Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants you to know that it’s not only women who get pregnant
AOC discussing maternity leave at a Congress committee. (Twitter/NowNext)
US Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has shown how simple it is to include trans people in conversations about pregnancy during a speech about maternity leave.
Ocasio-Cortez was talking about how short parental leave is in the US at a meeting of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
“The market has decided that women and people who give birth deserve less time with their children than a dog,” Ocasio-Cortez said, managing to both include trans and non-binary people who give birth in a conversation about maternity leave and ridicule the US’s current free-market approach to it.
Trans men and non-binary people who give birth are often left out of conversations about pregnancy, with some women claiming that including these minority groups will “erase women” – the response by a small group of “gender-critical feminists” when sanitary-product brand Always took steps to be more trans-inclusive recently.
But by including those five short words after the word “women”, Ocasio-Cortez showed that including trans people in conversations relating to pregnancy is straightforward and not at women’s expense.
“What is the most common length of parental or paid family leave that you have seen?” she asked during the committee meeting.
When the response is “six to eight weeks”, Ocasio-Cortez, who has her pronouns in her Twitter bio, asked: “Do we know how long puppies are allowed to stay with their mothers after a dog has given birth?”
The person she’s asking doesn’t know, so Ocasio-Cortez answers for her – “Eight weeks”.
“So the market has decided that women and people who give birth deserve less time with their children than a dog,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And I think that that, at its core, has already shown that the market has failed to treat people with dignity and basic respect.”
‘The market has decided that women and people who give birth deserve less time with their children than a dog.’ — @AOC exposed just how lacking parental leave is in the U.S. pic.twitter.com/Ok9GTw7DSN
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) December 16, 2019
Her speech was the latest example of Ocasio-Cortez consistently showing herself to be an ally to the trans community.
In January, she turned up on a viral Twitch livestream of Donkey Kong 64 to talk about trans rights, which saw UK-based YouTuber HBomberGuy (Harry Brewis) raise more than $200,000 for transgender children’s charity Mermaids.
