{"id":456684,"date":"2026-03-04T07:33:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T07:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/456684\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T07:33:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T07:33:11","slug":"no-paloma-faith-a-baby-cannot-choose-its-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/456684\/","title":{"rendered":"No, Paloma Faith, a baby cannot \u2018choose\u2019 its sex"},"content":{"rendered":"

British singer Paloma Faith has said she\u2019ll let her third baby decide whether it\u2019s a boy or a girl. In an Instagram video<\/a> earlier this month, she prances around, cradling her bump, insisting it\u2019s 2026 and her child will decide his or her or \u2018their\u2019 gender when they\u2019re old enough. Anyone who disagrees is, apparently, a \u2018transphobic, homophobic prick\u2019. \u2018It\u2019s 2026 \u2013 do we even give a shit about gender anymore?\u2019, Faith says. \u2018It will be whatever it wants to be whenever it is old enough to decide its own identity.\u2019<\/p>\n

I watched the video thinking: God, I\u2019d hate to be pregnant now. Not because pregnancy has changed. It hasn\u2019t. Women still carry babies. Babies are still born male or female. The reason I\u2019d hate to be pregnant is because expectant mothers have to contend with numpties on social media, telling them their baby can choose its own sex \u2013 and risk being labelled a bigot if they point out, truthfully, that this is not possible.<\/p>\n

Two decades may have passed, but I still remember the anticipation before our baby was born. We chose not to find out the sex \u2013 we wanted the surprise. Granted, \u2018boy or girl\u2019 isn\u2019t exactly a plot twist. But after slogging through labour, there\u2019s something joyful about calling your friends to say: \u2018It\u2019s a girl!\u2019<\/p>\n

Now, in certain circles, even saying \u2018it\u2019s a girl!\u2019 can be treated as an act of political aggression. Which says something about the moment we\u2019re living in \u2013 that acknowledging a basic biological fact is now framed as bigotry.<\/p>\n

When I was growing up in the 1980s, girls with short hair who preferred trousers were just tomboys. Boys who gravitated towards the girls\u2019 dressing-up box might get teased \u2013 but they weren\u2019t told that they were born in the wrong body and sent to a gender clinic for treatment. Self-expression wasn\u2019t treated as a potential clinical condition. And when pop stars like Boy George and Marilyn Manson appeared on Top of the Pops in dresses and make-up, they were exciting because they blurred fashion boundaries \u2013 not because anyone thought they were literally women, or expected us to pretend they were.<\/p>\n

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Paloma Faith is not the only celebrity besotted with gender-identity ideology. Other public figures have echoed similar sentiments \u2013 from Olivia Colman describing herself as \u2018sort of nonbinary<\/a>\u2019 and a \u2018gay man<\/a>\u2019 to Coronation Street\u2019s Shobna Gulati announcing, at the age of 58, that she is neither male nor female<\/a>. <\/p>\n

If it were just eccentric celebrity behaviour, perhaps we could shrug it off. Artists have always been dramatic about identity. But the language \u2013 and the ideology that goes with it \u2013 has filtered far beyond celebrity cliques. NHS trusts have adopted terms such as \u2018pregnant people<\/a>\u2019, \u2018birthing people\u2019 and \u2018chest feeding\u2019 to describe women and breastfeeding. The stated aim is inclusion. Yet for many women the effect feels oddly diminishing \u2013 like being \u2018cancelled from motherhood\u2019, as one friend put it to me. <\/p>\n

There is a great risk attached to this manipulation of language and denial of truth. Last year\u2019s independent Sullivan Review<\/a> warned that blurring sex categories risks missed screenings<\/a> for sex-specific conditions, such as breast and prostate cancer, due to the confusion supposedly \u2018gender inclusive\u2019 language causes.<\/p>\n

Last year, health secretary Wes Streeting said that NHS language should use plain English and that women should not be \u2018excluded or erased<\/a>\u2019 in attempts to be \u2018inclusive\u2019. The Supreme Court<\/a> has clarified that \u2018woman\u2019 and \u2018sex\u2019 in the Equality Act refer to biological sex. Yet hardly a week passes without a fresh attempt to undermine biology in favour of trans dogma. Only last week, 38 biologists and doctors wrote to equalities minister Bridget Phillipson under the banner \u2018Biology is not binary<\/a>\u2019. They argued that \u2018biological sex\u2019 is political rather than scientific and should be understood as \u2018bimodal\u2019 instead of binary.<\/p>\n

Which makes Faith\u2019s recent announcement feel less like quirky celebrity behaviour and more like a symptom of something deeper: a discomfort with the basic fact that reproduction is sexed \u2013 and that only women get pregnant. And once that is negotiable, everything built on it becomes contested, too.<\/p>\n

So when I say I\u2019d hate to be pregnant now, I\u2019m not talking about morning sickness or overstretched maternity wards. I\u2019m talking about the political noise that now surrounds something as simple \u2013 and natural \u2013 as birth. Quite frankly, it sucks the joy out of it. Would \u2018it\u2019s a boy!\u2019 sound like a political statement? Would a pink blanket invite commentary? Would I be corrected for calling myself a mother?<\/p>\n

Pregnancy and birth are demanding enough without treading on eggshells about the language you use about your own body. Paloma Faith may believe she\u2019s liberating her child from labels. But a baby\u2019s sex is not a label. It\u2019s a fact. <\/p>\n

Janet Murray is a journalist writing on women, culture and public policy.<\/p>\n