Recently I came across an invitation to “think your thoughts through to the end” and I thought this an apt phrase when people state that supporting the transgender lobby with the phrase “be kind” is the right thing to do. At one point, I probably would have agreed with them; who wants to be thought of as unkind or even mean-spirited to others?
I mean, what’s wrong with “adding more ink” so that marginalised groups feel included? Isn’t this good? Isn’t increasing diversity always better? Shouldn’t everyone be striving for equality? Why would anyone have a problem with gender neutral or gender free language?
Well, I see a massive problem with this approach, particularly around anything to do with birth and breastfeeding.
First, a quick reminder about the effects of queer theory and gender ideology on reality.
“Queering” everything erases the truth
Queer theory is a Western philosophical concept that escaped out of academia around the year 2000 and has increasingly captured wider society in every aspect of government, business and society at large. Broadly speaking, the principles of queer theory are embodied in a belief that there is no such thing as objective truth and that everything is subject to oppressive language. This belief system posits that society cannot be changed for the better as is; that it needs to be destroyed (or “queered”) and out of this chaos and destruction a new world order will emerge that will lead to a golden age of equality and equity for everyone.
According to those who believe this, there is no such thing as biological sex because sex, as well as everything else, is a social construction. There are no women; there are “people with a cervix”, but some women have penises. This is how you get “lactating parent” and “breastfeeding families”. By desexing biological processes you dehumanise people and you make it easy to commodify the parts of life dependent on these processes. (As an aside, I would like to point out that it is really only women who are expected to compromise their reality. “People with a cervix” need to have cervical smears to check for cancer; there are no “people with a prostrate” cancer care groups, but there are prostate cancer support groups advertised for men.)
Adopters of queer theory posit that biological sex is immaterial to the chosen reality of people, but once you leave the halls of academia and move into real life, the total inanity of this belief system is obvious. As every fertility clinic and animal breeder in the entire world knows, there are only two sexes and only one combination of gametes that can be used to create a new mammal and no ideological belief system will change this. Believing that everyone has a gender identity that may or may not coincide with their actual sex is a foundational belief, but as with other religious beliefs, faith is an unreliable substitute for bodily reality.
Gender ideology privileges gender identity, which is what someone says they are over biological sex. It makes someone’s fantasies more important than others’ realities.
I accept that in the modern definition of gender, there is an infinite panoply of choices that one can make up as you go along. Many of them are quite frankly, bonkers, but adults are free to do stupid things as long as they are only affecting themselves. Propagandising children to believe in junk “science” is beyond the scope of this post, but no one will find it surprising that I think that deliberately confusing children by telling them lies is shameful and wrong. No one is born in the wrong body. No one can change their sex. There is no wrong way to be either male or female so nothing needs to be “fixed”.
Gender free = meaningless information
So to return to the beginning, what happens when you, in the spirit being kind, use gender free terms when talking about birth and breastfeeding and think that thought through to the end?
First, let’s establish some ground rules here. Birth and breastfeeding are sexed activities and gender identity is irrelevant. No biologically born male can conceive, gestate, birth or breastfeed a baby. Not one. And no baby cares if his or her mother identifies as a woman, a man or as skoliosexual (no, I didn’t make this up). Every mammal baby ever born is looking for his or her mother, and they don’t care if theirs doesn’t want to use the label “mother”.
The two main problems with freeing physiological processes from sexed bodies are:
1) Everything becomes dehumanised as if it has nothing to do with real people and their relationships and
2) Necessary safeguarding is abandoned and people are subjected to harm.
For the remainder of our time here now, I will concentrate on the first point; my next post will discuss point 2.
What happens when you take sexed activities and render them genderless? The first thing that disappears is biology. “Pregnant people” are all women. Every single one of them. Even to say “women and pregnant people” makes it sound like there is more than one category of who can be pregnant and there isn’t.
“Families” do not breastfeed. Yours may be a breastfeeding family or a family that supports breastfeeding, but I am going to bet the farm that only one family member is doing all that breastfeeding and it’s not Granddad.
For sex-specific activities, sex-specific words are both appropriate and necessary.
Desexing language creates ambiguity where there should be none. When talking about birth and breastfeeding, “parents” are not interchangeable and body parts are not synonymous with relationships. Global health messaging demands the use of words with a clear meaning, that are not open to individual interpretations. A belief system is not more important than the mother/baby breastfeeding relationship.
Adding words to mother is unnecessary, confusing, inaccurate, and contrary to published peer-reviewed research and global health policy.
It is really easy to become confused when public health messaging is no longer clear.
To protect newborns from COVID-19, it matters whether vulnerable infants are being separated from their biological mothers, or their parents.
By any calculations, the overwhelming proportion of women having babies have no problems stating that they are women and even in today’s world, in many countries to become a mother increases women’s status and place in society.
But when using desexed language to talk about birth and breastfeeding, you risk excluding the very people you are trying to help and support. According to a 2022 study conducted in the UK, “just 51 per cent of women can correctly label all five parts of their gynaecological anatomy on a diagram”. British women are still clueless about their bodies because reproductive education is not cutting through (inews.co.uk)
How are women supposed to know about community support if they don’t speak English well, have low literacy levels or little education? Referencing parents and breastfeeding families misses the very audience that needs the service. Why is confusing mothers who need help deemed acceptable to those who prioritise body parts over an integrated reality? It is unjust to accommodate one small fraction of society to the detriment of the majority.
For most new mothers, bringing home that first baby is the ultimate challenge they have ever faced. Breastfeeding in public is scary and the opportunity to practice in a safe, women only setting is valued and necessary for their comfort and ease. Imagine the shock of attending a breastfeeding support group and finding a male bodied person participating. In some cultures, women would be required to exit immediately in the presence of an unrelated man, and most new mothers in Western culture where breasts are heavily sexualised would not be keen to expose their breasts to strangers in these circumstances.
Desexing language also mirrors the techniques of marketers by separating the product from the producer. “Human milk feeding” can be done by anyone and says nothing about the intimate relationship between a mother and her baby. The health optimisation of exclusive breastfeeding for both mother and baby cannot be replicated. Even babies who are bottle fed their own mother’s milk miss out on the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding. By dehumanising breastfeeding this is overlooked and rendered less important.
Avoiding sexed terminology not only excludes those who need including (those who don’t see themselves as “parents” or “families”, but as mothers), it includes those who should be excluded. Not just men playing at being women, but men and other family members who may hold more power and want to use it inappropriately. If infant feeding decision are left up to “parents” and dad rules the family roost, then he will be the sole decision maker. In some cultures, grandmothers opinion’s may hold more sway than a baby’s mother. Women’s rights are easily eroded.
So where does “be kind” take us if we think our thoughts through to the end?
It takes us to a land, where in a quest to prioritise the feelings of men, women and mothers no longer exist; where relationships disappear, where the connections between what we do and who we are are considered less important than an ideology and where even prestigious medical journals feel it appropriate to refer not to women, but to “people with vaginas”. Nope, I don’t see any kindness being beneficial here to anyone. Count me out.
Excellent article. Thank you for taking the time to write it. I am so glad we have articulate, intelligent women like yourself on our side
Thank you for this well written article.