‘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?

Women.

But there’s no material difference between them not considering themselves a woman and them considering themselves a man or a unicorn or a sea lion. They are wrong. Both on what they say they are not and on what they say they are. If they are pregnant they are women. I’m sorry for them if they hate that fact but it is a fact.

Yep. And if truth be told, I think that the majority of the population believes that. But people are scared to speak the truth because of the potential consequences: to their job security, safety and so on.

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 and if using the word person on a form helps a little then that’s fine by me.

I’m so glad to see others on this thread feel the same as me.

@Wereallsquare

Go you. May I join you, please?

I’m so glad to see others on this thread feel the same as me.

Precious few, thankfully. If you want to identify as a 'man' then go right ahead but …. men do not give birth. Easy really, innit?

I truly believe some people are desperate to be offended, and look for it everywhere

Well, there seems to be a hell of a lot of us. We could all be wrong but, you know, somehow I don't see it.

Easy really, innit?

What a nasty, patronising turn of phrase.

I get the issue about the erasure of women, I really do, but this wording explicitly avoids that.

Pregnancy is hard enough as it is, without feeling like your somehow trapped in the wrong body or whatever. I like that it is being made slightly more inclusive for those that don't identify as women, whether they are "deluded" or not.

you're

It costs nothing to be nice

Did you read that in a Christmas cracker? How absolutely wrong you are. And, on that note, I'm off to the gym

What a nasty, patronising turn of phrase

Gone to the gym!

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

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.

They can shove their x.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

@ 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.

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

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