Some of our words are missing. Have you noticed? The Labour shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, has, and he’s angry about it. Earlier this month he gave an impassioned interview for the BBC on Radio 4’s Political Thinking, raising the alarm about missing terms such as “breastfeeding” and “mother”, despite the fact that there is no campaign to remove these terms. Pope Francis has joined the chorus of discontent, warning of attacks on freedom of expression in the name of “cancel culture” and ideological colonisation.
Of course, some of us never had our own words to start with. We’ve had to create our own or reclaim terms that have been used against us; we’ve had to find alternatives to the dehumanising language of state and medical institutions. Those of us who are lesbian or gay parents, mothers or fathers, have found new words to help others understand us and make our lives visible and valid: othermothers, gaybies, co-parents, daddy and pappa, MaPa, mummies and mummas. Not bad, considering we weren’t even allowed to exist a few years ago.
