NHS staff invitation to menopause workshop to people who menstruate!

There's a lot of iffy medical terminology around female reproductive bits.

EG

Incompetent cervix
Geriatric mother
Failure to progress
Etc

Interestingly my autocorrect knows primiparous etc! When I've heard it for the first time today.

And yet words I use often it still insists on changing...

Veeerrryyy interesting.

'Nulliparous is a women who has never given birth. Primiparous is a woman who has given birth to one child, multiparous is a woman who has given birth to more than one child.
They can mean slightly different things if you look into the exact definitions but this is broadly how it is described in medical terms.'

Cool.

Note up in library.

Have you changed from nulliparous to primiparous in the last 12 months?
Come along to our sessions on Wednesdays at 10 to meet other people in similar position!
If you are a member of this category you are welcome!

OTOH

Dad and baby session Wednesdays at 3! Meet other local dads. Free bacon sandwiches!!!

🕳🐗📆

Good point GCAcademic
The NHS guidelines, so kindly linked for us earlier, which I understand are to be followed, says this

“Inclusive, accessible services are better for everyone. For example, using simple words helps people who are sick or stressed as well as people who have a learning disability.”

Inclusive meaning to take into account various different groups e.g. people for whom English is not their first language, people with poor literacy

It also says
“avoid making any groups of people feel excluded”

This all comes under the heading of

NHS service standard -

1. Make sure everyone can use the service

Where it goes on to say:

Make sure people with different physical, mental health, social, cultural or learning needs can use your service, whether it's for the public or staff.

Also people who do not have access to the internet or lack the skills or confidence to use it.

service-manual.nhs.uk/service-standard/5-make-sure-everyone-can-use-the-service

There are many examples on the NHS website, where you can find this put into practice.

For example
“The menopause is when a woman stops having periods”
www.nhs.uk/conditions/menopause/

Early menopause happens when a woman's periods stop before the age of 45
www.nhs.uk/conditions/early-menopause/
Page last reviewed: 02 February 2021

The latter example having been updated only a couple of months ago so definitely showing the current thinking

""Maybe we do need to have words that emphasise biology more. For example, a word for a woman who has not given birth (childfree and childless are both ungreat in my opinion because of mothers whose children have died). Or women who have not yet been through menopause. There used to be words like barren, spinster and crone but they were offensive. Is that because the ideas themselves are offensive?""

There are already words.
Nulliparous is a women who has never given birth. Primiparous is a woman who has given birth to one child, multiparous is a woman who has given birth to more than one child.
They can mean slightly different things if you look into the exact definitions but this is broadly how it is described in medical terms.

However I'm sure it will offend someone, somewhere, for some reason.

@PumpkinSpiceWoman

Settle in with your favourite tipple, calm down, and have a nice read through the whole thread.

🦡🌈🤍

Remind me again, why do you want trans men to suffer during the menopause?

Why don’t you remind us why you want women who have poor literacy (we have 7.1 million people in the U.K. who are deemed functionally illiterate) and don’t understand medical terminology to suffer during the menopause?

As a perimenopausal woman I'm not sure if my last period was actually my last period. Am I a "person who menstruates"? I'm not sure. Is this event for me? I'm not sure

If it was a talk for women to learn more about the menopause, that definitely something I'd be interested in and I know was directed at me.

Language matters. Clarity matters.

@ASugarr When it comes to biological medical needs it’s really important to be honest about your biological sex. You could end up missing some serious sex based health complications if not (I.e a non binary person of a male sex not having check ups for prostate cancer, or a non binary person of the female sex not going for smear tests). Sex based medical care should be clearly labelled so people can identify which services they need based on their sex. This shouldn’t be about being inclusive or excluding, it should be about directly targeting biological male or females

N*iceGerbil
*
I can't really name the specific one, but a civil service department. To be fair to them, it wasn't the department but a volunteer-led women's network that said it. I don't think the departmental leadership would have seen it before it went out (at least I sincerely hope not!).

On "what were they thinking", honestly I think it's similar to what you wrote earlier: they want to be inclusive, they strongly believe we're a very 'good', 'caring', 'values-led' organisation, and they don't want to cause offence to anyone, but they don't think critically or deeply about exactly what any of that means and where conflicts might exist. So I can imagine there might have been a discussion about "we should acknowledge our male allies" (all our networks are very big on allies) with a bit of "we're all nice people in this department, there can't possibly be any rapists/harassers/domestic abusers here!" naivety.

This thread has prompted me to have a discussion about it. I'll come back if there's anything worth following up on.

Very interesting thread. I wonder if there have been any petitions yet on changing This type of wording..

@Diverze I've really enjoyed all of your posts

Plain English. Just use the word woman. Simple.

I've heard it used by those that pat the heads of those doing the graft for them, the fact it sounds incredibly patronising seems to woosh over the heads of those that are chuffed to receive it.

On racism, seeing as we're being diverted. Has there been much work done to find out how terms like 'people who menstruate' land with women from different religious or ethnic backgrounds? And those with limited English?

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the results of any such work came back with exactly the same statistics and findings that the one on whether or not women knew what a cervix was did. Any work and the results would, of course, be ignored as it always is.

Is it?

I've only heard it in reference to sex and lesbians.

How odd.

What is a gold star feminist?

It's what the enlightened, progressive ones think they are, proverbial gold stars and awards are given to them by those they shill for.

When I told my boss what I was up to she was impressed but warned me that I'll probably end up being co-opted onto the equality team.

All the committees that people do not want to be bothered are open to entryism. Everyone just waits for someone else to do it. So that empty place on the parish council, or the school governors..... and the equality team. I am sure there are loads of people on here that would be really well up to speed with the necessary acts now .

It is really worthwhile and it is good to get the people involved who they are actually for, rather than people practicing for their stellar political career.

It was Soho's employer/ sector I was interested in as well.

Sunshine a large NHS trust?

That's even worse somehow. I mean, if it can be worse.

It's not like there's never been docs etc in the news for sex offences

I mean they didn't need to say it. What were they thinking?!