"Women and birthing people"

Is it something else? what?

What is it we are including exactly. Why bust a gut trying to include something that no one can explain/define/test for amd is apparently different for everyone.

Medicine should just stick to facts. And exclusion is often entirely necessary. Maternity care excludes men and anyone not pregnant. A gastro ward would exclude people suffering from a neuro issues etc

And if we base medical care on believe systems Why just gender. Why not past lives , those who think they can fly , those who think everyone's following them.

Is it writing one of the expressions - say "woman" - and adding a footnote that "people who don't identify as women but are [affected by whatever the brochure is about] should feel included too"

Just use 'woman' and make it clear that this refers to sex not gender.

Books have included similar footnotes explaining generalised uses of he/she/they for a long time.

Given the very specific healthcare needs of somebody who has transitioned, it should be possible to produce targeted literature, just as for anyone else with a specific healthcare need.

I think the point is more about the difference between accommodating individuals (good), and imposing their beliefs on others (not good).

"Women and birthing people" doesn't make sense. Either Woman refers to sex and therefore a woman is by definition somebody of the sex with the potential to give birth (See also Ewe, Doe), so there is no need for birthing people, or it refers to gender and is irrelevant.

The reason it is important to talk about women as a sex in a healthcare setting is that if you don't you are left in a situation where you have to pretend that periods, pregnancy, endometriosis etc. are distance phenomena that could happen to anyone.

Obviously HCPs should provide appropriate care to individuals, including using their preferred language. However, I think in this case generalising that language means a loss of language that is vital to protect women's health.

If large numbers of women can't bring themselves to talk about their sex, isn't that a healthcare problem in itself?

Hi President Biden! Thank you so much for doing this. I'm wondering if you could adjust your wording from "women's healthcare" to "healthcare for people who get pregnant and bleed". I am a (trans) woman, but don't need these services. Thank you for your work!

twitter.com/elianasrubin/status/1354955908770500619?t=WyN2Ht6PxzdJZPyQc8uyTQ&s=19

The context?

President of the United States twitter account: Today, I issued a Presidential Memorandum to protect and expand access to reproductive health care. I am fully committed to protecting women’s health here at home and around the world.
twitter.com/POTUS/status/1354953657796722693?t=8GuV5HLuAqiSaL4XyJZ06A&s=19

Yes I think a footnote type thing would work well. Eg a note somewhere saying that women is used as shorthand but includes those people who identify as other genders but are biologically able to give birth. Something like that.

ok point taken about the "and" but what do you suggest? make suggestions of how to be inclusive, because this thing isn't going anywhere.

How i understand it right now is that there is a rock (using the word women) and a hard place (not using the word women) and people who take one or other position are absolutely not prepared to move one millimetre to accommodate the other.

And if the stories and things i read on the internet are true, each of these positions (i don't want to say "sides" but that's how it comes across) believes that the other is trying to erase them through use of language (ok, let's leave aside the fact that they will still exist).

So how do we move forward? There is a way to move forward that mostly accommodates just about everyone except extreme hardliners. (history tells us that accommodating extreme hardliners rarely ends well).

So is the answer separate and extremely specific sources of information? (like those tourist brochures that all look the same but when you get closer you realise they're in 36 different languages)?

Is it writing one of the expressions - say "woman" - and adding a footnote that "people who don't identify as women but are [affected by whatever the brochure is about] should feel included too"

Is it writing "women and..." (yes, i know, most people here don't seem to like that, some don't - so that's something that research would clear up")

Is it something else? what?

So-called ‘additive language’ – a suggested idea in the Open Letter – doesn’t help in any way. ‘Women and birthing people’ in a document sounds like there are two different sorts of people who give birth. It’s confusing, divisive and inaccurate….and still denies the impact of biological sex. We also know that in real life the result of additive language is that the words ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ disappear – often for practical reasons of space and time, and other times to deliberately omit the whole notion of ‘women’ as a biological sex.

Exactly. No.

Okay but do you think we should be saying inshallah, and other Muslim things and have honey on labour wards to accommodate Muslims? If not why not?

what is it about anything i've written here (and elsewhere on the site) makes you think i wouldn't want that if it is what they want? Of course, especially during labour and birth, the woman having the baby (or the person having the baby who doesn't identify as a woman) should be comfortable and, within reason (no sacrificing virgins or whatever), it should be allowed. I can't imagine why you would think i would be against that?

But anyone who has gone through a birth plan with a midwife (and you'll note that despite the origins of the word, i don't see any need to change that) knows that is the time to talk about honey, right?

Additive language from the link above:

So-called ‘additive language’ – a suggested idea in the Open Letter – doesn’t help in any way. ‘Women and birthing people’ in a document sounds like there are two different sorts of people who give birth. It’s confusing, divisive and inaccurate….and still denies the impact of biological sex. We also know that in real life the result of additive language is that the words ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ disappear – often for practical reasons of space and time, and other times to deliberately omit the whole notion of ‘women’ as a biological sex.

If they really believed what they were saying, that phrase would come easily and would quickly be normalised.

I honestly think that if we can keep it to “women and…” eventually, as the trans trend dies down, the “and…” will gradually fade away in almost all circumstances. There’s no doubt that there is currently a fad for all things PC and a lot of pressure to comply and be seen to “do the right thing”, but it sounds like this interviewee still didn’t find it routine and easy. I think that will be common, as it involves a degree of cognitive dissonance, that perhaps the anatomical dehumanising phrases don’t. Everyone knows there isn’t really an “and…”

I think the important thing is to maintain the word women and not sit back and allow the offensive trend to reduce us all to body parts to be normalised. Once normalised, even when the PC/woke pressure stopped, it quite possibly wouldn’t change back.

Why the word 'mother' matters:

with-woman.org/2021/09/21/mothers-they-matter-however-they-identify-heres-why/

I have long suspected that the main reason the word women is being removed, and replaced with other dehumanising anatomical phrases, is because men who insist they are women don’t ever want us to use that word when it doesn’t include them.

So any time that women is used to describe women (whether or not there’s an addendum to cover those women who don’t want to be seen as women) is a win over those men.

I realise it’s not a perfect result, but it’s a great deal better than reducing us all to “birthing people” which is where we could have easily been headed.

And it makes it very difficult for those men to argue their case as they can no longer accuse the speaker of not being “inclusive” without looking very obviously ridiculous.

To me, "women and" implies people in addition to biological females can give birth.

(Quoted wrong item above - apologies)

Other matters aside, I should think the group encompasses non-binary people.

Freddy McConnell seems to have attempted to cope with the dissonance through a legal action to be named as father on the birth certificate.

inews.co.uk/news/freddy-mcconnell-ruling-trans-man-child-gave-birth-father-birth-certificate-342962

I agree. And the fact I'm willing to say ok whatever. Shows both female socialisation. Be nice etc. In action.

It's so difficult not to

And. Well at least woman is there. That's ceding ground. FFS.

I just don't know what to do in the end.

I sort of think. Ok whatever to that. Just let us have our own words and single sex spaces....

Fucks sake.

Women and is ok. I mean in the end not necessary imo but you know ok.
I strongly disagree. I regard 'women including....' as clunky and not necessary, but ok insofar as it doesn't change the meaning of 'women'. But 'Women and....' switches the definition from biology to identity. Not ok.

This is nothing to do with inclusive maternity services but to do with the idea that the words woman/girl/ and increasingly female must not be used ever when it's about our reproductive biology.

Women and is ok. I mean in the end not necessary imo but you know ok.

However.

To me the phrase birthing people. If I didn't know context and background. I would definitely take to mean those at the birth with the woman.

So I mean. That's silly.

The new language for women there is hardly any that is anywhere near as widely understood, and lots of it is very wooly and/ circular.

Eg people with a cervix.
If never had smear or baby. Plenty women don't know if they have a cervix personally. They ASSUME they do IF they know cervix = woman. Because they know they are a woman and so can expect to have one.

No one thinks person with a cervix full stop and no further steps to parse it.

It goes person with a cervix = girl woman female. Therefore it means girl/ woman / female.

An extra step of translation which not all will know, and in the end the answer is still because woman female girl.

It's a euphemism as so many things about our reproductive organs and processes have always had. Because unmentionable.

Now the organs and processes must be front and centre because woman/ girl/ female are unmentionable in relation to them.

The link is not altered at all. It's just not to be drawn attention to if you're a decent person.

It's all shit.

1. Only women can get pregnant.

1. Someone who is pregnant and doesn't identify as a woman is not a woman.

Those two statements cannot co-exist.

If only women can get pregnant, you cannot be pregnant and not be a woman.

I was trying to listen to a podcast earlier - 'the ultimate guide to being a birth partner'.

I used to really enjoy it. Unfortunately, the woman who runs it has adopted the language of 'pregnant people' etc more and more, to the point that she now audibly hesitates before using the words 'woman' and 'mother' (which she hardly ever does these days, although many of her guests still do). It is just so depressing.

Stripping language of the words 'woman' and 'mother', or rendering them devoid of meaning, which is what happens when we use expressions like 'women and transmen' are not feminist acts.

I would actually agree to the end of Brefugee's post as forming part of a compromise:
'Women, which includes anyone who doesn't agree that they are a woman (for whatever reason).
That works for me because, unlike 'women and....', it's not changing the meaning of the word woman.
It's a mouthful but I'm sure there are wordsmiths around who could pare it down.

Exactly Floisme. The only way to accommodate both groups is to have specific separate resources for believers in gender identity and keep the “traditional” terminology for the majority.

If we write "women and other birthing parents" where does that take away anything from women?
The way I see it is that those three letters: 'and' take away the very meaning of the word 'woman'. Once we give that away, what's left? How can we talk about ourselves or frame legislation about us if the word doesn't have meaning any more?

That's why this ideology must not be embedded in law.