'Mother's milk' should no longer mean 'mother's milk'

equal rights
'Mother's milk' should no longer mean 'mother's milk'

England is leading the way in LGBT matters: Sussex and Brighton University Hospitals are encouraging their employees to use gender-neutral language in maternity wards to honor the diversity of their patients. New terms have even been created so that transsexual women in labor also feel addressed and belonging.

'Breast milk' becomes 'human milk'

Doctors, nurses and midwives should now also use trans-friendly terms in addition to the conventional ones: "person" instead of "woman", "birthing parent" instead of "mother". The word "breastmilk" can be replaced by "human milk" or "milk from the feeding parent". "Parent" or "co-parent" is intended to serve as an alternative for "father".

Non-discriminatory wording is also finding its way into antenatal courses and all other appointments where parents come together. If it is clear that those present are exclusively CIS women and CIS men, one could stick to the conventional terms, according to the recommendation of the clinics. CIS women and men are people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

With language against exclusion

As the newspaper "Metro" reports, it is hoped that the measures will "quickly end the historical exclusion of trans- and non-binary people in the maternity wards". Brighton is the British “trans capital” – a corresponding number of LGBT people have children here: trans men, for example, who were born with a female body and did not have an operation. Conversely, women born with a male body can father children. One would like to include all of them linguistically.

Although the clinics expressly recommend using the usual language for women in addition to gender-neutral terms in order to adequately address them, the protest was not long in coming: The "Times" railed that the "language police" should now "women" to erase "wool.

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