In a nod to radical, left-wing activists, the Biden administration will replace the gender-specific term “mother” with the gender-neutral term “birthing person.”
Lefties will point to complaints about this change as just another example of right-wing nuttery — getting upset over nothing. After all, “birthing person” says the same thing as “mother,” doesn’t it?
No, it really doesn’t mean the same thing. “Mother” is a reverential word, loaded with meaning and emotion, that’s been in the English lexicon for hundreds of years and variations of it appear everywhere. According to Wikipedia: “The proverbial ‘first word’ of an infant often sounds like ‘ma’ or ‘mama.’ This strong association of that sound with ‘mother’ has persisted in nearly every language on earth, countering the natural localization of language.” [Emphasis added]
Somehow, I doubt very much that “birthing person” will catch on quite as readily.
The effort to drive “mother” from the English language began last month when one of The Squad members, Rep. Cori Bush, used the term “birthing person” during a House floor speech to describe a mother. Not to be too technical about it, but Bush is a loon. She believes that, as a member of a cult-like faith-healing sect, she can “cure” people of cancer and serious Covid-19 illness. But she’s the left’s loon and they defended her vigorously.
Left-wing activists defended Bush’s use of the term, which was met with widespread criticism on social media. “When we talk about birthing people, we’re being inclusive. It’s that simple,” NARAL Pro-Choice America tweeted from its official account. “We use gender neutral language when talking about pregnancy, because it’s not just cis-gender women that can get pregnant and give birth. Reproductive freedom is for *every* body.”
The same activists attacked Bush’s critics for suggesting “birthing people” was a ridiculous way to describe mothers. Snopes.com, the left-wing fact-checking website, published a strong rebuttal to a handful of joking statements about Democrats wanting to change “Mother’s Day” to “Birthing People’s Day.”
Funny thing about the right warning about stuff like Democrats wanting to change “Mother’s Day” to “Birthing People’s Day.” The warnings usually end up coming true.
It is biologically impossible on this planet, in this universe for a man to conceive and bear a child — even a transgender woman. Don’t these woke activists know how babies are made? Apparently not.
Biden’s budget is the first known instance of the term making its way into a policy document at the federal level. The budget’s language, however, is not entirely consistent. Another section touts paid-leave policies for their success in keeping “mothers in the workplace.”
Scrubbing the language to make it “gender-neutral” (or incomprehensibly confusing, if you prefer) will take time. After all, there are a lot of pronouns we have to change. But eventually, the government will hire language police to make sure the language remains “pure” and gender-neutral — just like the Nazis wanted the German language to be scrubbed of all Jewish and foreign idioms and words.
Caroline Downey of NRO gives us the reason for the change.
“The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations, with an unacceptably high mortality rate for Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and other women of color,” the provision reads. The section begins by incorporating gender-specific terms such as “maternal” and “women of color” but then reverts to gender-neutral wording later in the paragraph.
Biden’s budget would allocate over $200 million in funding “to help end this high rate of maternal mortality and race-based disparities in outcomes among birthing people.” The paragraph then jumps back to using “maternal health” and “maternal morbidity,” terms which refer to motherhood. Also included in that $200 million allotment are investments to “implement implicit bias training for healthcare providers.”
“Implicit bias training”? Why don’t the Democrats just drop the pretense and open camps for whoever they want to brainwash? They could call them something besides “reeducation camps.” They could make them like summer camps for adults. Outdoor activities during the day with re-education sessions held right after dinner. They could throw in training for losing our white privilege and heteronormal male oppression.
Doesn’t that sound like fun?
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