Righto...

These are just generic guidelines about general limitations, they don't actually provide any insight or evidence around whether people understand the word "female" any less than "woman".

You’re being very obtuse.

Biologically female women who are happy that they are women don’t tend to visit gender clinics.

I’m a GUM nurse, the posters we currently have up mention “women” and “people with a cervix”; the overwhelming majority of our biologically female patients happily identify as women so the posters generally reach their target audience. We have a poster specifically for women with learning disabilities, too.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/cervical-screening-cervical-sample-taker-training/topic-1-the-nhs-cervical-screening-programme-nhs-csp#barriers-to-cervical-screening

Section 5. NHS, publication date Feb 2020.

Yup I checked. It's in the essay but not in the clear, concise poster which is where it needs to be.

Thquestis ion

If there is genuine evidence that uptake in stuff like cervical smearing falls in number when the word "woman" is not explicitly used, I would understand the issue. But I don;t think it's that unreasonable without that evidence to assume the word "female" covers that

And actually scratch that as they are actually 2 separate issues which I have conflated. There's no correlation between using the word "woman" and either having or not having a trans man on the poster.

There are many, many resources that provide accessible information for the women you’ve described, and they will also be disseminated and displayed in places that will reach the target audience. There’s an easy-read poster of a lady with Down Syndrome on the PHE smear campaign downloadable resources, which might be displayed in, say, a day centre or group home for women with learning disabilities.

The poster aimed specifically at Afro Caribbean women might be displayed in an area with a large Afro Caribbean population.

The posters which could apply to any women would be displayed in areas where the average biologically female person that would see it would be women that identify as women.

How does that not make sense to you?

But to claim that they are having disproportionate and "unfair" representation at the expense of women, you can't just provide anecdotal examples of that representation alone. Surely you would have to compare it to the numbers and reach of advertisement and material aimed at women and all the other demographics of women mentioned in order to get a fair comparison.

Has anyone actually done that or do you just post isolated examples of trans inclusion and base your views on that alone?

If there is genuine evidence that uptake in stuff like cervical smearing falls in number when the word "woman" is not explicitly used, I would understand the issue. But I don;t think it's that unreasonable without that evidence to assume the word "female" covers that.

Gender clinic means the word woman is hidden because? I don't get it? Is there something wrong with the word woman in a gender clinic? Or is woman a dirty word which shouldn't be used in a gender clinic? The one describing females goes where? Not in gp office or gum clinic?Where is this mystical place where women can't say women?

As I said earlier, the most recent statistics have been quoted on the thread. Yes, this really is a need.

That is the language of the campaign here on the government website: women and people with a cervix.

The last leaflet I was sent was such a word salad focussed on trans rather than issues affecting women that I genuinely couldn’t work out if I should go or not (for reasons I have no intention of going into here it is not completely clear whether I still need to be screened and I was hoping the leaflet would provide some guidance)

Do you have any evidence to back up your claim that a fair proportion of women with additional needs would either not understand what the word female means or not have a carer who would have input into their medical welfare?

Because it kind of feels like you're using disabled people as a sort of ideological shield right now. If you can provide any literature on the matter I will of course learn from that.

You may like to read around the many and multiple threads looking at the replacing of words such as woman, mother, breastfeeding etc, with neutral terms. Not adding: replacing. It is a significant issue for women at the moment that in the rush to be inclusive to some, others are not excluded. And that the tolerance for diversity runs in both directions.

The reason that I and many other women are currently convinced that it is not, and that it is unfairly biased, is born out by hard fact.

I don't have a problem with the word woman at all but I am also confused about what is wrong or unclear about the word female. Like, adult human female?

The point is that this poster will be displayed in places that will be accessed by the people described in it. Gender clinics, for example.

It wouldn’t be in the ladies’ toilets in a women-only gym, or probably even on the waiting room wall in a GP surgery.

Then I'm afraid this is a very naive view of the kind of needs that make health care inaccessible to many women.

But it's only your perception that those other demographics are not being catered for, and it's the assumption that they're being forsaken in favour of transmen that I have an issue with.

The same poster has provided a really good link with loads of different types of accessible information for women with other needs but that's been ignored.

When that happens, it shouldn't be hard to understand why it comes across that people have more of an issue with the fact that there is a trans man on a cervical screening poster rather than just being worried about women with additional needs.

I'd like to see what evidence you have to back up the claim that advocacy for trans men is disproportionately dominating cervical smear campaigns.

User testing can't possibly be a forte here. If I've seen 2 similar posters with enormous lists of people to cater for by the time I get to the 10th poster which finally has the word female I'd have skimmed ,recognised and discarded. This is how I got to 30 without knowing cervical anything was for women only. Now your turn what's wrong with stating clearly "woman" and whatever criteria anyone else would like to use?

There's no such thing as 'assigned female at birth'. Doctor don't 'assign' a sex. They certainly don't 'assign' a gender - that would be even more ridiculous. They observe what sex a person factually is. Assigning implies that the doctors choose and allocate a sex. Why on earth would they need to do that?

You wouldn't have understood that female is synonymous for being a woman?

Genuine question, as I empathise if people struggle to understand words like cervix but I (genuinely without trying to be unkind of ableist) assume that any adult would either know what the word female meant or if unable to grasp language at that level would have some kind of caring input.

So interesting that there's the 'if it saves one life' when it comes to TM, but women with learning difficulties, literacy challenges, EAL.... this is the point. Women are not just randomly having a fit because TM are included, the point is that this political movement is dominating and reframing all language for women and this is harmful to many other groups of women. Much greater numbers of them than TM.

If it was just including TM too no one would be here arguing.

Although we'll leave aside that we all know it isn't about TM at all in actual fact; the root of this eliminating of all links between the word 'woman' and biology has nothing to do with helping anyone female.

Of course they matter as do the 99% of the rest of which 25% would not understand that this poster applies to them. Woman and anyone with a cervix is another option. There are many alternatives which can be direct for all involved. What do you have against finding an alternative with the word woman in it?

Also, as a smear taker, I couldn’t give a shiny shit if the person who turned up on my couch had a beard, or whether they introduced themselves as Mary, Geoff, or Cupcake. I’d just be thrilled that a) the information had reached them and b) that they’d turned up so I would just crack on with taking their smear without batting an eyelid.