Pregnant People

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/09/pregnant-people-gender-identity/620031/

Like most critical theory movements, this one has likely been brewing behind the scenes for many years, but even I have only just recently seen for the first time the mainstream push to erase the concept of women in regards to their capacity as child bearers. The concept of referring to pregnant women as pregnant people and other analogous language shifts first popped up, as far as my memory serves, less than a year ago. Actual hospitals and medical centers have started to adopt such exhausting phrases as "pregnant people" or "birthing persons", and terms like "chest feeding". 

Many of these shifts are not even necessary as men do on fact have breasts and can even get breast cancer. It is done exclusively at the behest of a tiny fraction of the population that has trained themselves to have mental breakdowns over small nuances in language useage. Despite the fact that men have breasts, women who have decided to live as men get very upset at their breasts - which all humans have - being referred to as they are, which is breasts, and would still be if they were actual men. Considering women who undergo hormone replacement therapy are less likely to be able to successfully breastfeed in the first place, it's even more unnecessary. But why precisely, you may ask, is such a language shift SO egregiously unnecessary?

What's important to note firstly is that the percentage of the population this affects is practically null. Hormone replacement therapy renders many women unable to become pregnant, since such "therapies" are identical to chemical castration procedures. This leaves women who have decided not to undergo HRT and simply choose to unilaterally declare they are actually men, or "neither" as it were, and then carry on as usual, and by some completely unknown and mysterious process, become pregnant. This is even a smaller percentage of the population that says they are transgender, as the majority of transgender people do not wind up pregnant.

So what we have already, without going any further, is an absolutely miniscule population taking our language usage hostage in a way that is highly offensive, if not simply mystifyingly obtuse, to the vast, overwhelming majority. Referring to WOMEN as "birthing persons" is shocking and degrading to any normal person. If I had to guess, it was likely shocking to the majority of LGBT proponents, but their tribe loyalties forced their cognitive dissonance to engage and accept such a disgusting term. 

Even I will admit "pregnant people" is less obtuse a term and does not carry such dehumanizing qualities as "birthing person", but it is somewhat more insidious as it easily slides by people's radar. Pregnant women are indeed people who are pregnant and it appears rather innocuous, almost an innocent slip of the tongue, as one was used to referring to a person of unknown gender as "they" since the long gone days of yore, well before all of this language alteration. All pregnant women are in fact pregnant people, and if this were ten years ago it would appear just like a normal word replacement someone made while not thinking very hard about what they were saying. Now it's a severely intentional decision meant to reprogram the way everyday persons think about the people who may become pregnant.

While all of this is entirely fair and easily understood by rational people, the argument is still made that it is so important to use these "inclusive terms" (at the expense of women's identity) not simply because transgender people get their feelings hurt by normal language, but because such exclusive language and adherence to well established and understood real concepts in some way manages to cause transgender people to not receive proper care. The article linked mentions briefly that it helps remind women in the OBGYN waiting room to "not stare" at the unaccompanied man who appears to be a patient at the women's health center. 

My OBGYN does in fact care for at least one woman who lives as a man, as I've seen her before, three years ago. I did not stare nor did I make any comments, because while I know this woman has made unwise decisions, I do not care and I mind my own business. I actually fully believe people who have made unwise decisions to mutilate their bodies and undergo procedures to change their physical appearance for the sake of vanity should be able to receive full, comprehensive, and compassionate medical care. They deserve rights and privacy as any other human being does. What they do not deserve is the entire upheaval of society on their behalf BECAUSE OF their personal choices to undergo physical and chemical procedures to live their private lives in such a way. They should never have been able to do so and that we are here now is frankly embarrassing.

My OBGYN has hundreds and possibly thousands of patients. I've been there a very large number of times in the last five years, having been pregnant four times in that timespan. I have seen this transgender patient once, ever, and even then there is no guarantee this was actually a transgender patient. She may not have been a normal woman who chose to mutilate herself and could have been someone born intersex but raised as male, but still possessing female anatomy. There is no way to know, especially because as stated I mind my own business.

It is precisely my staunch belief in minding one's own damn business that makes me so frustrated to see this forced language shift. It is said to be done for the safety and in service of acceptance of tiny fractions of society that feel maligned, but really it is the HOA of Language, telling all of us what we MUST do on our own damn property. The words used by the news, media, government, and general populace are being policed by a tiny, miniscule - have I hammered this point in enough - portion of absolute busybodies who are not happy to leave us all alone to mind our own existence as we please. Thus continuing to use the terms and phrases of sane people is the unapproved house siding color of our collective society, subject to punitive measures by the association.

All the aforementioned points are very important, but perhaps the most pertinent part of this discourse lies in the fact that the people demanding such forced language shifts have chosen to do these things to themselves. While people do not choose to have gender dysphoria and/or body dysmorphia, they do choose to alter their physical bodies. 

There is a can of worms here, but to not get too buried in tangents, it is not proven that body alterations and hormonal treatments actually "fix" the problems such people have. It is widely known and accepted that gender dysphoria in adults is accompanied by additional diagnoses of mental disorder. It has not been proven that those accompanying disorders are caused by the dysphoria and thus solved by superficial gender transition. In fact, if we were to put aside our worries of offending the LGBT coalition, we would see that the fact that these accompanying diagnoses remain after transition (though sometimes the "excitement" of transitioning stifles them temporarily) and still require treatment would appear to STRONGLY suggest that the the accompanying diagnoses are the cause of the dysphoria.

There is also a point to be made that a lot of innocent people have been manipulated into accepting this position in their life by the medical conglomerates that look to profit off of their gender dysphoria long term (HRT never stops for the remainder of a transitioned person's life) and the misguided media and pop culture that idealizes transitioning as the solution to all of their problems. While this is unfortunate, it remains that it was still their personal choice to undergo such procedures.

Thus, what we are engineering is a full rework of colloquial, well understood language useage for the sake of a minute population of people who made personal choices to change themselves. We used to understand that people who make such personal decisions to live life in ways that society is not catered toward must simply accept the inconveniences that come with these decisions. It is a new and exhausting phase where we are trying to change completely acceptable, well established, and fully functional parts of society for those that would choose to live outside of these parameters to the detriment of those who have not made such drastic decisions. 

It is continually argued that it is NOT a detriment, inconvenience, or affront to anyone else to use such obtuse phrases as "chest feeding", by the same people who argue that simple terms may make some people literally suicidal. These same people argue that language can cause violence, that dehumanizing language attributes to vast underlying societal inequality.

I have to say that I agree, which is precisely why it's so dangerous to so brazenly undermine women and motherhood with these new terms. Intersectionality is self-defeating in this way, as one ideology MUST necessarily prevail, as we cannot accommodate for all of these nuances together. Critical theory leans toward engineering society not simply toward the lowest common denominator, but to the absolute most obtuse outlier. I am and always have been a proponent of supporting and encouraging the largest number of people at the detriment of the fewest number of people. There are nuances, as there are to anything, but this debate is clear. This alteration of language is to the detriment of a vast swatch of human beings - female human beings - to the benefit of an overwhelming few.