I absolutely agree they were right to change the language of the act. I don’t think it’s a massive scandal that it needed to be changed, that’s how law works.
But without people saying 'hey, this isn’t right', the gender-neutral language would have been retained and the word 'mother' would have been erased from that particular bit of legislation.
Without people saying 'hang on, Stonewall is misrepresenting the law' or 'Stonewall's going a bit far here', organisations would have been slowly, quietly, one-by-one implementing changes that gradually get rid of the words 'women' and 'mother', almost without anyone noticing.
Yes, maybe these things do seem like minor issues when viewed in isolation. I just take the view that that the more we think 'oh it's just this once' or 'it's not a big deal really', the more normalised the whole thing becomes.
And if in 10 years time, the words 'woman' and 'mother' have ceased to have any meaningful definition, I consider that to be detrimental to women. How can women's rights be protected if we cannot define ourselves?
So yes, I appreciate sometimes it looks as though we're overreacting or 'pearl clutching' or whatever, but I do perceive any instance of changing language, no matter how small, to be worth talking about and standing firm against.