Long experience of apparatchiks has taught me that anyone who prefaces what he is about to say—his communication—with the words “I am committed to…” will soon proceed to something unpleasant hiding in his thicket of polysyllabic euphemism. If a hospital manager, for example, says “I am committed to…” (or, even worse, “I am passionately committed to…”), you know that something is about to be closed down and its staff (except for the managers) sacked.
A large majority of people that have been pregnant or have given birth identify as women. However, there are some intersex men and trans men who may get pregnant. Therefore doctors should not use the expression expectant mothers but expectant people, for fear of offending all the pregnant transsexuals. Whether anyone has ever met an expectant transsexual offended by the term expectant mother is not stated; nor is the possibility aired that, if such a being actually existed, he or she should simply be told not to be so silly. The BMA now lives, or wants to live, in a world in which taking offense is its own justification: The offended, or yet-to-be offended, have taken over from the victims as the world’s heroes. Read the rest of this entry »
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