Birthing People - inclusive or offensive?

Anyone who gives birth can only have one gender and that is female as a male has not got the necessary equipment for having a child. The legislation would therefore have to be
female but now male and all that would get so complicated.

By the way the term "Birthing" is only used as birthing partner
in the U.K

No, trisher no one is stopping people from being called Mother, but if an official government document refers to the rights of the “birthing person’ then that will exclude adopters and those who have surrogate children.

That opens a legal minefield too. So “birthing person “ just won’t do.

What a strange world we live in….!

Peasblossom it's a health budget document which will I suppose be referring to health issues associated with giving birth. I agree that adoptive and surrogate parents may need to be included in certain areas, but I don't think giving birth is one of them.

Nothing can erase your physical sex. No matter how much surgery, no matter how many hormones, if your dead body is found skeletal and decayed on a hillside. The pathologist will be able to work out what your sex is regardless of what gender you did or did not live.

You need to be born which female sexual organs to conceive and give birth.

As for chest feeding, men have breasts and presumably with the right hormones could breast feed, where else on the chest could a baby access nutrients? I cannot see any problem with breast feeding.

I do not think the needs and wants of small groups in society should be ignored because they are a minority, but when a minority in society demand major society wide changes that could majorly disadvantage half the population that are not the same as them, there I find myself digging my toes in and saying 'no'

M0nica so who will be "majorly disadvantaged" by the term birthing person? I can't see it harms anyone, it's simply more inlusive.

Inclusive of what, being a woman?

trisher

M0nica so who will be "majorly disadvantaged" by the term birthing person? I can't see it harms anyone, it's simply more inlusive.

Inclusive of adoptive mothers?
No, it is not.

There are probably far more mothers who have adopted children than there are those who want to be called a birthing person.

Callistemon of course there are and if this was a document about care of parents or children I would expect them to be included but it's a health budget and presumably about care at birth so the section about birthing would refer to the birth person and not the adoptive parent. The adoption argument is just not applicable.
M0nica inclusive of those who choose not to be called mother.

Jennifer Eccles
I'm not. Can't, for once, blame Trump.

Callistemon precisely.

Trisher. The fact that my friend's children did not call her 'mummy' doesn't mean she isn't a mother.

What people call themselves is entirely up to them. But a human being is a human being whether they want to be called that or not.

Both my grandchildren are adopted. My daughter is definitely their mother and by the way it is sex not gender. Gender is a social construct.

So your friend's children have the right to call her what she wished M0nica but transmen don't have the same privilege?

They can call themselves anything they like, momenclature is neither here nor there.

Gossamerbeynon1945

Both my grandchildren are adopted. My daughter is definitely their mother and by the way it is sex not gender. Gender is a social construct.

So the person who gave birth to them is their birth person and not their mother ?

Don't think so. What is so offensive about the word Mother?

Some transmen choose not to be called that.

I really like you but you have some very odd ideas about your own sex.

I can quite understand the whole born in the wrong body thing, if I had continued as I was preteens I would probably have loved to be male. What I don't really understand is why someone would go to a lot of trouble to be accepted as a man and live as a man and then decide to have a baby. Surely you would be trying to forget that your ovaries and uterus had ever existed.

trisher

M0nica so who will be "majorly disadvantaged" by the term birthing person? I can't see it harms anyone, it's simply more inlusive.

Not it’s not. It’s erasing a whole group of people who are proud to call themselves mothers. Why should the vast majority of women be forced to bow down to a tiny minority of women who want to call themselves something else? I don’t care what they call themselves, tbh, but they have no right to force a change onto me.

As for the health aspect of this - some adoptive mothers want to breastfeed their children and need appropriate care to do so. Why should they be excluded from being able to call themselves mothers simply because they are not birthing people?

The word mother has many cultural reverberations, not just in the English language. Various phrases spring to mind: mother country; mother church; mother wit; mother Earth; mother nature; mother of God; mother of parliaments; mother's apron strings and even mother's ruin. It is not going to be obliterated by dictate.

The majority of people take no notice of these 'angels on the head of a pin' arguments by small groups of the urban elite.

Most people will continue to 'mother' and 'father' and 'breast feed' and leave these little groups to squabble away.

It doesn't matter who cares/doesn't care, language is being changed by governments and legislation put in place whether we object or not.

Does Biden refer to sperm donors? Whether present in a child's life or not, that would be an accurate description of the male input. No of course not, men's opinions count, and their handmaidens reinforce this at every opportunity.