In defence of motherhood

Slowly but surely the thought and speech police are pushing the bounds of equality further into the realm of misogyny. The politics of offence has become offensive to what has been a bedrock of civilised society, the nurturing, protection and celebration of motherhood. If culture lives in language, the full-frontal assault now being waged against the natural order of childbirth and motherly affection posits a bleak future for Western civilisation. The latest example of censure, which would be inconceivable to most citizens, comes from the UK parliament, where legislation on paid maternity leave for MPs has become entangled in the culture war on women. As Jacquelin Magnay wrote on Wednesday, there are no pregnant women in the bill, only pregnant persons. Women in Britain also have lost their right to breastfeed, they must now chest-feed, lest they offend transgender parents who no longer want to be considered female despite having given birth. Acceptance of difference has become a tyranny of conformity.

The co-opting of maternity leave legislation by politically correct language police has outraged members of the House of Lords. The push is part of a bigger movement to delegitimise the status of women generally. Self-identification is sufficient for anyone, regardless of gender, to be admitted to women’s hospital wards and single-sex jails. Conservative politician Baroness Sheila Noakes said she was not prepared to be erased as a woman regardless of any abuse she might receive on social media. Billionaire author JK Rowling has been the high-profile target for virtue-signalling shamers. She was accused of hate speech for ridiculing a World Health Organisation definition of women as “people who menstruate”, despite only half of the female population being of menstrual age at any one time. Rowling’s name has since been removed from school buildings in Britain, despite her Harry Potter novels being the catalyst for a generation of children to discover the joy of reading. LGBT+ campaigners blame her for Britain’s slide down the ranking of Europe’s equality index from first to 10th. For inclusion on some lists there is a price that is too high.

Confusing biological sex with gender identity and thereby devaluing the status of women is a folly. We agree with Lady Noakes that there is no malice in wishing to maintain the biological facts of womanhood and the lived experience of women, which includes menstruation, childbirth and menopause. It is a view that can happily coexist with respect and concern for transgender people.