I had my booking appointment this week

[SundaeClub]

At the end I looked over at the midwife's computer screen.

In the section for my personal details, there were boxes for "Legal sex" and "Sex assigned at birth". Fine. Seems like comprehensive data collection.

Except that my "sex assigned at birth" was left blank. As this was a maternity appointment, the answer to this question is self-evident. No reason for it to be left blank.

And my "legal sex" was filled in as female. She didn't ask me my legal sex, and had no way of knowing if I had a GRC.

My midwife was very nice. She also spoke English as a second language. So I guess this goes in the new ONS bucket of opaque questions leading to poor data collection from the large section of the population that does not speak genderwang.

Actually, turning facts & biology upside down is a significant drain on resources. The NHS's maternity care should be doing nothing else other than focussing on putting right their appalling standards. Yes, the specialist mental health midwives will no doubt have on their books the tiny proportion of women who believe that they're men while being pregnant. But apart from that, none of the language mangling, pretending men can be pregnant, removing the language of women from maternity care should be happening. Not a bloody sentence.

Focus on providing safe maternity care for women and babies first. Once that has happened, then the energy / resource sucking D & I departments might have a role. But until then, only one focus - on women and babies.

breaking down beauty standards

I've only just seen this and I really really want to comment, however board guidelines which I think are still in play prevent me.
Betcha can guess what I'm thinking tho.

I've seen comments in the past from TW complaining about women not wearing makeup and dressing up. Can't remember their reasoning.

But remembering 800 plus pronouns is time consuming for the practitioners.
Why do you think pronouns are more important than a baby?

Why do you think HCPs should spend any time at all(most especially in maternity) remembering these pronouns of which there are many, more than genders in fact, when it's only women who have babies?

Do you know any of the pronouns other than she/he and they? Do you know any neo pronouns?

From a demi boi aromantic <<< please use these every time you mention me from now on until I say different, except Thursday afternoons between 1pm and 4pm when I am your majesty and Monday morning when I am kitty until midday.

Okay but to deny gender just doesn’t make sense to me.

What do you mean by 'deny gender'? If you're talking about getting rid of gender stereotypes, why do you think this is a bad thing? Do you think it's better to reinforce these stereotypes and suggest to impressionable children and young people that the only alternative to complying with these stereotypes is to alter their bodies to 'match' their personality?

We have expectations, norms, gendered pronouns because we have constructed ideas of gender.

You're mixing up two different things here.

Gendered expectations and norms are imposed on us according to our sex. We don't get to choose. Feminists want to break these down and avoid having these stereotypes imposed on us.

Gendered pronouns in English only apply to people and animals, and the appropriate pronoun based on sex (masculine for male, feminine for female) is used. This is nothing to do with gender stereotypes. Gender here is a linguistic term.

As you say you have a sec and then your personality - gender and gender expression is a part of this. It is a spectrum more than a binary and many trans people may wish to express their femininity or masculinity in ways that align to gender expectations in their culture

Anyone, whether they identify as 'trans' or not, can express themselves however they want. By calling this 'gender expression' you're suggesting that these imposed stereotypes are relevant and important rather than restrictive and unnecessary limitations which feminists fight against.

Okay but to deny gender just doesn’t make sense to me.

I think this was a reply to me. I don't deny gender (I assume you mean gender identity), I just think it doesn't affect anyone's sex.

You seem to think gender identity is, broadly speaking, what we describe as masculinity and femininity. I agree, I think this is what people generally mean by "gender identity".

I believe you can be feminine without being female, and female without being feminine. One of these in no way requires the other, to be an aspect of a person.

Again, because you don't seem to have understood, it is the trans ideology that insists feminine = female and vice versa. They constantly conflate the two.

I believe they can be separated.

I also believe it's regressive, sexist and harmful to imply anyone masculine can't "really" be female, or you can't be a feminine male. This is what gender- critical people fight against.

<taps teeth with pencil>

Starting what time on Monday? I'm assuming that's BST, but will change to GMT.

I'll maybe add a frisson of danger here and use mountain standard time?

That'll teach me not to make assumptions