Good ways of using inclusive language without excluding women etc

Add a disclaimer in small print at the bottom

The health service has a duty of care to provide the best possible service to the whole community and for the dignity of all. This is why it is important we always recognise sex primarily even if this is difficult for some of our patients because of the biological nature of health care and provision. We recognise and respect patients who have a different gender identity may find this hard and where this is relevant we will treat patients with the dignity, respect and privacy they deserve using prefered pronouns as advised. However we must stress that is not in the interests of trans people to replace sex with gender for the purposes of healthcare provision, nor does this protect the dignity and privacy of other patients. Failure to acknowledge could lead to substandard levels of medical practice and is important to good clinical practice.

Or similar words to the same effect.

Leave the word woman alone. Just as it seems to be fine to leave the word man alone without drawing criticism.

Highlight the clinical need to know sex not gender.

The thing is, to 99% of the population, woman simply means adult human female and sex and gender are interchangeable terms. I used to say gender purely because it was less embarrassing than saying the word sex.

To a vocal minority, sex and gender mean different things, yet also the exact meanings of these terms, and terms like female and woman, are constantly shifting about and mean whatever someone wants them to mean at any given moment. Fluidity and ambiguity is the point. These people all know what sex they are, and if they are in any doubt as to whether, for example, they require a smear test, they can ask their doctor.

(Maybe it's easier if you think about the words we use for animals - stallion, mare, colt and filly. Those words tell you about the sex and age of the horse they are describing. No more, no less.)

If we're talking biology surely it's male/female
Gender would be man/women boy/girl?

If in doubt use male or female?

How would people feel about disclaimers?

Plus inevitably someone will whinge that they were born a natal woman on the inside, where it matters, i.e. that mythical place in the soul where gender identity resides.

More and more on the side of grown-ups drawing a line and showing that we don't have to pander to all this. It occurs to me that it's actually quite unsettling for a child testing the boundaries to find no resistance.

I don't think natal is a term that passes the "reading age of an eight year old" test. I don't think I've ever heard of natal men and women outside of the deepest recesses of this debate.

ie a trans woman is someone who is not a biological female or a woman, because if they were one they're be the other and they;d not be trans.

I think it is absolutely crucial that young people ho have been brought up to believe they can change sex are told in no uncertain terms that they can't. We need to absolutely decouple sex (which is fixed and binary) from gender (which is woo woo). Even if you don't think it's woo woo, you still need to know you can't change sex.

I really think our next action should be getting the 'assigned at birth' bollocks language out of our nhs, schools and media. I think it has a huge part to play in the confusion many young people are now feeling.

And (I know this has been mentioned a gazillion times) there is no push for inclusive language for men. Prostrate cancer charities talk about men. Not men and trans women. Men.

This is not about inclusivity for trans men. This is about coopting the word women to include men who say they are.

Women. It’s sex based. On issues such as healthcare you can’t just ignore ignore sex.

I think natal male and natal female are inclusive terms that still allow people to make (albeit nonsensical) arguments about gender identity and 'transitioning'. This was quite widely accepted by TRAs until the move to use AMAB and AFAB came along - and even that is now out of favour.

Just "woman" and people who have a problem need to get a grip on reality. I'm really tired of the pandering to childishness... "but what about meeeeeee?" You know what sex you are, you know the words woman and man so use your noggin and make some better decisions for yourself. Leave the vast majority of the population to the simplicity of terminology we frankly deserve having put up with this head-fuck from you lot for so long.

Ideology has no place in a medical setting.

Pedants - I was told that health literacy in the UK was equivalent to the reading age of an 8 year old. So patient leaflets should be written in language that a Sun reader (reading age of 11 required) could understand.

Does anyone know where that comes from?

I can live with 'woman and.... ' and 'mother and....' if necessary. However just as versions are available in different languages on request, there should be a TW/TM version of information available to take or download that is the specific language and regards their specific medical needs, and advice on how to navigate that with health providers.

But this is not, in essence, about the need of TW and TM to have access to better health care. This is about a political agenda to disenfranchise biological womanhood from the concept and words for women. Which is insane to participate in if you are providing health care to specifically meet the needs of a group who will in fact be 100% biologically female, otherwise they would not be needing that healthcare.

I’m with Babdoc. I work in an area with low literacy rates, low income and multi-generational low educational attainment.

Information needs to be clear and unambiguous. Pregnant women works just fine. Not everyone has the luxury of knowing what a pronoun is, never mind the long list of choices.

For e.g: www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng201

"The guideline uses the terms 'woman' or 'mother' throughout. These should be taken to include people who do not identify as women but who are pregnant. Similarly, where the term 'parents' is used, this should be taken to include anyone who has main responsibility for caring for a baby."

The thing is, women AND is unnecessary for all the good reasons outlined above, but it is rarely the preferred option for woke campaigners, because it completely misses the point. Front holes, menstruators and birthing bodies is never demanded to appease women who identify out of their sex but still desire motherhood. Apart from a few notable exceptions, very few trans identifying women don't know their sex and how relevant it is to healthcare and childbirth. The terminology is required to divorce as much female biology from the words women and mother to appease men who will always be men, cannot become women and are so enraged by this fact we must be obliterated in language if not in fact. Which wasn't the question, I know, but to me renders the question a bit pointless as nothing will ever be good enough.

If you are looking for easily understood and inclusive, "women and" constructions do not meet the brief. Neither does "women (which includes...)".

Both are undeniably inclusive, but they do not meet the requirement for comprehension. In my view, this is much better dealt with by using a tested and proven method of adding a separate paragraph (often a side bar or a text box, sometimes even a whole new leaflet) which directly addresses women with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

Of course, it's still possible to get this wrong. The Scottish Government for instance used "women" without any additions throughout its new "Women's Health Plan". And then they added a text box to state that where they say women, they mean of course all female people including those who identify as trans. (From content and context it is unequivocally made clear that this is indeed about the healthcare needs and issues of female people only.)

Unfortunately instead of saying that, they said this:

^This document will use the term
‘women’/‘woman’ throughout. It is
important to highlight that it is not only
those who identify as women who
require access to women’s health and
reproductive services. For example,
some transgender men, non-binary
people, and intersex people or people
with variations in sex characteristics
may also experience menstrual
cycles, pregnancy, endometriosis
and the menopause. The actions
included within this Plan make clear
that all healthcare services should be
respectful and responsive to individual
needs.^

When creating healthcare materials it helps to use a coherent definition of your target group, i.e. women. The Scottish Government does not have one as it believes that women can be male or female, which here interferes with some otherwise excellently ambitious aims for improving healthcare for women. Hence they're using "identify as women", a phrase which firmly includes males in the provisions of this health plan even though they go through neither menstruation, pregnancy, birth, endometriosis, gynaecological cancers or the menopause. They also exclude those of us who do not identify as women but simply are women.

I'm giving them a 3 out of 5 for intent on that text box (because I know exactly where that thinking is coming from - a need to genuflect to the doctrine of gender identity and its proponents), and a 0 out of 5 for execution.

Sign me up to team Babdoc!

The thing is, this only ever seems to be about redefining the word 'woman' so that it includes men.

I had a leaflet through the door about signing up for Movember and there was not a single mention of 'men and...'

Can't remember who it was, but something somewhere used women throughout the document with an asterisk on the firs mention that lead to a reference/foot note which explained who they were using the word to cover, ie this covers women, transmen anyone of the female sex, so similar to the "includes" approach, and does not interrupt the flow of the document.

We have to be able to assume that every transman and every woman who identifies other than by their sex descriptor, does, in fact, know that they are a women when we are talking about sex (or at he very least knows that the word "women" might be referring to them). Admittedly, given the education on this issue that some are getting, that may not be safe to assume in the future, but right now it is.

Woman is inclusive, as it means those of us with female biology. This was a perfectly acceptable definition for everyone up until very recently when a small group of angry people decided they didn't like it, and now for some reason we are all supposed to go along with this. It's not about being inclusive, it's a power play.

I appreciate you are trying to do a good thing OP, but it will never be good enough. Nothing but complete capitulation to their cause will be good enough.
Queer theory sees the reshaping and control of language as the way to remake the world. They believe that words are actual reality, and by manipulating them, we can shoehorn reality into the words (it's totally nuts, but hey ho). Therefore they must control the language and manipulate everyone's speech to align with their view of the world. And they've done a good job so far with emotional threats and outright abuse.

They also want to decouple the word 'woman' from female biological processes, so that men who don't have the required internal biology can opt in to that group (because no matter how great their fake boobs are, no amount of plastic surgery can give them a working uterus or cervix, or allow them to menstruate). This is very important to them for several reasons, mainly validation and AGP.

"Woman/girl" is inclusive language. It covers all female humans.

Being a woman does not mean you have to embrace all stereotypes associated with women, physical or behavioural or emotional.