Um, Yes This is Interesting, But How Will It Help Anyone?
“In real life” problems can’t be helped by just making shit up
When you unmoor from the truth to wander off into the realms of fantasy, it can be a wonderful thing. As a lifelong reader, I have been taken to so many different worlds through reading fiction and a genre I particularly love is science fiction. Well written fiction literally transports a reader into a different life and can launch continuing thoughts that can lead to new insights about one’s own life, as well as ripples that infinitely resonate.
Over the last few years, I have read proportionally more nonfiction and have always appreciated learning about new things and deepening my knowledge about topics that I already understand.
Until recently I never had much of a problem figuring out if an article or book was fiction or nonfiction, but over the last few years this has become more challenging.
Blurring boundaries, ignoring facts and prioritizing “queer joy” over reality causes harm.
A man with intermittent abdominal pain was taken to the emergency room by his male partner and by the time it was discovered that “he” was in advanced labor with a cord prolapse, the baby had died. Even though the patient told the nurse she was a trans man, her medical records stated she was male, and this classification directly led to the unintentional death of a baby.
The hospital staff did exactly what this patient and other transgendered people state they actively seek and what our culture now demands: designating people by their chosen identity, not their biological sex. In this case, if her actual sex had been taken into consideration this woman would not have been left for hours before being properly examined and treated and she could have taken her baby home, rather than need to plan a funeral.
American medical schools are radically changing their admission procedures to prioritize political ideology and public virtue signaling over the previous knowledge-based curriculum.
Doctors trained in woke medicine aren’t learning the skills they need to treat patients. Instead, they are being taught that diversity, inclusion and equity “deserves just as much attention from learners and educators at every stage of their careers as the latest scientific breakthroughs”.
This slide is shown to first year medical students as part of their structural anatomy class:
The relationship between gender and sex has been deliberately obscured to appear confused by those pushing queer theory and in particular, the trans lobby. Turning biology into controversy is one method used to indoctrinate every member of society from the youngest child to their grandparents. However, taking future doctors away from learning basic and universal anatomy, biology, physiology and replacing this with social issues they have no mandate to change has the potential to cause great harms in the future medical care of sick or wounded people.
Would you be happy to go to a doctor with severe stomach pain or a broken bone and be quizzed about your gender identity, factors that affect your intersectionality or focus on the social construction of what brought you to a physician’s office?
Midwifery doesn’t exist without women, so why are we being erased?
The word midwife derives from Old English mid, "with", and wif, "woman", and thus originally meant “with women”, that is, a woman who is with another woman and assists her in giving birth.
Birth has nothing to do with “identities”, but everything to do with bodies. Pregnancy and birth are possibly the most embodied experiences open to us, but they are exclusively the domain of female bodies. Sorry guys, but boys can’t do everything.
Thanks once again to “inclusion” I have been dismayed to note just how many midwives are bending down in obeisance to the gender gods and in particular to the vocabulary mangling that condemns them to be pretend that some “birthing people” are not women.
I have written previously about the deleterious effects of changing language and how this causes harm.
This excellent paper dissects what happens when clear communication in maternity care is abandoned in favor of ideological propaganda.
Disassembling women into their body parts (NB, this is not done with men’s bodies) may allow some men to feel they have a right to claim a womanface identity, but nothing changes the reality that the only way to become a woman is to be born a girl.
That some midwives have succumbed to a faulty belief system is nothing short of appalling.
This recently published paper claims that: perinatal and midwifery services have been positioned as “woman” centered and understood exclusively in hetero patriarchal and cisnormative terms. The paper also claims that: there is increasing recognition that such understandings are colonial in nature and do not acknowledge gender diversity.
This particular bit of word salad is trying to convince us that when it comes to having babies, our beliefs, feelings, wants and desires are more important than our sex and anatomy. Their logical next step surely must be to castigate every fertility clinic on the planet for insisting that the only gamete combo that is going to work to create a new human is that intensely “cisheteronormative” coupling of one egg from a female and one sperm from male. I mean, how “colonial” is that?
What does womb steaming have to do with breastfeeding?
La Leche League Canada (LLLC) recently had a special seminar for health professionals. The scope of practice for all LLLC Leaders is breastfeeding and I would expect any workshops aimed at health professionals to be an educational step above the sort of information given to “just” mothers or even Leaders (who rely heavily on their own breastfeeding experience in their role of supporting other women).
Some sample sessions from LLL health professional seminars from other countries have included topics such as anesthesia and breastfeeding, introducing solids, tongue tie treatments and supporting breastfeeding in emergency situations. There are some sessions offered in this Canadian seminar that would have value for health professionals such as “What is the WHO Code?” and a session on perinatal anxiety (although this is about “parents”, even though the content was clearly aimed at mothers and I’m guessing that the presenter never mentioned what dad could do about his anxiety).
But what is the top advertised session on? Yup, “Supporting Families in the 2SLGBTQIA+ Family”.
In 2022, the population of Canada was 38.93 million. As of 2021, the total number of transgendered and nonbinary people aged 15 and over constituted 0.13% of the population. Given that, for all practical purposes, of that sub-group, the only ones remotely likely to require breastfeeding support would be less than half of that 0.13%, I am left baffled about why LLL Canada or any other breastfeeding support group is erasing mothers and catering to “parents”.
Nor why it is bullying volunteers who are endeavoring to uphold the Mission Statement in favor of making themselves into global victims of derision by pretending that ideology somehow trumps biology and physiology?
The recent outrage in LLL Great Britain serves to illustrate what can happen when sexed activities like breastfeeding are pushed to morph into adopting a context of gender identity. You can read about that here:
and here:
Those in LLL pushing to indulge gender ideology over biological facts are claiming that those Leaders who are honoring the Mission Statement (which names mother to mother help as being our purpose) are “trying to turn LLL into a single sex organization”. Well news flash, there is no need to do this because by using the word mother in a sexed, not gendered role, LLL is indeed complying with UK law by being just that, single sexed.
Common sense - RIP?
This man who was a blood donor for five decades is never donating again. Why? Because he was told that unless he answered and signed off on the full questionnaire issued by the NHS in Scotland, he couldn’t donate. He refused to tell them if there was any chance he might be pregnant. He was 66 years old (and looked it) and he is male.
When I am reading a book I have chosen because I’m in the mood for some make believe, I can be told anything and am happy to go along for the ride.
But if I am dealing with a doctor, a midwife or a breastfeeding support group, if I have any concerns about my health or the wellbeing of someone I love, I don’t expect those I’ve asked for help to have been schooled in some ethereal utopia where the unicorns are freely grazing alongside Pegasus and the Genderbread man.
If you believe that even bodies aren’t factual, but are just complex social constructions, you have no business treating or advising others.
If you can't at least appear to be polite and respectful to me and my readers or if you come here looking for a fight, rather than a discussion, your comments will be removed.
The reason that women are being erased from the concept of childbirth is to make us into a commodity. An egg-producer can sell her eggs, a womb-haver can rent her womb, a milk producer can sell her milk. On the other hand suggesting women sell their babies is a bit icky, it won’t go down well in lovely liberal America. So reduce women to working body parts and services, buy those parts and services, and the patriarchy wins with bells on while pretending to itself it is being “kind”. Rich female celebrities get babies without pain or mess, or any time off work, and men get babies without having to engage with women at all. The only losers are poor women, probably in another country, and who cares about them?