@nauticant
This was a popular comment under the Daily Mail article:
So if the word 'mother' is to be replaced by 'parent who has given birth' what does that make a grandmother? A parent who has given birth to a parent who has given birth or contributed to a parent giving birth.
Sadly I think that 'grandmother' would be defined as 'a grandparent who identifies as female'.
For grandmother, we use maternal or paternal if we want to be specific.
So if my father now identifies as a woman, and my paternal grandmother identifies as a man, I suppose the concept is 'grandparent who identifies as male who gave birth to the parent who contributed sperm to make me'??
However, this shows how complicated the whole thing is, because we are debating this using English, where for example the word 'aunt' could be used to mean 'my mother's sister' or 'my father's sister' or 'my mother's brother's wife' or 'my father's brother's wife', or 'my mother's sister's wife' or 'my father's sister's wife'.
I believe that other languages would have a different word for a number of those relationships, if not all. So if my sister identified as a man, that would change the word my nephew would use to describe me, even though I might disagree with the concept of gender and hence still think of my sister as my sister and not by brother.
Can anyone confirm this?
If so, has this led to new words now same sex marriage exists?