Oxfam has issued a new inclooooosive guide to how to erase everyone except Trans Folks.

Oxfam has instructed staff to drop the words “mother” and “father” from their vocabulary and replace them with “parent” when describing family roles.

Which is to say Oxfam has instructed staff to describe family roles without describing family roles.

The charity said that allowances should be made for trans families that might not identify with the conventional roles of a man and woman in parenthood and that in such cases “parent” would be more appropriate.

Except it’s not actually “conventional”; it’s physical. There are of course many conventions that go with the physical roles in parenthood, but the conception and gestation and expulsion and lactation are physical. Not having a word for the one who does the gestating and lactating or a word for the one who does the inseminating is just fatuous.

The word parent describes “the role in raising children without directly ascribing gendered roles”, Oxfam said.

No, it doesn’t. That’s exactly what it doesn’t do. It throws a modesty veil over the role in raising children; it removes the precision that names the parent who nurses the infant and the parent who is unable to nurse the infant by lumping them together. In the real world, sometimes “parents” is the right word, but other times the specific parent has to be specified. We have a quick and easy way to do that: say “mother” or “father.” It’s not an obscenity, it’s not blasphemy, it’s not libel, it’s just the ordinary word.

Oxfam said: “This guide is not prescriptive but helps authors communicate in a way that is respectful to the diverse range of people with which we work. We are proud of using inclusive language; we won’t succeed in tackling poverty by excluding marginalised groups.”

They won’t succeed in tackling poverty by refusing to mention mothers, that’s for damn sure.