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Your reminder that names are important.
Names are important. From a philosophy perspective, they are seminal.
They’re so important that they shape our world, and they can’t be easily denied.
What are our first words? “Baba” “mama” “Apple” “no”
Names are how we as a society map ourselves.
“Mother” is a very important word. It’s a word that has resonance throughout thousands of years of generations. (Well, tell us something we don’t know, James, you might say.)
Allow me to “labour” the point here, har har it’s not funny. Being a mother, for millennia, has meant facing up to the very worst that biology can throw at you. At the very best, pain on a level nobody experiences anywhere else.
On a middling level- episiotomy, loss of sexual function, incontinence. On an extreme level: death. (This happens far more frequently than you might think, especially if you are a Black woman.)
Once you’ve gone through these things and brought and birthed a person to the world, you’re a mother. Whether that person was pushed or cut out of you- you are a mother.
Now, you can be a mother if you didn’t do any of that. You can adopt children. You can be the partner of a person who gestated a child and call yourself a mother. That’s fine.
What you really can’t do, is call someone who’s gone through the whole actual biological process - a “gestational partner”. Nope, she’s a mother.
Because only women can carry and birth babies. And - in my humble opinion- surrogacy is an absolutely appalling invasion of women’s bodies. And any couple looking to “rent a womb” should be ashamed of themselves.
Life doesn’t owe anyone a baby. Foster one of the thousands of kids who need unconditional love- and they’ll test that. Don’t like that idea? Take a good look at yourself.
Because- I repeat- nobody owes you a baby. NO WOMAN’S BODY OWES YOU A BABY. Foster a lost kid, get a dog, spend your money on fancy holidays (eventually- for now, do up your house). KIDS ARE NOT A RIGHT.
And there was me yesterday thinking I had no outrage left.
