I wasn’t a Birthing Person and I didn’t Chest Feed

Anyone remember that line spoken by Thora Heard in Allan Bennet's Talking Heads?
"Those round things with pink ends that men like"

Whatever .
Newborn babies of all animal species need to feed from the naturally produced and enriched food of their mothers for the first few weeks of thir lives.
Full Stop.

Shall we call the Sun the Moon , shall we change wind to rain,
Shall we call a bus a car, what is the point? I just don’t get it.
Can someone explain to me why breastfeeding needs to be changed to chestfeeding , will we still call the liquid that comes from the chest , breast Milk or should it be renamed, substance coming from hanging things on a body that is at this moment time unidentifiaed.

trisher - I haven't read every word of this very interesting thread so not sure who you mean by rich white men who are profiting from the situation.
Do you mean owners of pharmaceutical companies?

Sparkling

Valerie, the thought of anyone cultivating a baby outside the womb is horrific. Babies pick up on sounds, they get agitated if the mother is, messing with nature has a massive cost as Corona has shown us. We will live with this from now on after Covid 19 there's 20,,21 etc.

Babieshave been "cultivated" outside the womb for some time. The first ones were called "test tube babies" and it is now a widely accepted and very much welcomed way some women can have children.
But the language adaptations are to do with transmen who might want to have a child anyway. No medical intervention on such a scale is necessary.
Nothing is being altered. simply added to. Some time ago medical staff never told a patient anything about the treatment they were having. We moved on from that, ideas, concepts, language all change. it's called progress.

Valerie, the thought of anyone cultivating a baby outside the womb is horrific. Babies pick up on sounds, they get agitated if the mother is, messing with nature has a massive cost as Corona has shown us. We will live with this from now on after Covid 19 there's 20,,21 etc.

Without very strong drugs to alter what you are it would not be possible, what effect will it have on a child. The same with the on line donor sperm. How would you feel not knowing who fathered you? It should be about the baby. We can't always have what we want just as we can't choose what life throws at you.
Sorry Trisher, I don't understand you, are we to alter everything for every minority group.we should just treat everyone with dignity and not change every rule. It goes both ways.

What a load of cobblers. Remember.. a rose is a rose by any other name. All the fads and pc brigade can’t alter that! Maybe in time babies will be cultivated outside the womb. It’s possible but not something I would want to see. In meantime they can say what they want. I ‘breast’ fed my babies, I am female, I embrace it. I love being female. My daughters are same. God help the grandchildren.

Compared to the number of women in the country the number of trans people is very very small so although they may be a very vocal group there effect on stats will be negligible.

It would be good if the world was not divided by gender but both halves worked together to make this a better place instead of fighting each other.

Sorry for typo's.

Iam 64 Absolutely , but I don't think we can maintain what's we have or gain ground by throwing another group under the bus. As trisher says, identify the enemy. Trans people are not the enemy.

I don't think we should fall for the narrative that because they are a minority group their needs and wants don't really count, and that they should simply slot into existing systems - that's how everything women have achieved over time starts to really deteriorate. Because we then give the message that outliers have no rights, the minute we make any other group 'less than' we are giving trisher's rich white men an excuse to make us less than too.

We should uphold the rights and needs of all minority groups, and bring them under the umbrella of what we, as women, know can be achieved by solidarity and persistence. By constantly 'othering' we are just feeding the wrong beast.

But it was not transpeople who stopped women getting their rights, they are simply another victim of the system. The system will still be run by rich white men who are watching this whole argument with amusement because they know that whilst minorities are fighting amongst themselves they can further their own interests, and have more money and power. First rule of battle identify your enemy.

NellG - history teaches us that women have had to fight every inch of the way to establish women’s services. That’s why women on this thread are concerned.

MBHPI Thing is... the census is about collecting accurate data about the population that can be used to project need etc. If less women show up on the data, so be it.

Surely if more people tick said box, then the census will collect accurate data about a growing sector whose needs should also be addressed.

As long as the information gathered reflect the needs of the nation accurately there can be no problem. If more natal women identify as a different gender, then services need to adapt alongside, and vice versa for natal men.

It's right, proper and just that services are adapted to meet the needs of a changing society and not ignored in favour of allaying the fears of another group.

Or is there some concrete evidence that there is a sinister plan to kill off women's services?

simtib - there is, Prolactin.

With the right tablets men can grow breasts. I don't think there are any tablets that make those breasts produce milk but when there is then men can feed babys but it is still breast feeding not cheast feeding.

That should be public!! No pubic services available (as far as I know)

Actually I already care about all victims whatever their sex or gender. And yes services in all areas will be cut, nothing to do with the census but with electing a government which doesn't care about pubic services and is planning to sell off the most lucrative services to private providers anyway. So what will be left is a struggling public service which only the poor will use.

Found this on Forwomenscotland
Someone mentioned census, it is from last year and still relevant.

Count Women So Women Count
Posted on 8th March 2020
When will you start caring about data? About the importance of sex-disaggregated data? When will you start caring about the way in which we are already replacing data on sex with data on gender identity? When will you realise that it matters? That counting women matters or else they quite literally don’t count.

Maybe you will start caring when the newspapers report that there is an apparent explosion in ‘female’ sexual offending rates. Because it won’t take many transwomen being convicted of sexual offences to double or triple the offending rate.

Maybe you will start caring when the government or criminal justice agencies reallocate precious resources away from sexual offending programmes for men to fund programmes for all these new ‘female’ sexual offenders.

Maybe you will start caring when a man who commits a sexual offence against a woman you care about and love slips through the net because the sexual offending programme for men has been cut back…to tackle the growing phenomenon of ‘female’ sexual offending.

Maybe you will start caring when your employer announces proudly that their ‘gender pay gap’ is closing, even though – in your heavily male-dominated tech company – you know that’s only because two transwomen are now regarded as female for the purposes of the company’s annual gender pay gap report.

Maybe you’ll start caring because your employer tells you there isn’t really a problem with female employees being underpaid for work of the same value because the stats now say something different.

Maybe you’ll start caring when the prevalence rates for a disease that disproportionately affects young women starts to decline because the census and health authorities have enabled people to answer the sex question based on their gender identity not their sex.

Maybe you’ll start caring when a young woman you know and love struggles to secure the health care she needs because the local NHS authority has cut funding for the screening programme for that disease based on the declining prevalence rate.

When will you start caring about the loss of this data, which is already happening?

You’ve read Caroline Criado-Perez’s book, right?

WAKE UP! #countwomensowomencount

Love, a Data Nerd

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It's just unbelievable.

The usual sleight of hand trisher

NellG I think it's so sad that people can post about the massive amounts of money being made by white men on this thread and not realise who the real enemy is. The richest are getting richer and instead of supporting the poorest and in particular poor children (which was one of the suffragettes aims) they are instead focusing on a small number of people who are themselves suffering. It's the cleverest bit of marketing in history and some women are falling for it. Meantime the patriachy strengthens its hold on finance and increases its power.

FarNorth Given it would be created by the same hormones as breast milk in natal females I doubt there would be any harmful effect. The biggest issue would be in creating enough. But natal females have that issue too sometimes. If I come across any research other than that linked to up thread, I will be happy to let you know. Although as we are happy enough to feed our babies modified cows milk with both preservatives and additives as an alternative to breast milk It would be difficult to rationalise the greater concern.

My main point in all of this is the divisiveness and 'othering' - as if this very small group of people are out to rob women of something (in the case of the OP a small number of trans men, as trisher kindly keeps trying to remind people). My point about the breast milk and hormones is that men and women aren't as biologically different as we assume, just tweaking a few hormones can change a great deal about how our bodies present. As for the additions to the language that will be adopted by some healthcare professionals - it is a massive, massive stretch of unbridled umbrage to even think that it will in any way undermine women and their lived experience.

Feel free to correct me in a few years time when natal women are being hunted down and eliminated by marauding gangs of trans people. You know, when we are all being kept in pens and robbed of our vocabulary before they finally strip us of our womanhood in their sinister bid for world domination...

Bt PECS if a member of staff who was responsible for your care at a time when you were extremly vulnerable kept using a term you really objected to wouldn't you be upset and offended? If so why would you stop someone who didn't want to be called "mother" but preferred the term "birthing person" from being treated equally?
This isn't about changing the language used for most people but of expanding vocabulary to encompass everyone.