Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (09:31): The ANU’s Gender Institute’s new guidance for students or staff involved in teaching should concern us all. It made headlines advocating the terms ‘chest feeding’, ‘human milk’, ‘gestational’ and ‘non-gestational’, ‘birthing’ and ‘non-birthing’ parents. Forget about referencing ‘mother’ and ‘father’; that is out. There has of course been outrage, but what disturbs me is that critics have been automatically dismissed as reactionary, implying they simply cannot adapt to progress. This is lazy, inaccurate and unfair. Their arguments are significant. I applaud the intentions. We should always be caring and considerate—‘Do to others as you would be done by’ is the mantra—but the idea that normalising this language is caring is fundamentally misguided. In the name of inclusivity, it is hugely alienating. It risks devaluing women, obviously. More insidiously, it implies that those who do not adapt and adopt the convention are arrogant, uncaring and deliberately hostile. Wrong language will isolate and harm transmasculine parents, apparently. This is the key. I believe we can show inclusivity and understanding without making a mockery of language or devaluing women. To teach people they are harmed by others’ normal use of English, that their own inference inevitably trumps the speaker’s— (Time expired)