It's nice to know that even now

[GloGirl]

We are still keeping our birthing people at the centre of our focus with clear maternity guidance from my local hospital. So we don't confuse anyone.

Giving Birth

• One birth partner is allowed when in labour. This will not change and is exempt from the general COVID 19 guidance.
• Birthing people are being discharged home from the delivery suite wherever possible and birth partners can stay with you until you go home.
• If you need to be transferred to the postnatal ward partners are not allowed to go with you.

From our local branch of Maternity Voices.

[ThePawtriarchy]

For the people driving this, it’s about power, holding it over women and taking it from them (actually, in the way that rape is about power). For the people that go along with it, that’s about lack of intelligence and being unable to use their own logic and brain to see if for what it is.

[MoleSmokes]

Totally agree Barracker -

It's such an ugly phrase, apart from anything else.

"I am a pregnant woman"
"I am a woman in labour"
vs
"I am a birthing person"

It literally conjures up the mental image of my vagina performing a function first, and my human existence second.

The focus is entirely upon the bodily process, not the woman with a name, personality and life.

It's the polar opposite to 'woman centred care'

It's functional vagina and uterus attached to a nondescript human animal care.

This is the same dehumanising language that health professions, medical and nursing in particular, have been urged for decades to avoid, eg. "the broken leg needs a bed-pan", "Have we got a discharge plan for the kidney stones in Bed 3?"

It is also unintelligible to the vast majority of people.

There need to be formal complaints put in on both counts whenever it occurs. They are doing patients a serious disservice with this offensive gobbledygook!

Copy and paste from comment on an earlier thread on the same subject:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3809751-please-help-me-articulate-why-this-makes-me-uneasy

I would assume "Birthing person" to mean anyone other than the mother involved with the birth.

This sort of bizarre language is confusing enough if English is your first language and you have a reasonable level of literacy. The aim should be to communicate effectively and think about "hard to reach" groups - not alienate and confuse your target audience.

"How to write medical information in plain English" - Plain English Campaign

Ten tips for clearer writing

1. Think of your audience, not yourself.

Don't try to impress people by using your language to show off: keep it as straightforward as possible. Imagine you are speaking to someone, and write in that more relaxed way.

8. Use everyday words.

Big words, foreign phrases, bursts of Latin and so on usually confuse people. Consequently, it is a sine qua non of plain English not to write too polysyllabically! So, for plain English, use everyday words.

Download guide: www.plainenglish.co.uk/files/medicalguide.pdf

Plain English Awards 2019 include NHS Scotland ‘Ready Steady Baby!’
www.plainenglish.co.uk/campaigning/awards/2019-awards/plain-english-awards.html

Maybe you could suggest that the local "Maternity Voices Partnership" prepare info to a standard that might result in them winning an award from the Plain English Campaign?

[MrsDoylesTeaBags]

Its the dehumanising that just gets to me

*Who benefits from this, 'cos is sure ain't women.

*That's a rhetorical question. I know who benefits, just galls me when other women pander to it.

[PertEllaTitsahoy]

It looks as if Women are just being described in terms of the biological functions they are performing, or having performed on them.

I hate to say it, but I can see this ending up with the trauma suffered by women who have been raped bring reduced in the same way. "Vaginas that were raped" because god forbid theres any acknowledgement of the woman going through it.

[MrsDoylesTeaBags]

I find the use of language so disturbing, its one of the reasons I stopped going on Twitter.

Some people suffer mental illness or past trauma that causes them to feel a disconnect with their body, I understand that, but by changing language so that everyone has to discuss their body as if its just a lump of flesh is not the way to help them overcome that.

Why are established medical bodies giving way to disturbed individuals rather than addressing that?

I just find it all really scary.

[TheBewildernessisWeetabix]

Sowing chaos so that no one knows who they can believe on a given subject is an effective strategy of authoritarians. We see it now in regard to the pandemic in Russia, the UK, and the US.

[BeetrootRocks]

Their argument of just give it up for adoption, ignoring the realities and dangers of pregnancy and birth on the woman, is exactly the same vibe as the pro surrogacy crew.

So both the left and the right are singing from the same song sheet, when it comes to things that negatively impact women.

[BeetrootRocks]

Agree that for some pushing this language is to disconnect certain process from the people who have them, in order to make other agendas more palatable.

The USA anti abortion stuff is a good example of this, where the (very developed) foetus is always represented floating in a nothingness, as it doesn't help their aims to recognise that that it is inside a living breathing human.

[BeetrootRocks]

In and out group language is a thing.

The NHS should not be engaging with this when surely their main aim should be to get important info across as simply as possible to the massive range of people who use their services.

I'll never forget the poster on the cancer campaign thread about people with cervixes, who said essentially that if women are too uneducated to know they have a cervix that's their problem.

[WrathofFaeKIopp]

In preparation for in vitro pregnancies using only the minimum amount of a woman's body tissue as is possible.

Surrogacy of a future age.

[ScrimpshawTheSecond]

They enjoy confusing people if they get to demonstrate how superior their made up knowledge is and do a spot of educating.

[JellySlice]

Do the woke enjoy confusing people?

Yes.

[TheProdigalKittensReturn]

If I came across the term "birthing people" I'd assume it meant midwife, obstetrician, nurses working on the maternity ward, etc. Those who assist with the birthing process, not the woman giving birth. Do the woke enjoy confusing people? I mean, if they all want to confuse each other on Tumblr then fill your boots etc, but really not appropriate to do so in a medical setting, especially not in the middle of a pandemic.

[TheBewildernessisWeetabix]

Birthers are the Republican nuts who subscribed to Trump's claims that Obama was born in Kenya and his Hawaii birth certificate was a fake.

[TreestumpsAndTrampolines]

birther

Isn't that what they called the people who wanted to see Obama's birth certificate? I know it was something to do with americans, presidents, and birth certificates...

[Oncewasblueandyellowtwo]

I just looked through the maternity voices twitter page, this was posted by someone who attended a seminar and was from someone's notes.

"We are all birthing people,connecting
Human to human*

The person who wrote it had a red drawn a red box around this to highlight it for some reason...





twitter.com/hashtag/matvoices2020?lang=en

[ScrimpshawTheSecond]

I honestly didn't twig what on earth they meant by 'birthing people'.

We're not mothers anymore?

[MonsterSister]

One of the interesting things about working from home is that I can hear DH during his online work meetings. He writes medical software.

'Kevin. Kevin, the fuckwits have collated this by bloody GENDER again. Can you get on to them and tell them we need them to populate the SEX field for the medical risk, and the gender field is just so they address the letter right? Thanks.'

[Dances]

Ah come on, you shower of genital fetishists, what genitals MUST a 'mother' have? Bigots.

Especially today.

[ScapaFlo]

But to be inclusive of the teeny proportion of trans people affected, they exclude and disenfranchise the other 99.9% of women who use the service. It's utterly ridiculous 😡

[Charley50]

OMFG

[JellySlice]

The word for the person being discharged home from the delivery suite has been defined in law:

mother

[Middleagedmidwife]

Absolute shite! Only women give birth- end of. I’ve looked after a pregnant ‘man’ once but actually the baby came out of his/her vagina in the normal way!

[Judgybitch]

The thing is, it's perfectly possible to give put this information in a a woke way without using this bizarre phrasing.

YOU will be allowed one birth partner.

Once you have given birth YOU will be discharged etc etc.

It makes it obvious this has been specifically been targeted otherwise it wouldn't sound so batshit!

[PhoenixBuchanan]

One of my colleagues (we are not in the UK) uses the word "birther" in her written communication. She has a friend with a trans son and is trying so hard to be "inclusive". I pointed out that it made her clients sound like brood mares. She agreed when I pointed it out and changed it to something slightly less offensive.