Another first for Brighton
Brighton had the first nudist beach, one of the biggest Gay Pride events and a well-deserved reputation for wonkiness which has transformed into wokeness.
The Brighton School in Kemp Town has three uniforms: boys, girls and transgender.
Almost next door to it is the Royal Sussex County Hospital in process of a costly refurbishment.
They issued recently a policy document to make its maternity services more transgender inclusive.
Thus, there is to be a re-naming of words associated with pregnancy.
The maternity ward is renamed the “perinatal” and breast feeding is “ chest feeding”. The words “woman” is to be avoided where possible and “father” replaced by parent, co-parent or “second biological parent”.
Breast milk becomes human milk.
I have spent more time than most in large NHS hospitals and they are sprawling places difficult to navigate.
In my view any benefit of inclusiveness to the transgender community will be outweighed by visitor confusion seeking the old maternity ward.
What will the hospital reception be instructed to say?
Will the re-naming exclude the donor to a ward or the title of a renowned obstetrician?
How did a group numbering 1% of the total population succeed in getting a quite material change through?
Will those staff who do not use the now more convoluted lingo be disciplined?
My own perhaps ageist and anti-woke view is that the NHS has been rightly lauded and applauded for their inspiring hard work throughout the pandemic but here they are opening themselves up to ridicule.
