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Relax About ‘Birthing People’ Already
The panic over gender-neutral reproductive health language has another eye-rolling favorite phrase
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.
The tweet kicked over a transphobic hornet’s nest. Conservatives and gender-critical feminists pounced on the chance to tell a Black mom she was wrong. The tweet prompted nearly 7,000 replies and over 3,100 quote tweets, mostly mocking Bush for using the term “birthing people” rather than “mothers.”
Gender-neutral reproductive health language like “birthing people” or “pregnant people” has found popularity as trans people have been increasingly accepted by a wider swath of Americans. The reasons behind the language are fairly straightforward to understand and include far more than just transgender parents.
