‘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/

Sorry for spamming.

Another ???.

The letter starts by saying this is a letter written by those who work in the area of pregnancy and childbirth.

Later on it reads as a letter from LGBTQ+ people who are talking about their experiences with pregnancy and birth.

And of course plenty of people both work in the field and have babies.

I am however struggling to see that people who work IN THE FIELD would have real problems accessing services for their own pregnancy.

I mean apart from anything else won't they probably know many of them if they work in same area? Know of them? Maybe even at same hosp.

And I mean if a sodding midwife can't access care when she's pregnant for any reason that means there's massive problems. Because if they can't get looked after properly then everyone else is fucked.

I DO however agree that-

There should be no barriers to creating/ updating medical records due to eg sex/ gender being different

The fact that various permutations of who is what has changed and often recently.

No trans man should experience difficulty accessing services when Pg.

No I don't agree with surrogacy at all. But as it is happening, the relationships and services do need to be understood. A surrogate may well not want to be referred to as mum all the time and if not then that should be done imo. No need to cause issues with actual patients on the ground iyswim.

In short the patient should be treated as an individual. Exactly the same as (I hope anyway) when eg a 16yo is having a baby, a woman who has suffered multiple losses is pregnant, a woman who has had their parent leave while pregnant etc.

The sad fact is on NHS it's a conveyor belt. In maternity it's so different to other areas. IME you are a mum in a line of mums. Background, experiences, fears. No time for that. Bish bash bosh.

And the point about bf support for non birthing mothers (mother is fine to use in that context apparently). Unless things have changed there is no support for anyone. You get lectured and pushed when Pg. Then zero help when it's action time.

Pah.

Yy nice gerbil. All that.

I read the original letter, and I had to ask: what the hell are they talking about? I mean, really?

If you are healthy and the pregnancy is conventional, you are looking at two ultrasounds and a clutch of antenatal appointments that are mostly about checking blood pressure and listening to the baby's heartbeat. You go into labour, give birth usually in a midwife unit or labour ward, you might get an overnight stay, you go home and see the health visitor a few times.

And that's it. A lot of pregnant women don't even get that, and if it is your second, third or fourth baby, you are mostly likely to just get your scans and that's pretty much it.

So what exactly do they want? What's missing here for them? How exactly is the process not supportive of LGBTQ+? In a normal and healthy pregnancy, there's no ante-natal or postnatal time to be anti-LGBTQ. What can a midwife say or do that is anti-LGBTQ in a ten minute physical check appointment?

But then you get to "support for lactating non-gestational partners" and that's when you realise what they want. They want to be able to access ante-natal and post-natal services without actually being pregnant. They want to centre themselves in a medical service that has bugger all to do with their own physical condition.

That letter strikes me as a bunch of people who define themselves by their difference to others, "normies", and expect that difference to be recognised everywhere, even in conveyor belt medical services such as maternity.

@Packingsoapandwater good points. I think the original letter is actually demanding some sort of validation. I don’t think many of us would object to an individual mother being recognised on her notes as being transgender, as long as her sex is accurately recorded. If she wanted her particular partnership recorded in the notes so HCPs understand the family set up....no problem. But they demand more. They demand wholesale changes in public health information, in training of midwives, in the daily life of the maternity services, so all mothers are referred to as ‘birthing people’ etc.

Most mothers wouldn’t want that - but just as with other interventions that become routine until they’re challenged - no one would even think to ask first.

Thank you OP for posting this. It's really well-written

Calling women mothers being seen as offensive should tell people exactly how much disdain these people have for women.

You are so narcissistic that you think maternal care shouldn’t even mention the very group of women it serves? Wow.. the utter disdain for women, for mothers is palpable.

All of the mental gymnastics these people do to justify not saying mother is ridiculous. I’m personally going to continue to say women and mother.

English is not my mother language and I’m not going to play these nonsense games. Words matter. Words have meaning. I’m not going to go around saying birthing people.. this is the most ridiculous, redundant thing ever. We have a word for this.. it’s called mother. Or a woman who is pregnant.

@tiktok

It’s all about validation. It is not society’s responsibility to validate anyone’s self image. And demanding that we change language to protect the feelings of overly sensitive people who can’t validate themselves is ridiculous.

Childbirth is still very dangerous for women. How are we ever going to improve maternity care if we can’t even speak about mothers and women as maternity patients? How are we going to address the health needs of pregnant women when we can’t even say the word woman?

I’m so sick of these people. All this dehumanizing language being thrown around for women. Basically they are serving us shit and telling us to like it.

I’m happy to give them my pregnant ass to kiss while I wear a “mother” pair of huge pregnant pants.

@MarshmallowSwede 🤣🤣🤣

Brilliant posts MarshmallowSwede
Unbelievable that we should find ourselves here. But... it will never catch on - not really. Just in the language of the terminally stupid.

I honestly don’t see why left wing feminists are getting so wound up about this?

Using political correctness to enforce changes in the language to avoid offending others is something the centre left have done for as long as I can remember and for as long as I can remember feminists have tended to vote for these political parties and sneer at those who have in the past objected to political correctness.

Can’t have it both ways. If we are going to accept changes in the language to avoid offending others as principal and then ask others to change their language when we find ourselves offended by it then we shouldn’t be surprised to find that one day we are the ones being asked to modify our language because others are offended by us.

This just looks like centre left politics/principles 101 in action to me. It’s just getting what you vote for and getting the logical outcome of the principles you endorse.

The word mother is not an offensive term, mother is a biological and legal descriptor. Banning the use of mother is not same as banning the use of racist or disabilist words.

@Orderhhh

I honestly don’t see why left wing feminists are getting so wound up about this?

Using political correctness to enforce changes in the language to avoid offending others is something the centre left have done for as long as I can remember and for as long as I can remember feminists have tended to vote for these political parties and sneer at those who have in the past objected to political correctness.

Can’t have it both ways. If we are going to accept changes in the language to avoid offending others as principal and then ask others to change their language when we find ourselves offended by it then we shouldn’t be surprised to find that one day we are the ones being asked to modify our language because others are offended by us.

This just looks like centre left politics/principles 101 in action to me. It’s just getting what you vote for and getting the logical outcome of the principles you endorse.

Can you give some examples of other changes in language?

Do any of them alter words that exist in all languages to describe a fundamental and universal concept, leaving none to describe all those people as a group?

Anyone who thinks this is 'political correctness' doesn't understand the politics of this at all.

Not just political correctness.

Probably pc gawn mad!

And I suppose. If you only were aware of the pronouns thing. That would be fair enough.

But if you're posting on here then you would know a lot more surely

I would imagine the putting it under that label. Might be the reaction of those who thought things like. Not calling female colleagues darling. Having to watch their language when referencing certain groups of people. That might seem the same sort of thing from their viewpoint.