James O’Brien on now ‘pregnant people’

The inclusive word is 'women'.

All non-binary and trans people who are pregnant (or have periods, or give birth, or have a cervix etc etc) are 'women'....which is a sexed word, referring to the sex of the individual/s.

And no, the 'additive language' of 'women and pregnant people' does not work. Why? Because it conflates sex & gender identity.

Of course there are women who say they identify as men or neither men or women, but unless they are totally deluded, they realise their sex remains the same. And why do we care? Because if you pretend that sex is not the salient biological feature of being pregnant, giving birth etc, how can you recognise, name and challenge the sexism that affects all females? If we're all just 'people', then how can we claim to be discriminated or disadvantaged or ignored on the grounds of our sex?

If everyone has a gender identity and will not even acknowledge they have a sex, then women lose out.

And that's one of the reasons why I'm rather tired of 'being kind' to women who say they are not women. I'll be polite, but going along with their idea they have somehow opted out of sexism? No.

You think being called a person not woman would mean you got treated better?

I think you will get worse treatment if the word woman is removed because it will hide what is happening

Its part of the same movement to pretend that sex is irrelevant to how women experience the world. And doing that causes real harm to women. Using language that denies women's experiences as women, leads to making women's experiences invisible and that does harm women and is harming women. I would say that is pretty dehumanising to women, yes.
Poor maternal health care in many parts of the world reflects the low status of women. We can't recognise this as a structural inequality that women face, if we can't refer to it as something that affects women only. We can't address sexism if we can't name our sex.

@oklets - Can you please tell me your view on the perfectly sensible reasoning on why it is important to distinguish 'women', from 'people'.

You seem to be focussed on the 'words', rather than the explanations.

I wish I’d been treated like a person when I gave birth… but sure, let’s fight over what we’re being called. That’s much more important than the coercion and obstetric violence that’s happening up and down the country whether you are a cis woman, non-binary or a trans man. But, yeah

• being called a “person” is the issue. That’s why I needed £2000 worth of therapy for the trauma. Good to know 👍

Let's remember that babies are people too! So instead of talking about "women giving birth to babies", we should talk about "people giving birth to people". That would make everything clearer.

Woman has, throughout history, across cultures, meant adult human female. Which rather shows its vital importance as a category. We don't deny that there are women who identify as a male gender. That doesn't change their sex (woman). We recognise the importance of keeping the word 'woman' to mean the female sex, for all the many reasons outlined here.

*women have the right to be called women'. This is true, nobody is denying this
Well, you are very clearly denying this. If you saying women can be called women, but so can these other people who are male, then you have destroyed the meaning of the word women, as when that word if used no-one knows if it is referring to women or males.

Its rather like saying cats can be called cats, but so can dogs.
You've destroyed the meaning of the word cats by doing that, haven't you?

If its ok in one circumstance then it must be ok in another till the word woman is obsolete which makes our sex based rights obsolete.

And a lot of us are keen to keep them

I think a lot of young people in particular think the problems are historic , they don't realise how much health and safety is still geared towards the male default

Ah a fly by!! I’m sure they’ll be back when they can explain how saying that only women can give birth denies the existence of trans ppl

I doubt oklets will absorb that data, no matter how often it is repeated. Not today anyway.

Maybe in the future oklets may have that moment many of us had... that "Oh crap! I said what?" moment when we read something our brains couldn't ignore.

If there is a disease, for example, which affects both men and women (defined by their sex) but women are disproportionately affected, then reporting on 'people' obscures the effect of the disease, and interventions to tackle the disease, on women. And this has started to happen in medical journals who wish to be 'inclusive'. And that starts to have real world affects on our ability to tackle issues that affects women due to their sex.

Which, given as we have only just started to recognise how illnesses and treatments can affect men and women differently, is a massively retrograde step in creating a society that genuinely treats women equally.

This is really important. We know that women who suffer a cardiac arrest are less likely to be resuscitated and survive.

A recent study showed us, that alarmingly, nearly half of women didn’t know what a cervix was. Inclusive language such as “people with a cervix” can exclude a lot of women, especially non-native English speakers and women with literacy issues or learning disabilities.

The consequence of excluding these women isn’t hurt feelings. It’s about reduced understanding of female health issues, reduced take up of women’s cancer screening and potentially the loss of women’s lives.

We are denying the existence of people who are neither male nor female sex
( people with chromosomes disorders I believe are comfortable with that statement )

We are denying that it is possible to change sex

Nowt to do with anyones gender. I don't care about their gender . Sone people are attached to it but it's not universal

I do care about people trying to change the meaning if sex based words to mean gender

Sex is not gender
Woman is adult human female
Female is the sex with eggs
Woman is about sex not gender

Toodles?!

Infantilising and rude. Pity you couldn't engage with all that was said. But never mind. If you ever change your mind and come back, we will still be here, ready and willing to discuss this with you.

You are always welcome🙂

We also end up with statistics we can't understand when we so this. So 'eight out of ten people having regular unprotected sex will get pregnant within six months' or 'five out of ten people found that they were more likely to get covid when they were having a period'

I've see this happening more and more. My DH is terrified by the pregnancy types one I must say...

Language is less effectual the more general.it becomes on the whole.

*disclaimer - made up statistics

All I'm hearing is 'women have the right to be called women'. This is true, nobody is denying this. Then 'ONLY women give birth'. This is true only if you deny the existence of trans and non binary people. Think my question has been answered so toodles 👋🏼

Exactly

There is no none binary sex

There is only none binary gender

The word woman is related to female sex

You can not be excluding none binary people by saying woman

Ergo the idea that saying people is more inclusive of none binary is nonsense - they are already included in women which is adult human females of any gender

But using gendered terms excludes none gendered people

[quote oklets]@anothersmahedmug Really? You strongly object to being referred to as a person? Think the replies here have answered my question! [/quote]
The problem is you have arrived with an objection. One based on something out with the wider FWR cohort.

And now posters from inside that cohort are trying to explain you are narrow focussing on one sentence, that doesn't quite say what you report it as saying

The history behind women posting here objecting to having their femaleness being nullified is manifold:

Person with a cervix - excludes a great % of women who don't recognise the word cervix, and many other gynecological terminology. Yes, there are some proper statistics on this. Quoted across FWR threads many times.

The removal of the sex based identifying word only occurs in female products and services. No men's health service has changed its terminology, there is no call for people with a prostate.

Oh! Do excuse me. One of the twin telly doctors did that last week, didn't he? Used the circular logic of "if you have a prostate then, unless you have had it removed for medical purposes, you are a person with a prostate". Because he couldn't bring himself to say "Men, get your prostate checked".

But no national health drive has done so for men's health. Just women's health services.

Women are women. Not all women give birth, have a womb, go through menopause etc. But ONLY women do. So it seems logical to refer to those people who do as women. For clarity and also for not fucking around with statistics. If, say, 40% of women experience a specific health issue what is the point of advertising screening services to everybody with the headline 40% of people will experience this cancer in their lifetime. So get yourself checked

It's a lie. No man experiences a specifically female cancer. 0% of men and 40% of women do. So not only does the headline lie, it misleads, causes fear where none need exists and reduces the real risk factor where it does exist.

And yes, this has happened, recently, in the UK.

This is why so many women do care, do object, do speak out. Because language matters, buggering about with it has consequences, and non amount of 'being nice' overrides the realities of health.

Please do have a wider read
There is a thread here called "break it down for me" that is long but has all of the salient bits of information in it.

[quote oklets]@anothersmahedmug What are you even talking about? I'm not really sure where you've come up with 'none binary sex'? [/quote]
@anothersmahedmug is referring to the fact that pregnancy only relates to one sex. And so it makes no sense to use language which denies that reality.

[quote oklets]@Intheopinionofourexpert Well my point was is your objection based on you denying the existence of trans/non binary people. And your reply indicates that yes, it is. [/quote]
So you think that when women say they want to be referred to as women, that’s not what they’re saying at all - they’re actually saying they don’t believe there are any trans people existing in the world anywhere, ever?

Yeah, that’s a really logical interpretation.

[quote oklets]@anothersmahedmug Really? You strongly object to being referred to as a person? Think the replies here have answered my question! [/quote]
Would you say the same thing to a person of colour who objected to someone refusing to refer to people of colour AS people of colour, when they were talking about issues of that relate to them exclusively as people of colour?

If you can see the offence and issue there, why can you not see it as it relates to women?

@anothersmahedmug What are you even talking about? I'm not really sure where you've come up with 'none binary sex'?