‘Mother’ a word to avoid - why this is so wrong

[tiktok]

Good blog post, answering an open letter from ‘queer birth activists’ who think some people giving birth aren’t female.

with-woman.org/2021/09/21/mothers-they-matter-however-they-identify-heres-why/

Extremely well written and explained. Thank you for sharing that.

The original article tow which this is replying is something to see. I especially like the 'action plan' - they might just as well have written 'bend over'.

Powerfully argued and well-written.

I especially liked the line about biological sex being the most inclusive category of women; it of course encompasses all women across language, culture and geography within the history of our species.

God that action plan, some of it so petulant and emotive. "We don’t need continual reminders that people hate us just for existing" Grow the fuck up.

It reminds me of that guy doing the Barclays bank rainbow promotion 'Educate yourself..... you don't have to understand, but you should go along with it for my comfort levels'.

They want paying too for this window into their 'lived experience' that no one was asking for.

I've mentioned on here before that in my antenatal class, some of the literature changed its wording from 'mother' to 'birthing parent' during the duration of my course.

It genuinely felt degrading and alienating. They might as well have labelled me a brood mare and been done with it.

I've been on these boards a while now, but it was the first time such a term was applied to me directly and it was very jarring.

@EdgeOfACoin, these changes in terminology (as the blog post points out) are imposed on us. No one has checked if people understand them, if they welcome them, if they lead to better maternity care.

Just as, historically, pregnancy and birth interventions have been ‘done’ to us without assessing if they do good or ill.

Yes, the original Open Letter is a piece of work, @aliasundercover.....the entitlement 🤣🤣

We don’t need continual reminders that people hate us just for existing

But women absolutely should get such reminders...

Excellent piece. This particular resonated with me;

Our issue is not with individuals but with the ideological claim that beliefs about gender must be prioritised, at the expense of the material reality of biological sex.

Well they may want to get rid of it, but for most people in the world it’s ‘the most beautiful word in the English language’, see this survey conducted by the British Council a few years ago news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4039185.stm

Bit inconvenient that.

This is great to see.
The original Open Letter is completely unhinged in places so it's good to see such a stiff rebuttal of it. What were they even thinking when they cited Hatshepsut as evidence that 'people of the past lived without gender binaries'? If strong female leaders (Hatshepsut, Queen Elizabeth I, Boudicca etc) are to be held up as example of non binary or even trans people simply because they were just kickass women then I slightly despair for the future of feminism. These people sound uneducated.
Also good to see challenged this idea that everyone has to pay these idiots to 'educate' us - I'm not sure it's going to be value for money if they think regressive gender stereotypes are some big lightbulb of insight. Sadly they didn't remember to include the links to their cash apps anyway

“Our issue is not with individuals but with the ideological claim that beliefs about gender must be prioritised, at the expense of the material reality of biological sex”

I like that bit, too. No one hates you. No one wants you not to exist. Call yourself what you like. No one has any power, or desire, to order you to arrange your family and your naming. But this ideology wants to rename and redefine an entire sex class - the sex class all ‘birthing people’ belong to, whatever they feel inside, however they present, whatever they tell their kids.

@FemaleMule, ackcherly, I think Queen Elizabeth I was non binary😀

“I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.”

So that, um, proves, er, something 🤣🤣

@tiktok sounds like she was trying to say she was 'born in the wrong body'.
As in, 'if i had been born in a male body, i wouldn't have to fight so hard for effing respect. plus these feckers would bring me bigger sandwiches'.

Thanks for posting this OP, very insightful article. I posted recently about a 20-something year old who worked in the NHS and had replaced the word 'mother' with 'parent' in the maternity leave policy, to be more inclusive and couldn't see the harm....this is an excellent answer to that.

Correction: she altered the pronouns from she/her to they/them. I have an old brain.

Looking at the original letter that the post is replying to, I'm wondering about the incidents that gave rise to some of them.

Was a transman ever turned away from a labour ward? Presumably because they weren't thought to be female? Even if they were 9 months pregnant? And if that happened, was it fixed, as in did they explain 'I'm having a baby' and then all was well? Was this an unbearable level of exclusion?

I'm also quite seriously interested to find out if being bisexual excluded you from adoption before 2003? I can believe it, actually, but I just wondered. In general I found the constant squashing of all issues into one LGBTQ+ block difficult.

It's quite scary that all of these changes to maternity literature are happening because of just one transman. At least, according to Sky, Freddy McConnell was the first British transgender man to give birth to his own child. So, no, I don't think a transman has ever been turned away from a maternity ward since it surely would have been captured in Freddy's documentary about giving birth.

I think the difficulty accessing the obstetric services in labour might reflect poor or inadequate records - I do think someone’s name/name change should be accurately recorded so there is no delay when someone presents and gives their name, even if they are male presenting. This is part of good individualised care, which everyone should have.

[quote tiktok]@EdgeOfACoin, these changes in terminology (as the blog post points out) are imposed on us. No one has checked if people understand them, if they welcome them, if they lead to better maternity care.

Just as, historically, pregnancy and birth interventions have been ‘done’ to us without assessing if they do good or ill.[/quote]
I am convinced the use of openly dehumanising language will only exacerbate the pre-existing issues of women in labour being treated as vessels to extract a baby from.

Language matters. If it matters so much for some people not to be called women that to do so is literal violence, what does it do to the midwifery profession when they are trained to use language like "birthing bodies"?

How can I trust a midwife to treat me with respect about interventions and to be patient-centred, f I can't trust her to respect my personal wishes about words I find dehumanising?

Not RTFT sorry.

Just reading the letter that was sent originally.

Big question.

The term perinatal has come up a few times.

I would have thought this term is exclusionary?

The phrase natal woman is definitely not acceptable according to those who fight for trans inclusion.

That has be a bit confused.

Next. This really gobsmacked me.

'We are now seeing more people come out into their true selves based on a variety of factors including protection in law, access to services, social media, peer to peer support as well as popular culture moving away from only portraying LGBTQ+ folk as light entertainment or for pornography only. '

This came out of their mouths.

This utterly outrageous statement totally casting aside all the massive gains made over the years around acceptance for gay and lesbian people. And esp gay men.

I've been working in the financial sector for 30 years and EVERY ONE of my what. 6 or 7 jobs. Has had visible gay men including at senior mgnt level. Lesbians are still less visible which is a different thread however I have worked with out lesbians as well. Maybe in 4 of those jobs.

My current workplace has only 100 and 4 or so of my friends there are openly bisexual.

Yes I have no doubt that there is discrimination, homo and biphobia. Some horrible colleagues. All that stuff. But things are so much better.

These large corporates all also have as standard LGBT+ groups. Organise stuff for pride and have done for yonks. My sector has an LGBT + industry group that is excellent. The organising group are all LGB (Don't think any other letters) and the top person is a lesbian.

They get really highly profile speakers from within that community. Like people with massive responsibility, hugely high profile. Who come and share their experiences etc. How it was when they started out. Changes as the years went by.. Situation now. How they work to support others.

I mean WHAT?

how dare they casually say that it's all about light entertainment.

And porn??????

A bunch of 'perinatal experts' or whatever it was saying oh yes you only see LGBT+ people in PORN???!!!

I'm genuinely angry about that.

They think that coming out with that shit. That sounds like they're living in the 70s and have got are you being served and Larry Grayson on.

Making shit up by ignoring the massive strides made over the years in order to make a fucking argument for all this? And referencing PORN?!

Flabbergasted.

They mention that lesbians are having more babies.

Ok fine etc.

They then say that staff aren't trained in how to handle lgbtqi etc.

Lesbians have always had babies fgs. They are female. Hence it's hardly a shocker that there can be babies. All you need is some semen and with much there you go. And semen is not exactly a substance in short supply.

(Leaving for another thread the fact that it's usually IVF now which is expensive invasive etc...).

Hello Jane how are you? This is Clare my partner. Hello Clare. Ok Jane pop on the bed and let's see if we can find the heartbeat.

Tricky? Erm no.

The fact is they are using lesbians only in order to illustrate something they want to say about other people.

'who have assumed that all perinatal care will be delivered to cishet people.'

Really?

Well they are shit at this if they think that 'cishet men' need perinatal care

People is used because it's illegal to say women, or even cishet women...?! And for some reason the shiny new options of gestator/ people with wombs/ ovulators etc is no good either. Why? My guess is that it sounds crass. Because it IS crass. And so in the end it's better to say something at best inaccurate and at worst nonsensical.

What they mean surely is that people who work in maternity services assume their services will be assessed by people who are FEMALE. And that's a problem.

'We aren’t calling for the eradication of cisgender heterosexual parents.'

Um. Well that's a relief then?!