"Child" series on Radio 4 - birthing people!

[Pocketfullofdogtreats]

This series is about maternity care. It's 15 mins at 13.45 each day this week. It's quite good. Today's was about trust, between doctors and midwives, and listening to the woman giving birth. Except one of the guests - a doctor, I think - kept on saying ' birthing people'. Specifically the topic was oxytocin production being higher when the patient trusts the health professionals and feels listened to. I found that my cortisol production increased each time she used this phrase. So.... I'd really like to ask her how many non-women giving birth she's dealt with. What the hell is going on?

There won't be any non women.

There may be a TINY, TINY number of women who preferred a fiction to be supported that they were something other than a woman.

Ffs BBC, fuck off with this bullshit or give up the licence fee.

Listening to the wishes of the woman giving birth!

I'd love to know exactly what the percentage is per year of female 'birthing people' passing through the NHS, versus the number of woman who accept they are women and would rather be referred to as a woman.

I get that 'birthing person' is preferable to the utterly nonsensical 'birthing man' or 'pregnant father' but why can't they reserve the term 'birthing person' purely for those women who identify as trans men, instead of applying it wholesale to all women, the vast majority of whom find it offensive to have the words 'woman' and 'mother' erased from obs/gynae and maternity services?

This was completely jarring to hear. I'd too like to know how many 'birthing people' other than women have actually given birth.
There are a couple of high profile transmen who are known to have had babies but other than that....tumbleweed.
I suspect it is very, very few indeed - absolutely tiny in percentage terms - but for that we are forced to change the terminology for everyone?
Wouldn't it be better to just use the ghastly "birthing people' solely for people who want to be referrred to as such, and in specific circumstances, and not risk erasing the majority?

Ffs!

I've just had a quick look online. There are a handful of trans people who've recounted their experiences, since about 2017. One is a Guardian journo, saying about how he'd been taking hormones since the age of 25 but decided to stop and try to get pg, which he - she - did at 32, and hated having periods again, voice change, etc.
What was also of concern to me was when I typed it in, so many questions popped up on Quota/Reddit about whether men can naturally get pg and have babies. People (teens?) are confused!

I just heard that in the car and shouted at the radio. It was a midwife, wasn’t it? Of all people. I had to turn the radio off anyway because I couldn’t hear behind that. What a stupid eejit

Quite why someone who apparently believes with every fibre of their being that they are meant to be a man should want to get pregnant, carry, give birth to and breast feed a child using their female genitalia and reproductive organs is competely beyond me.

Surely you would see yourself as an infertile man, sadly born incomplete and missing the necessary man parts, but with a few unwelcome and unnessary appendages such as a womb and fallopian tubes that are surplus to requirement?

Surely to deliberately use them for their very intended purpose is to admit and acknowledge that you are, in fact, all woman?

It seems to be that everyone's supposed to pretend a miracle has happened and a man has given birth. 🙄

to be fair she was saying 'women and birthing people' and its not the BBC's fault if people spout this nonsense

I was listening too, and getting very frustrated - but I don’t think it was just one of the guests, I think it could have been three, or definitely two and it ranged between women and birthing people, birthing people, women (obviously!) and “women and girls and other minoritised gendered people”.

I came away thinking that language has been well and truly captured in the NHS.

Quite so!

And wasn’t one of them a doctor?

Tbf to the BBC it sounds like there's a particular doctor interviewed saying it (going by the OP). Not the BBC themselves.

It's so awful. It's not just awful because it makes women invisible in an exclusively female arena but it's so weird to have the entire state of being pregnant, nine long and distinct months of carrying a baby be reduced to the act of pushing out the baby at the end. I mean, that's so odd.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a pre-show chat in which they discussed the language to use. The BBC has form for this stuff, after all.

Specifically the topic was oxytocin production being higher when the patient trusts the health professionals and feels listened to.

I wonder how much a labouring woman trusts health professionals who pretend that pregnancy and labour are not uniquely female experiences. I wonder how listened-to a labouring woman feels when the health professionals pretend she is not a woman and a mother.

@SiobhanSharpe Yes, I'm pretty sure it was a doctor as well as the midwife - and, I'd have to listen to it again, but towards the end, I think the presenter used birthing people. Given the rest of the content of this series, I was surprised.

It wasn't the doctor, I think - they had three on, all women - doctor, midwife and doula. As far as I remember it, the midwife (surely she should call herself a midperson?) was the most kowtowing in her language, the doula almost hesitated after saying 'women' and added hastily 'and people of minoritised genders' I think it was (a new one on me!) and I think the doctor said ... women.

It certainly boiled my piss! I actually turned the radio off. Shame, I've enjoyed what I've heard of this series.

This, in contrast to the eminently sensible Prof Sophie Scott who was on 'All in the Mind' with Claudia Hammond later on on R4 and was discussing an experiment run ON academic psychologists where they got male and female academics to name the 10 academics in their field who first came to mind. Men name almost all men: women tend to name about 50/50 female/male. As she pointed out, this has massive implications for scholarship, recognition, recruitment and all sorts of other things. And Prof Scott consistently said men, women, male, female the entire time.

The problem with birthing people is it actually includes the baby. As babies play an active part in birth. They move and wiggle during birth to assist thier passage out of their mother.

Birthing people includes at least 2 people at every birth.

I think where the NHS is concerned anything maternity, obs and gynae related should always and only EVER refer to women. It's a simple fact that trans men will often need to avail themselves of those medical/health services purely because they are biologically women, whatever they might like to identify as. I think the NHS is fiddling while Rome burns by spending money, time and energy pandering to a minority ideology. The ONLY thing they should care about is women's reproductive health and and best practice in maternity care. That's all.

Nobody who isn't biologically a woman will be needing any of those services anyway, so within that setting they should just accept the terms woman and mother and live with it. They are free to identify as whatever they like outside of a women's health setting, but within it there should be clear boundaries. Medicine should only ever deal in facts and reality.

Women's reproductive health and maternity services deals with physical health, not mental health. They shouldn't need to concern themselves with issues of gender dysphoria or indeed with the increasing number of people who are not gender dysphoric in the truly clinical sense but merely bandwagon jumping onto the zeitgeist of trans and non-binary ideology.

Women's reproductive health and maternity services deals with physical health, not mental health.

Disagree. Women's mental health is relevant to their overall well-being, and therefore to outcomes for them and their babies.

Issues of belief can be highly relevant - eg certain conditions are more likely among Jewish women, so a patient's Jewish faith may inform the ante natal tests she needs.

But the default should be entirely woman-centred, with relevant differences highlighted and addressed as needed.

It’s the old question. Why is it unacceptable to offend transmen, but fine and dandy to offend all the women who are ok with being women?

Yes I take your point, but my point is that if you are suffering from gender dysphoria or a serious MH condition the consultants/specialists who will probably diagnose you and treat you do not concern themselves much or at all with women's reproductive health. It's a different discipline. There may be a degree of overlap sometimes, but it general they are separate.

Therefore for obs/gynae/pre and post natal services the focus should be firmly on the physical body, not the mind, unless a woman's state of mind is directly related to her pregnancy or her menopause.

In general, that means dealing in biological fact, not feelings. Ovaries and wombs don't have emotions or feelings or an 'identity.' Whether pregnant or menstruating trans identified people like the words woman or mother being applied to them or not, is beside the point. They are only pregnant or menstruating because they are a woman or an expectant mother.

WHO CARES. Why not focus your energy on an actual issue. I'm a pregnant person. I could not give two hoots about anything beyond getting the best possible care.