Midwives have been told to stop using terms including “breastfeeding” and “breastmilk” as part of a new trans-friendly policy at an NHS trust.
Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH) NHS Trust is the first in the country to formally implement a gender inclusive language policy for its maternity services department — which will now be known as “perinatal services”.
Staff have been told to avoid using the word “mothers” on its own and have been given a list of alternative terms to use when addressing patients including “mothers or birthing parents”, “breast/chestfeeding” and “maternal and parental”.
Instead of saying “breastmilk”, they can choose from “human milk” or “breast/chestmilk” or “milk from the feeding mother or parent”.
Having a baby is the definition of mother. Milk from a breast is breastmilk.
This clearly all being aimed at trans men who might have had top surgery and not bottom. And, well, how many of these are actually going to end up using maternity services? Sure, we know of one who worked for The Guardian.
But enough to make a change in the language necessary?
Brighton is fast becoming California-on-Sea in its pandering to tiny minorities at the expense of everyone else.
And you think the BS stands for Brighton and Sussex?
When I worked in Cambridge I noticed a very carefully placed “Hospitals” in “Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust”!
Pretty sure medically men have breast tissues and breasts, and if you don’t then chest feeding isn’t going to do much good.
So guidance that talking about breastfeeding to someone who can’t might be considered insensitive (for which more women will probably fall into that category) but talking about chestfeeding just seems scientifically bonkers.
Soapy chestwank.
“Soapy chestwank”
Oh Steve, you steal the internet again.
When I worked in Cambridge I noticed a very carefully placed “Hospitals” in “Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust”!
Not sure what Dr. Alan Statham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cePrN7hAJUQ
would have made of the new gibbershit. It would be fun to find out but I doubt they’d be allowed to make Green Wing nowadays.
Trans people don’t have breasts. Nope, nothing between their necks and navels. You didn’t know?
I’d feel a right tit using those phrases.