“We want gas and air to be available for women and….”

[AnyFucker]

You guessed it… “birthing people”

Morning telly, right there 🤢

Same.

yes, that's the point I was trying to make.

Was it? You seemed to be advocating for "Women and ..." to ensure all women were included.
My point is that the word women alone is quite sufficient.

'advocating' is dramatic. But I see nothing wrong with it, as it includes the word 'women' also. People who give birth are women, and if someone would rather be known as that, so be it. Doesn't mean that fact and science are any less real.

No-one is a birthing person unless they are a woman, so birthing people is redundant and a tautology - unless women are not people.

Not all women give birth but ONLY women give birth. It is dehumanising and erasing of women to say 'people who give birth', people in general do not give birth, women do, and we need to say so. Slippery slope as someone has already said.

I think this is the point being made, though, Arabella. Unless we use sex based words and everyone knows and accepts that sex is binary and biological and immutable we are up the proverbial creek, as you point out.

Watched BBC today talking about the cost of childcare. Someone said 'families have to give up work' - which made no sense whatsoever. Even 'parents' would have made more sense.

Same here!

Problem is that there is a tiny but vocal minority of women who will say that yes they are female but no they don’t consider themselves to be a woman and are NB or trans - given the broad umbrella definition of trans now, it’s unclear what that even means. It mostly comes across as very narcissistic, the demands that the rest of the world affirms those individuals self-perception which is objectively untrue.

It’s the demands on the rest of society that really bothers me, especially when our children are brought into it (“nb” child at Cubs and having to talk about sex v gender to my then 8 year old!).

This is why the insanity of 'look, I'm a man having a baby, a miracle has happened, now men give birth too'.

YY. I'm not willing to pander to this.

There must be a tick list of buzzwords for them to use !

Indeed! Very interesting listening to Mary Harrington on the Modern Wisdom podcast, one of the things she touched on was the research that is being done into womb transplants, alongside questions around where wombs would come from, and the commodification of human bodies, especially women’s bodies. Depressing listening 😟although important to bee we aware of I guess.

100% agree.

I spent many years working alongside maternity teams supporting and representing mothers.

I remember the fight we had to have women and mothers recognised as an acceptable term to use when the ob-gyn teams were dead set on referring to everyone as "patients". It took so long to have this change recognised.

Problem is that there is a tiny but vocal minority of women who will say that yes they are female but no they don’t consider themselves to be a woman and are NB or trans - given the broad umbrella definition of trans now, it’s unclear what that even means. It mostly comes across as very narcissistic, the demands that the rest of the world affirms those individuals self-perception which is objectively untrue.

I don't care what that tiny vocal minority say to be honest, not considering themselves as a woman and then becoming pregnant and giving birth means that whatever they think they are a woman because only women can become pregnant and give birth. Now if it is too triggering or traumatising to be called a woman at that point maybe they should re-think doing something that ONLY WOMEN can do.

It is totally narcissistic.

I'm with AnyFucker too. Only women give birth. Fuck these compromises they just give leverage for more and more shit.

To be honest I‘ll accept the and - but only because I give zero craps if someone wants to refer to themselves as a leaf or a teapot so long as they don’t expect me to refer to myself as something I’m not

Well, my husband did give up work when I had a baby so not got an issue with parents instead of mothers

Me too.

Any further thoughts on how we teach children/young people about reproduction and safe sex, aseriesofstillimages?

Am with anyfucker

don’t need anything else just the word women

Sorry, yesterday got away from me, and although I did give this some further thought last night as I was trying to get to sleep, I didn’t have sufficient time or energy to type out anything coherent.

I think I dealt with how we teach children about reproduction, the outstanding question was about the terms you use to talk about sex and gender more generally to children.

I will try to come back with further thoughts on this as soon as I can.

Thanks, series. I'm interested to hear your thoughts. No rush.

@anyonewho posts under the username aseriesofstillimages
I would be particularly interested to hear what relevance you think gender has to reproduction.

Just started reading this thread but I’d rephrase that as …

It’s not open to all people, only those who are giving birth. All of whom are in fact, women.

^^