Originally a comment by The Whimster Gap on Gender-neutral childmaking.
Yes, but maybe also no. Sorry: I’m going to play devil’s advocate again.
Some of the drive towards gender-neutral newspeak might very well be based in a contempt for women qua women. Some might be based in a concern for the person, as separate from the body, or bare prudery about the body. This could be based in contempt for one sex or the other, but it doesn’t have to be.
There is another possibility, though, which is less sinister: it gives the law a way to deal more easily with lesbian couples. Obviously, only one of those will be the genetic parent (at least for the time being, though who knows what gene-splicing tech will be available soon). The genetic parent will likely be the gestatrix.
But the other woman will also be a parent in an entirely meaningful sense. She’d not be the father, though. Now, one might want to say that she’d be a kind of mother. But one might perfectly plausibly say that that’s not so – at least if one thinks that motherhood does have something to do with gestation. (Again, there may be disputes about that, but there is a use of the word “mother” in standard English that works that way; and one can’t easily try to proscribe that sense, or to prescribe a new one, without playing the same game as the genderloons.)
And there might be a further reason not just to call them both mothers which doesn’t depend on that kind of position. Suppose our lesbian couple splits up, and it’s acrimonious. There’s a dispute about child custody. Here, the law might want to take into account which partner gestated the child: that might be one of its considerations, even if only as a tie-breaker.
But why not talk about the gestational and the non-gestational mother in such cases? Well, because that doubles the work of the law. After all, straight couples sometimes split up, too; and in such cases, who is the mother and who is the father might matter when deciding what is best for the child, again, if only as a tie-breaker. So we could have one law that talks about gestating and non-gestating mothers, and another that talks about mothers and fathers. But these laws would be functionally identical. It’s therefore more efficient to cut the faff and talk about the non-gestating parent, because – bluntly – there’s really no significant difference between the non-gestating mother and the non-gestating father.
(Well, OK: there is the genetic contribution. But it’s not clear why that carries much weight, and as I’ve noted, it might not be a watertight distinction in the near future. Or the father might be adoptive, and so be in essentially the same position as the non-gestating mother. Or whatever. There’s going to be some conceptual bleed-through whichever way we cut it.)
So there is – arguably – a reason to distinguish in law between gestating and non-gestating parents that doesn’t rely on lunacy or misogyny. I’m not saying that that’s driving things here, but it’s still available.
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