Edinburgh Napier University claims to be one of the largest providers of nursing and midwifery education in Scotland. It now seems they are expanding their remit to the care and treatment of pregnant males.
This is Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland after all, where the SNP government passed legislation that redefined ‘woman’ to include those who have ‘taken the decision to undergo a process for the purpose of becoming female.’ The Court of Session in Edinburgh has since ruled that decision breached equality law. But it is surely beyond parody that now a school of nursing and midwifery is teaching students that biological males can get pregnant and give birth.
Course materials obtained by the feminist website, Reduxx, and reported this week, contain some truly jaw dropping lines Napier university is telling its students:
‘It is important to note that while most times the birthing person will have female genitalia, you may be caring for a pregnant or birthing person who is transitioning from male to female and may still have external male genitalia.’
Whatever genitalia we might retain, this is simply impossible. People like me who have transitioned ‘from male-to-female’ cannot be a ‘birthing person.’ Despite the potentially confusing terminology, we remain biologically male whatever changes we might make to our bodies. Human beings are mammals, and the gestation of the young is a matter for females – actual females, biological females – and we are not that.
Napier’s guidance does not appear to be a mistake, or confused with ‘female-to-male’ transsexuals like Freddy McConnell who can and do get pregnant. The materials go on to tell the student midwives that they need to be familiar with the catheterisation procedure ‘for both female and male anatomy.’ When removing catheters, the midwife need to warn male persons of ‘discomfort as the deflated balloon passes though the prostate gland.’
Reduxx reported that when Napier realised that significant errors had been made, hasty edits were made to the materials. ‘Male-to-female’ was reversed to ‘female-to-male’, though references to the prostate gland remained. Let’s be clear, female people who give birth do not have prostates.
Apparently, it also added an eye-watering suggestion that a female-to-male transgender person could give birth though a surgically constructed penis.
The mind boggles. Seven years after gender surgery, I still instinctively cross my legs in horror at the thought of a baby coming down any sort of penis.
If this was taken from the incoherent ramblings of transgender activists, or even the deluded ideas of some politicians it would be risible. But this nonsense was taken from course materials used to train student midwives in Scotland. The problem is fundamental. Activists – and the politicians they have influenced – have changed and obfuscated language so that the next generation of health care workers are being taught nonsense. George Orwell once wrote:
‘If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.’
Schools of nursing and midwifery should certainly know better. But to restore sanity we need to restore language. It should not be considered unkind to use language that describes reality accurately, and on which we can all agree.
This talk will no doubt upset those who feel oppressed by reality, but if we cannot describe reality then we cannot hope to address any oppression that we might face.
When Monty Python’s Life of Brian first aired in 1979, we laughed when Stan (Eric Idle) told his friends that he wanted to be called Loretta so he could have babies.
His friend Reg (John Cleese) protested, ‘What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can’t have babies.’ After being told told that it was symbolic of our struggle against oppression, he quipped that it was ‘symbolic of his struggle against reality.’
Comedy? Prophecy, more like.
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