Did anyone see the ITV News piece about of water bills on customers?

[inkjet]

https://twitter.com/PaulEmbery/status/1674332639921045505

Yes this is the feminism board. Paul Embery clipped it but I wonder if anyone saw it in full? He says the piece was about the impact of soaring water bills on an everyday mother. The voiceover calls the person a customer but the customer calls themself a mum. On the Twitter thread someone points out that the customer works for the TUC and is an economist who has been published in the Guardian. I think it’s fair to say the customer is neither a mother nor an ‘everyday’ one.

It's funny how language policing is a one way street isn't it?

Mika Minio-Paluello has complained about TfL using the term 'ladies and gentlemen' on the grounds it's exclusionary to people like him.

And yet women aren't allowed to object to men coopting women's word.

Mika says 'if you're a mum like me'. No one is a mum like him because he is male. Only women can be mums. He can call himself the grand empress poobah, ruler of the known universe at home for all I can.

But on national television, no thanks.

I've watched it, he's washing up a plate? The thing that looks a bit like a breast pump is just sitting there.

Sorry but this is ridiculous. You have no idea about this person's household, who picks up the emotional load or who does the bulk of household chores. It is ridiculous to imply that a trans woman inherently cannot fathom the impact of a cost of living issue on running a home in the way that a cisgender woman could.

How families refer to themselves is entirely up to them. If this woman's child calls her mum, then she is most certainly free to call herself a mum. It has absolutely no bearing on anyone else.

It really highlights that anyone claiming this whole ideology is all about 'protecting women' is nonsense. Insisting that a trans woman isn't even allowed to refer to herself as a mum, or should be blackballed from commenting on an issue affecting her, isn't protecting women - it's rank transphobia and nothing more.

Just posting this from the AIBU thread:

Mother is a term defined in law. It has specific legal meaning which gives us rights.

"the status given to the person who undergoes the physical and biological process of being pregnant, carrying and giving birth to a child."

It is not a man's to use nor for any woman to blithely give it away to because she doesn't understand its importance.

@Flickersy - I apologise. The breast pump had already been washed. But its appearance in shot was no coincidence

Presumably those fall within the category of "using water" (i.e. relevant to the story) and "able to broadcast on TV" (i.e not someone in the bath) though.

I don't think this is a commentary on "women's work".

Yes. This all day.

Right, so posters on here now think the only definition of mother is "the status given to the person who undergoes the physical and biological process of being pregnant, carrying and giving birth to a child"?

Is it some sort of psychological tactic, distracting viewers from the message they’re supposedly being given? Using a male person as a ‘mum’ is obviously going to take viewers’ attention. But why would the filmmakers do this? It’s surely the opposite of what they’re aiming for?

Baffled.

Or maybe the news story is a flimsy cover for a bit of propaganda. Actually, that would make sense. A shame that news reporters would rather push ideologies than tackle serious issues. But that’s where we are.

Unbaffled now!

I do think that Mika should be on TV a lot more talking about being a mother.

So adoptive mothers aren't allowed to use the word mother, by that logic.

Precisely. Utterly nonsense.

Not only are adoptive mothers mothers in the legal sense of the word, we also don't rigidly insist that words have to be used only in line with their legal definitions. That would be absurd.

It would mean that a foster carer who calls herself a mum would be hauled over the coals. Or a gran who is raising her young grandkids who might sometimes describe herself as a mum to reflect that she's actually raising them, not just a typical granny.

Let's face it, no one here thinks those people's use of words should be policed.

This is solely about having a go at a trans person.

It's solely about a male saying he's a mother. It's insulting.

I have absolutely no qualms about a transman saying they're a mother. That is the accurate term.

Adoptive families are not here to be used as gotchas by others. Shame on you Flickersy & TeaKlaxon for using such a vulnerable group of children and their families in a desperate attempt to justify cultural appropriation.

Or (thinking about it) step mums, foster mums, the non-child bearing partner in a lesbian couple...

@Flickersy I'm confused why you're drawing parallels. Adoptive mothers are women who have adopted their children. They're not men.

Mika isn't an adoptive mother because Mika is male.

If you're going to try and define mother then you'd better be able to come up with one which doesn't exclude adoptive mothers.

"Mother" isn't a culture either.

So shame on you, frankly, for excluding lots of legitimate mothers and also for forced teaming racial/cultural appropriation to try to back up your argument.

Males can't be mothers.

Only women can be mothers.

Because your definition of (paraphrasing) "the one who carries and gives birth" excludes an awful lot of mothers.

I for one think that mothers are women. Only women are mothers. Adult human females, or sometimes very young human females that have been through puberty.

Transwomen are male men, therefore not mothers.

It is astonishingly simple.

Women that are Adoptive mothers, foster mothers, co-mothers (the term in lesbian Relationships in my country), birth mothers (surrogate mothers and biological mothers are all mothers.
Men are fathers or dads. And/or parents.

It never ends.
Black women are women so men are women.
Adoptive mothers are mothers so men are mothers.

Fuck off.
Honestly.

Mum / Mother = Female Parent / Parent who is a Woman

Woman = Adult Human Female
In short, not a man.

Not sure why people are dragging adoptive mums into this. Obviously still female, therefore mothers.

Haven't adoptive mothers, including lesbians in same sex relationships, gone through a rigourous legal process to become an adoptive mother? Not just slapped on a wig and some lippy. Ditto foster mothers.

The only thing that's been adopted in that piece is a head tilt!

I have to agree with you on this one. Step-mother, foster mother and adoptive mother are all valid forms of mother.

Yes, Jane. Though the common factor is them actually being women, as in human females.

Men are not mothers or mums.