Use of “inclusive” language in medical leaflets etc

You can blame Stephen Whittle for this - the privacy aspect of the GRC means sharing info re: a trans person’s natal sex can incur a criminal penalty.

And as no one knows which trans person has a GRC and which trans person doesn’t policy has to err on the side of caution and not share that info at all, even if it’s detrimental to the health of trans people.

You make a fair point in this context - I was amazed by the proportion of women who have had a hysterectomy.

Before I give to charity now I always check what their website and message is like. No 'woman' or any ridiculous language then they are not getting any of my money.

That is a very good idea, and something I've been meaning to do. Scan down the list of charities I give a tenner a month to or whatever, and bin off those who come up with this sort of bollix. Plenty of good causes the savings can go towards instead.

Then they aren't following the current NHS data guidelines. The entire impact of this will land on transgender and non-binary people.

There is a data field for "An indication of whether the person's gender identity is the same as their gender assigned at birth."

It's quite common to hear things like "1 in 10 people have endometriosis". It's often not clear whether it's a straight find and replace of "people" for "women" so 1 in 10 women, or whether it's 1 in 5 women in the population also including men.

This isn't just leaflets it's everywhere. I listened to a woman from the endometriosis charity the other week and she only uttered the word woman once. From what she says, if you didn't know, you wouldn't have been 100% who it affected.

Before I give to charity now I always check what their website and message is like. No 'woman' or any ridiculous language then they are not getting any of my money.

Most are, according to the NHS, and there is a manual data field that can be updated on GP patient records so they are not cpntacted. But you are right, not 20%, somewhere between 10-20%.

This also uses the language of "women and people with a cervix"

https://www.nhsggc.org.uk/media/267749/faq-for-hcp-and-gp-cervical-incident-final.pdf

I'm sure Dadjoke knows as much about women's health as he does about equality law and biology.

I got my ‘invitation ‘ for a smear test recently and it was for people with a cervix
it irritated me so much that I haven’t made my appointment yet 🙄

Hysterectomy doesn't necessarily mean cervix is removed and may mean that ovaries are kept too.

It's also not 1 in 5 women.

I can assure you it doesn't. The NHS Trust at which I am employed asked for your 'legal sex'. And patients are allowed to change it without any ID showing the sex they want it to say , I've known patients who have done so. So a large teaching hospital has no idea of the actual sex of its patients.

Can't see how that could cause any issues, after all it's #kind and inclusive.

Not all hysterectomies are total hysterectomies.

Around 55,000 hysterectomy operations are carried out in the UK each year. This means about one in five women will have a hysterectomy at some point. The most common age to have one is between 40-50, however they are often carried out on women outside of this age group.

https://www.circlehealthgroup.co.uk/health-matters/ask-the-expert/hysterectomy-your-questions-answered

You've just reminded me, I never did get a reply when I wrote to NHS England to ask whether they'd been smear testing men to get that figure...

The NHS keeps records which allow them to differentiate between trans men and non-trans men. Only the trans men get a reminder.

If they have not updated their NHS records, they will still get a reminder, because they'll be listed as a woman.

Where is that stat from, it sounds very high? 1 in 5 women don't have a cervix?

I am, but trans women (as well as the 20% of other women who don't have a cervix) know they don't have a cervix, and not a single trans woman I know would mind at all.

I was in a loo yesterday and there was a poster on the door, regarding cervical screening. Nowhere on the poster did it say woman or women, it said three out of four people attend for their smears, lower down it said anyone with a cervix.

Extraordinary that a group of medically qualified people asked you to take out the word woman without knowing why!

Talk about outsourcing your thinking.

If I’m reading something medical - I want it to be a crystal clear as possible because I am potentially shitting myself that I have cancer or have had a stroke.

I don’t want to be playing linguistic silly buggers about the ‘technical’ prospect of having prostate cancer.

On 24 September 2021, The Lancet medical journal highlighted an article on its cover with a single sentence in large text; “Historically, the anatomy and physiology of bodies with vaginas have been neglected.” This statement, in which the word “women” was replaced with the phrase “bodies with vaginas,” is part of a trend to remove sexed terms such as “women” and “mothers” from discussions of female reproduction. The good and important intention behind these changes is sensitivity to, and acknowledgment of, the needs of people who are biologically female and yet do not consider themselves to be women because of their gender identity (1). However, these changes are often not deliberated regarding their impact on accuracy or potential for other unintended consequences. In this paper we present some background to this issue, describe various observed impacts, consider a number of potentially deleterious consequences, and suggest a way forward.

www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgwh.2022.818856/full

And the recent very moving testimony from Ciarra Curran of Little Heartbeats to the HoL's committee.

Ms Curran, from Chinley, Derbyshire, said that seeing the words mother and woman being erased from healthcare communications reminded her of that traumatic experience.
She said the removal of such terms…within the NHS, was incredibly hurtful to other mothers who have also lost their babies.
Demanding sex-based language is preserved Ms Curran said: 'It is extremely important for women who have experienced pregnancy or infant loss are recognised as mothers and not just a generic parent.
'To refuse us this status of mother in language is incredibly hurtful.'

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5012863-the-reality-of-losing-sex-based-language

This is the current approach, but this is as a result of campaigning by women on the issue - a couple of years back that would have just read "people with a cervix" with no mention of women. The trouble with that is that research shows that a substantial proportion of women in the target group didn't actually know what a cervix was or if they had one (I think it was over a quarter), so if you leave out the word women, they might not recognise that it applied to them. The "women and..." approach to cover trans men or non-binary people is fine. I'm amazed by that one in five figure though, I had no idea the hysterectomy rate was so high.

In terms of where the editorial policy comes from, I do some work in this area and we recently got told by a working group of clinicians to take the word woman out of a leaflet on a specifically female health issue. When we pushed for their reasoning why, it transpired it wasn't really their opinion but had been a blanket directive from their professional body. Fortunately their role was to advise us on the clinical aspects of the information in the leaflet, so we were able to explain our reasoning for not doing it and keep it in.

Wow, that pair of posters - are they really there adjacent to each other?
Men are worth saving (ITA) but women aren't even worth naming in a similarly clear and accessible way?

Public information posters like that should be aimed at people with a basic standard understanding of the English language. Trans people should be receiving specific advice as appropriate.