Don’t say pregnant woman!!

May 2nd, 2019 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Say what now?

Where is this??

Ah.

Ok so I’m reading the Ledge Bit Kyooeea Inclooosiv Pregnancy n Birth Care post.

Pregnancy and birth care professionals fulfill a wide range of roles and functions in the lives of the people and families we serve. However, as a whole, our goal is to provide compassionate, respectful, culturally appropriate care to all of our clients.

I hope they spare a little attention for the medical aspect of the whole thing.

Most of the resources available to birthworkers are not centered on the lived experience, identity, and needs of people whose gender identity and sexual orientation fall outside of heteronormative mainstream definitions of sex and gender.

What are these “needs” though? Lesbians probably don’t want to be asked questions about their husbands, but surely that’s not all that difficult to manage with notes on the chart or similar, unless the setting is some churchy hospital in the boondocks. It doesn’t seem to require a vast amount of “centering”; just a little would do. Other than that…what? The fact that some pregnant women say they are men? Put another note on the chart and move on.

1. ASK, DON’T ASSUME!
Just because someone “looks like” a particular gender doesn’t mean they identify that way. Ask them what name and pronoun they use, note their name and pronouns on intake and medical history forms—and use them consistently.

But…how? How do you use third person pronouns in two person interactions? You don’t. Also…if it annoys or upsets a trans person not to be asked what pronouns They use, might it upset a person who is not trans to be asked? Might it upset or annoy almost everyone who is asked? Is that something to take into account at all? Are there some contexts in which it actually is better to assume than to ask? Think, for instance, of people who are asked “Where are you from?” when they’re not immigrants but are, say, browner than the majority. Asking what the pregnant woman’s pronouns are could feel like that.

Many (but not all!) LGBTQIA people have complicated relationships with their body. Asking them what terms they use for their body and/or body parts, and then using those terms, can help them feel empowered and affirmed.

Hmmmm. So one person calls her Birth Entryway “Muffy” and another calls it “Love Canal” and another calls it “James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree” – won’t it get a little tricky for the birth care professionals to remember them all?

I see a future in which all the birth professionals are in a huddle trying to remember which name they’re supposed to apply to this particular Birth Entryway while the baby just makes its own way out.

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