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Relax About ‘Birthing People’ Already

The panic over gender-neutral reproductive health language has another eye-rolling favorite phrase

Katelyn Burns
GEN
3 min readMay 11, 2021

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Photo: Getty Images / Robin Mehdee

On Mother’s Day this past Sunday, conservatives on Twitter rallied around their new favorite joke — which is really just a variation on their one joke.

“Happy Birthing Person’s Day,” they all tweeted, rolling in retweets and the shared laughter of a bunch of usernames consisting of a first name followed by a bunch of numbers.

Ben Shapiro, the Babylon Bee, and countless other right-wingers all parroted the same punch line without a hint of originality. It’s a rewarmed variation of Shapiro’s “happy legal guardian of unspecified gender day” joke, which he’s made nearly every Mother’s Day and Father’s Day since 2013.

This year’s variation on the “haha laugh at trans people” punch line derived from a phrase used by Rep. Cori Bush last week while talking about her own experience of nearly losing her children in childbirth and the high rate of maternal mortality for Black pregnant people.

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Katelyn Burns
Katelyn Burns

Written by Katelyn Burns

Political journalist. The first openly trans Capitol Hill reporter in US history. Writing about more than just trans issues. Follow her on Twitter @transscribe

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