"Queer birth" response from With Woman

[WarriorN]

A group of peri and post natal support workers called Queer Birth recently wrote this.

www.queerbirth.com/

And this is an excellent response from With Women:

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

Apologies if this has already had threads, I couldn't see one when I looked.

That first document. I couldn't get through it tbh. My teeth were on edge at the first "folk" and it just got worse.

It's an example of how language is becoming a confusing and politicised issue in perinatal and postnatal care, ultimately excluding many women but championed by a very small number of relatively privileged women.

I watched the recording of Baroness Nicholson's webinar yesterday. It included a very good explanation of Queer Theory, which is founded on changing and controlling language. This document is a perfect example. It is difficult to analyse something that is completely incomprehensible, with a jumble of meaningless words.

The letter in response was great - the exasperation is clear and fair enough!

Oh that is a very poor document. LGBTQ aren't a homogeneous group so it gets confusing very quickly.

I did enjoy this gem

"To other perinatal workers we say - it is okay not to know. It is okay to seek further education and understanding of a community that you are not a part of. But how you do that matters. Paying LGBTQ+ people for their education, lived experience and time is a part of allyship. Demanding our labour, lived experience and past trauma’s surrounding our LGBTQ+ identities for free is problematic. It not only invalidates us, it retraumatises us. It takes our time and energy away from supporting other LGBTQ+ people and redirects it to your education. "
(my bold)

I can't help thinking that queer birthing is just the next iteration of the birthing woo woo that I got from the NCT when I was pregnant.
That also minimised the actual physical stuff we needed to know, and focused on feelings instead.

To other perinatal workers we say - it is okay not to know. It is okay to seek further education and understanding of a community that you are not a part of. But how you do that matters.Paying LGBTQ+ people for their education, lived experience and time is a part of allyship

That's extraordinary.
"Congratulations, its a girl!"
"How dare you assign a gender. You owe us £50"

@OldTurtleNewShell

To other perinatal workers we say - it is okay not to know. It is okay to seek further education and understanding of a community that you are not a part of. But how you do that matters.Paying LGBTQ+ people for their education, lived experience and time is a part of allyship

That's extraordinary.
"Congratulations, its a girl!"
"How dare you assign a gender. You owe us £50"

I am such a fan of With Women. It's a beacon of light in the darkness of our current situation.

A colleague of mine had this experience a couple of years ago. An LGBTQ+ birth worker was asked to come and speak to a group of students with a view to doing exactly as Queer Birth asks - enhancing and deepening the students' understanding of LGBTQ+ issues in maternity care. It's worth noting that this person has extensive social media advertising their availability for public-speaking alongside their day job.

The university don't pay anyone to come and speak to students - we'd absolutely love to be able to but we simply don't have a budget. We can reimburse basic travel expenses if required.

Anyway, she was sent an invoice by this person, before they had even agreed a date for their talk. They had an hourly rate, and it was not low. And when she replied, apologetically, to say that we couldn't pay that, she was told that was the price we needed to pay for asking them to be re-traumatised by speaking about their experiences.

She - and I - were gobsmacked. They have every right to ask to be paid for their work, of course, and it's frustrating that we can't offer remuneration for guest speakers.

But to be paid for their trauma? Because, apparently, life-long mental and physical trauma can be mitigated by an hourly rate and a free Pret baguette?

Fuck that manipulative shit.

That 1st letter is a joke and unless I'm mistaken is not only advocating surrogacy but biological males using a cocktail of drugs to produce some kind of artificial breast/chest milk/excretion and then using this substance to feed a new born and that midwifes should be helping with this. These people are clearly nuts and should remember 1st do no harm babies are not genipigs or validation units

Those this quote from the With Women response is pitch perfect:

Biological sex is the most inclusive category of all women across all nationalities, cultures and throughout human history.

Superb letter from With Women.

@endofagain

I watched the recording of Baroness Nicholson's webinar yesterday. It included a very good explanation of Queer Theory, which is founded on changing and controlling language. This document is a perfect example. It is difficult to analyse something that is completely incomprehensible, with a jumble of meaningless words.

And also coercive / radicalisation / cult themes.

@Cabinfever10

That 1st letter is a joke and unless I'm mistaken is not only advocating surrogacy but biological males using a cocktail of drugs to produce some kind of artificial breast/chest milk/excretion and then using this substance to feed a new born and that midwifes should be helping with this. These people are clearly nuts and should remember 1st do no harm babies are not genipigs or validation units

I can't work out if they mean lesbian couples where both are lactating (possible to re lactate naturally if you've breastfed before) so both breastfeeding or trans women.

In my experience in bf groups this seems to be very much an NB / queer lesbian all female phenomenon but could include trans women.

There's a huge amount of internalised misogyny among these women.

It really is women policing women.

So-called ‘additive language’ – a suggested idea in the Open Letter – doesn’t help in any way. ‘Women and birthing people’ in a document sounds like there are two different sorts of people who give birth. It’s confusing, divisive and inaccurate….and still denies the impact of biological sex. We also know that in real life the result of additive language is that the words ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ disappear – often for practical reasons of space and time, and other times to deliberately omit the whole notion of ‘women’ as a biological sex.

This is also an excellent point. I completely agree that additive language is confusing, misleading and above all the first step to losing the words mother or woman from healthcare materials. It is in actual fact easy to be inclusive by pointing out in every document that these words are used in their meaning of "female parent" and "female adult human" and therefore include all women, even those who identify otherwise.

Of course, don't do it like the Scottish Government, who clearly realised additive language would not aid clarity, and so used the word women only throughout their rather ambitious plan to improve women's healthcare in Scotland. Here's what they wrote as a disclaimer to be inclusive:

This document will use the term 'women'/'woman' throughout. It is important to highlight that it is not only those who identify as women who require access to women's health and reproductive services. For example, some transgender men, non-binary people, and intersex people or people with variations in sex characteristics may also experience menstrual cycles, pregnancy, endometriosis and the menopause. The actions included within this Plan make clear that all healthcare services should be respectful and responsive to individual needs.

Way to go to ruin a good thing. What they've said above is that men need women's healthcare too, because they needed to shoehorn in their conviction that women are those who identify as women. They've also excluded those of us who don't identify as women, but just know we are women on the basis of our sex.

And when she replied, apologetically, to say that we couldn't pay that, she was told that was the price we needed to pay for asking them to be re-traumatised by speaking about their experiences .

To be fair, I am seeing that request put forward for particular groups of lived experience experts (mostly people with lived experience of mental health disorders/treatment).

And, yes, people should be paid for work.

The issue of who is value for money and if they're open to challenge about the calibre of their work is different - particularly when that work is not open to challenge because it's subjective or it would be traumatising to be questioned on assertions presented as fact/evidence.

I can't work out if they mean lesbian couples where both are lactating (possible to re lactate naturally if you've breastfed before) so both breastfeeding or trans women.

There was a photograph doing the rounds on Twitter and other social media earlier this year where it was, indeed, the latter (drugs/non-nutritive suckling).

Paying LGBTQ+ people for their education, lived experience and time is a part of allyship. Demanding our labour, lived experience and past trauma’s surrounding our LGBTQ+ identities for free is problematic. It not only invalidates us, it retraumatises us. It takes our time and energy away from supporting other LGBTQ+ people and redirects it to your education.

Jesus Christ, the audacity. This is quite a common demand these days, it pops up with some regularity. I never before thought I should be paying my gay mates for their time. How can QP claim they don't want special treatment if they think they deserve a financial reward for bothering to explain what they need?

Surely it's a bit dim at the best of times to complain about the heteronormality of, erm, having a baby. Obviously anyone LGBT+ doing so deserves good care and to be treated with respect. There's surely things that need to be done to improve this. But the same is true for everyone else going through the experience too.

Sneering at the 'cishets' while demanding money to 'educate' them is really not a good look.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

I can't work out if they mean lesbian couples where both are lactating (possible to re lactate naturally if you've breastfed before) so both breastfeeding or trans women.

There was a photograph doing the rounds on Twitter and other social media earlier this year where it was, indeed, the latter (drugs/non-nutritive suckling).

Ugh 😣

@somethinginoffensive

Oh that is a very poor document. LGBTQ aren't a homogeneous group so it gets confusing very quickly.

I did enjoy this gem

"To other perinatal workers we say - it is okay not to know. It is okay to seek further education and understanding of a community that you are not a part of. But how you do that matters. Paying LGBTQ+ people for their education, lived experience and time is a part of allyship. Demanding our labour, lived experience and past trauma’s surrounding our LGBTQ+ identities for free is problematic. It not only invalidates us, it retraumatises us. It takes our time and energy away from supporting other LGBTQ+ people and redirects it to your education. "
(my bold)

You should pay me to whine at you tell you about my made up problems. You could not make this shit up.

@CharlieParley I can see the value of some additive language in some contexts. I agree "women and birthing people" doesn't work as it suggests they're distinct groups, but "women and other birthing people" would be fine by me - in the context of conversations between HCPs where I imagine it is important to be cognisant of pregnant [people] who don't perceive themselves as women and who will need patient-centred care, as with other aspects of cultural sensitivity eg not reacting with shock when the mother has a female partner (or no partner), knowing that Sikh women may want/need to continue wearing the 5 Ks throughout the birth, knowing about Mongolian blue spot birthmarks on babies of some ethnicities. Ideally HCPs have some awareness of these things so a pregnant/labouring woman* doesn't have to educate them whilst in a relatively vulnerable position.

On a similar note I think that SG quote almost does the job for me. I would reword the underlined bit to something like "some of those requiring access to women's health and reproductive services do not identify as women" - take away the nonsense implication that those of us who 'just are' women are 'identifying as', and achieve (IMO) actual inclusion without riddling the the full document with obfuscation and [people].

*aware of the irony of using the word woman here. I guess this is my political line in the sand - I can't really consider the politics of childbirth other than through a feminist lens!

On a similar note I think that SG quote almost does the job for me. I would reword the underlined bit to something like "some of those requiring access to women's health and reproductive services do not identify as women" - take away the nonsense implication that those of us who 'just are' women are 'identifying as', and achieve (IMO) actual inclusion without riddling the the full document with obfuscation and [people].

I would need some quality research to assure me that this doesn't harm the underlying health communication and alienate people from necessary health care.

Sneering at the 'cishets' while demanding money to 'educate' them is really not a good look.

Well, exactly.

Demanding payment for your time and your specific knowledge/expertise, absolutely fine.

Demanding payment because apparently providing the service you have chosen to provide 're-traumatises and invalidates' you, not fine. Emotionally manipulative, unprofessional bullshit, in fact.

Can someone decode 'non gestational lactating mothers' for me? Does that mean what I think it means? Because afaik only women who have given birth are able to naturally produce breast milk. So I am a bit

Yes, it means men 'breastfeeding' a baby for the needs of the man.

Sorry for the mental image.

@Fariha31

Yes, it means men 'breastfeeding' a baby for the needs of the man.

Sorry for the mental image.

Yes. I thought as much. What fucking lunacy.