When it comes to erasing women from society and waging an all-out war on femininity, one hospital is taking gender-bending to a whole new extreme.
According to this, midwives helping women – er, “pregnant people” – give birth at the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust in England have been instructed not to use any “gendered language” while helping guide women through labor and delivery – an effort that includes a ban on words like "maternity," “breastfeeding," and "breast milk."
The hospital specifies that terms like “breastfeeding” and “breast milk” are now to be replaced with more gender-neutral phrases like "human milk,” "chest milk," or "milk from the feeding mother or parent" to make sure the roughly 1 percent of the U.K. population that doesn’t subscribe to “gender norms” feel just as included as the 99 percent of normal people who understand that only women give birth and produce breastmilk.
The hospital is also renaming its maternity ward the more gender-neutral “perinatal services” department to keep from appearing as though they cater only to women.
“At BSUH we acknowledge the additional challenges that gender identity can have on pregnancy, birth and infant feeding and recognise the importance of providing inclusive, respectful care to pregnant people and their families,” the hospital explained in a statement.
The hospital added that it is “on a journey towards gender inclusive care for everybody during pregnancy, birth and afterwards,” and that these efforts are being “led by members of the trans and non-binary community.”
Hilariously, the statement also includes numerous mentions of “midwives,” which includes the word “wives,” which is about as gendered as you can get.