datun]

Here is another, current example. Look who is making it happen. Not women.

"Leicester students’ renaming of the celebration as International Womxn’s Day follows their election of a trans woman to the post of women’s officer."

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3837997-Leicester-renames-Womens-day