Open letter to Lizzie Streeter, NHS England National LGBT Programme Manager, requesting £100K Maternity Gender Inclusion Programme is paused.

[TiddlesTheTiger]

This is an open letter to Lizzie Streeter, NHS England National LGBT Programme Manager, requesting that the Maternity Gender Inclusion Programme is paused for the reasons outlined.

You can read the letter here and can add your signature, if you would like to.

with-woman.org/2023/01/04/open-letter-pause-midwifery-training-based-on-flawed-research/

Thanks for sharing. Signed as very specific to my job.

Non binary female people (and male) want no acknowledgment that pregnancy or birth is a female sexed health or body issue.

Thanks for sharing - read the letter, agreed and signed

Off topic, but please can I just say it's nice to "bump into" you here, ticktok.

You gave me some brilliant support with BFing on here when my DS was a baby, and I've not forgotten it, thank you

(I don't look at the feeding boards now as that was some time ago - my "baby" DS is about 6" taller than me now!)

And... I wrote your name wrong! Sorry tiktok

@FfaCoffi thank you! 😂. I was on that board for a long time as you know 😀. Hope you have signed the open letter. I can’t be doing with midwives being trained to call it ‘chestfeeding’ - mothers who want to call it that for whatever reason, of course they can. But just as we wouldn’t expect a midwife to use made up terms for anything else, but instead use the correct word, I reckon most of us are happy to stick with ‘breastfeeding’ and we don’t want midwives trained to say anything else. I don’t like ‘breast/chestfeeding either.

Yes, signed and shared to everyone I could think of!

I wonder if that report gives any consideration at all to women who IDd as trans as young women and had some medical interventions but have now detransitioned - or does it just pretend they don't exist?

Let me hazard a guess...

Signed. Honestly, I'm so irritated by the suggestion that we should all change our language to accommodate what's actually a very, very small group of people. That massive pot of money could be so well spent elsewhere, in a way that benefits EVERYONE

Of course many women with a trans history will now be infertile, but not all of them.

From that excellent letter, the ITEMS data is just terrible! Do they think so little of trans ppl that they just think "that'll do"?

Everyone deserves solid evidence-based approaches.

It's mind boggling, isn't it!

FWIW, I think some people are so caught up with the almost religious-fervour of gender identity ideology, and so many people they know and trust are saying the same things, then it must be true even if how they got the data isn't rigorous.

Their starting point is they believe that getting everyone to use de-sexed language is a GOOD THING, for example. Then, a report from people they like as they are on the'right side' of what they see as a good and righteous fight comes out, that appears to confirm this.

Their instincts are to do what they can to spread this message, not to interrogate the methodology as the results are in line with what they believe.

This is confirmation bias in action, of course, and why peer review matters, and why it matters that HCPs in the NHS can be confident their practice is based on a solid evidence base, not lobby group propaganda.

It's depressing that we're having to remind the NHS about this, AGAIN.

An excellent letter. I’ve added my signature.

Blimey, so two women, who call themselves men, have given birth in the UK, in the last 7 (?) years. During that time, about five million other babies have been delivered by women, who know that they are women.

The number barely qualifies as a percentage.

And they want to piss away £100,000 on propaganda.

Those 2 women, who call themselves men, and any others in the future do deserve to have good care from staff who understand their situation.
I don't think this is a sensible way to go about it, tho.

Anyone who’s pregnant, anyone giving birth, should be treated with respect & care….if someone tells their midwife ‘I’m trans’ or ‘NB’ or ‘gender fluid’ or whatever, and requests that non-sexed pronouns are used when appropriate, then sensitive HCPs will surely comply.

But this sort of adapting to individual preferences & needs should happen anyway, without special training in ‘gender neutral’ care, or indeed demanding that all HCPs go beyond good care and start behaving as if an ideology that privileges ‘gender identity’ over sex should apply to everyone.

Communications like shared notes, letters, posters, leaflets don’t have to be written in ways which avoid acknowledging the fact that everyone who gives birth is female and a mother, no matter how she identifies.

This was exactly my thought.

How can you possibly think you're going to get value for money and a result you want when you award a contract that starts immediately - no time to co design or tailor the approach at all?

And what kind of organisations can apply to win a tender for a large scale project to be rolled out immediately, with no time needed to recruit or train or plan or or prep? What organisation is big enough, experienced enough, established enough but also sitting around with nothing to do until this call comes in?! It's got a whiff of PPE contract scandal all over it to my mind.

Signed. Total waste of money. I'm sure staff can manage to call the tiny number who care by any pronoun they ask for.

I really don’t understand how the NHS can support desexed language, particularly in terms of breastfeeding. Breastfeeding rates are shockingly low in England and there’s obviously a low of push to increase numbers (without actually investing properly into adequate support). Do they really thing calling it chestfeeding, a dehumanising word, is going to anything to increase BF rates? How could their priorities be so skewed so such a small number of females with identity issues over hundreds of thousands of women.

Furthermore, what is ‘desexed’ language for non-binary supposed to even mean? Aren’t non-binary identities unique so each will have their own preference of language - which almost suggests a simple person-first approach to all individual women would work better than generalising ‘desexed’ language across the board offending, confusing and upsetting millions of women.

This is an excellent post. Agree completely!

looks like Lizzie Streeter tweeting in a public/official capacity is using a blocklist

what is there to hide?

goes off to name change (again)

Here's the blocklist Streeter uses. Glinner has quite a bit to say about its creator, James Billingham.

www.theblockbot.com/show-blocks/XpbppP2pPG8FFhbeApYs5hxPegJbrz37qRzZoW2O

What’s the point of using a block list? Its the equivalent of sticking hyour fingers in your ears and going ‘La la la la’. Playground idiocy

Looks like good news - article in paper today saying that it’s been paused while they review the evidence 👏

Can someone working in a publicly funded job just use a block list like this? I find that outrageous. My small twitter presence is blocked by Lizzie Streeter. I pay for the NHS to exist. I'm a woman of childbearing age. I have never interacted with Lizzie Streeter, why should she block me from doing so?