Thread derailment

Late to the topic but I don't agree with the premise that people aren't moderated out of this forum as I've seen it happen. I can be GC and still think the boards talk guidelines should apply equally to all posters - something MN have confirmed to me isn't the case on this board sadly.

I don't know - in my experience almost everyone does this, and people who work with the public do it a lot.

I work in libraries in a public facing role, it certainly is the case there that we reflect the patrons language when helping them. In an ideal setting the patron shouldn't know what our own views are about things, it's not relevant.

IME parents of kids with DS have several views on this but it is quite common for them to think it is presented in a way that is too value laden in contexts like this.

But I think i'd be at least as interested in what people with DS thought of it.

It wasn't prefaced by you as being about trans: the poster who questioned you about it did mention trans, among other identities. You stated 'It's simple. My brain just flips to "okay you're not a woman but you are pregnant" ' as if you are used to going from women to TM, despite having previously said but you had had never had anyone in your caseload who identified as TM, and your response to the questioner brought up youth, disability and Average Annie, rather than TM, as examples of changing your language when caring for individuals. You seemed keen to generalise to women having other identities than that of woman - not clear why you want to - and to trivialise a woman's sense of herself as a woman by suggesting it was no more important to her than her ring size. .

See for example this thread

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5415881-bristol-council-insists-women-be-called-people-with-ovaries

I bend myself in pretzels for everyone I care for. This isn't superior care for trans people. I haven't personally had a trans patient before. We are similarly reflective about improving care for everyone. So for instance, the way we talk about intimate examinations was looked at closely because we wanted to provide better care to women who have experienced sexual abuse. It's a standard part of healthcare.

Anyway apologies but duty calls and I'm off now. Thanks for an interesting derail 😀

Yes, although "should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I do wonder how many women get to "feel understood" by HCPs or "feel in control".

So I am more interested in who you feel obliged to bend youself into pretzels for so that they feel understood and in control and who you feel needs to, how did you put it, deal with it themselves? Some animals just seem to end up a bit more equal than others.

QED thank you to the derailing derailer.

I agree with the poster upthread about average reading age and comprehension levels.

I think a lot of us on these boards are well-informed and able to do critical thinking and analysis of text.

Sadly, something happened at universities in the 2000s to mean that many undergraduates missed out on this and I think those students' reasoning capabilities were actively harmed by the raised importance of 'right think' . Many of my friends who didn't go to university also have this ability through reading and open critical discussions.

Thanks to our friend above my point and many other points will get lost .

This is a shortsighted perspective. One of the best ways to maximise the chances of a good outcome for the parents and the baby is by providing individualised, holistic care. Maternity service users want to be understood so they can have a healthy pregnancy and birth that they felt in control of even in times of chaos and ambiguity. So nobody should have to choose between being understood OR a healthy baby. It shoukd be standard that everyone is given the best chance of having both.

More or less important than a healthy baby and a functioning pelvic floor? Or do we take those for granted nowadays so that we can all focus our priorities on "being understood"?

Why would anyone pregnant still be on testosterone? Do you think a TM is going to go to the trouble of conceiving a planned baby and not find out that they have to stop testosterone? It wouldn't be a challenge just like it isnt when you enquire about other harmful prescribed medication someone might be on.

I think you are imagining all these scenarios that just don't occur. The majority of TM will have ultra planned pregnancies.

I wasn't really talking about challenging an individual user - though goodness knows how you talk to a pregnant woman about testosterone use without challenging her.

It's your assumption that somehow TM aren't women which you revealed here even outside of the individuals you have to deal with. As a HCP you must have to deal with individuals who have all sorts of whacky ideas and carefully avoid challenging them in order to provide that care. But HCP don't usually take it on themselves to validate those whacky ideas.

What are they dealing with though? A TM receiving safe and individualised care and being included in services relevant to them? Why would that bother anyone if they are also included? They do feel excluded by being included as "women" because they report as much. How can you speak for TM? That's very presumptive to assume you know better than them about what approach to their healthcare they need from professionals.

I think people might be accustomed to shutting anyone who has a different perspective down through a mix of snark, derailment and relying on the moderators to give greater protection to explicitly GC views. Since on this thread, people have called out thee tactics already, it isn't as easily utilised this time. Since I am willing to respond to any posts aimed at me or about me, the thread continues.

Bingo - it's respecting the needs of the noisy minority over the quiet majority again.

In your view the quiet majority can suck it up and "deal with it". But surely it's the TMs who have the problem and who need to deal with it? They are no more excluded and deprived of safe individualised maternity care by being included as women (they know what the word means!) than all the other women are excluded by these word-games. Medical safety is compromised when HCP don't use clear language about sex.

This is a really eye-opening thread. It's somewhat raising my blood pressure, but having so many pages of one person arguing for their beliefs is also interesting. It lends a certain continuity.
So to get back to something akin to the thread subject, I think it shows that there is a place for something that some people may consider a derail.

Any attempts to challenge a pregnant sevice user on how their personal identity would be the epitome of terrible care. Only a selfish narcissist would do anything like that. Don't get me wrong, I have met midwives who are so awful that they have done things like that. Thankfully 2 of them are now struck off for not being able to leave their personal views at home and letting them leak into how they care for their service users.

I think you have to consider that for some people, being understood in that way is the most important aspect of their care.

I see TM as TM. TM can get pregnant and have a cervix and so literature has to include them. It isnt complicated.

If you feel that acknowledging TM exist and need maternity and gynaecology services as erasing you or other women, I think that's something you'll have to deal with yourself. The answer isnt to exclude TM so people who don't want to acknowledge their existence can live in peace.

I think if you keep trying to have TM excluded from safe, individualised maternity care, any other more valid points you have about sex and gender will be dismissed. Especially by professionals who have a duty of care to their service users.

Several types of humans give birth but regardless of identity they are all female. I'm not sure how you can separate identoty from sex and gender, at least not while you're giving giving birth. There's a big difference between (a) thinking that "woman" as an aspect of your identity isn't very important to you, and (b) refusing to identify as female or a woman at all while being pregnant and giving birth, to the point where it causes you distress if your HCP reminds you of it.

It's very ideological to assume that a midwife can provide "excellent" care to a mother while focussing on other aspects of the mother's identity over the physical realities. Pregnant women often have all sorts of ideas and theories about how things should be and I thought midwives were usually quite good at bringing them back down to earth.

@Squishedpassenger

We do have that person here who identifies as both a TM and a woman but that's the only time Ive ever heard of anyone doing that..

There are more people like me out there, but we are literally not allowed to speak up anywhere. This board is the only place I've found so far which wouldn't shout me down for transphobia for exposing my views. Which in turn means that new TMs only get to hear the one TMAM discourse, and either it doesn't even occur to them to question it because it's The Truth From On High, or even if they do, they don't have anyone to discuss it with anywhere.

I have stated many times on this board that it is impossible to believe that trans identities are valid without either holding sexist ideas about mental differences between men and women, or holding sexist ideas about the low importance of female-specific needs, voices and experiences.

And I use racism as an analogy to highlight this because I think it is shocking that the sexism of Genderism is openly supported by officialdom in a way that racism (while sadly still very present unofficially in officialdom) is rightly not.

And there is is again.

"including them somehow erases other groups who are also included (women)"

So despite claiming that you don't really see trans men as not women, you just use this language to make them comfortable, your subconscious is telling us that actually you do see them as separate groups.

As a female person, I can tell you I find the language "women and ..." whichever groups of female people are apparenty not women extremely excluding, and it makes me feel very unseen.

Because while weaselly orgs may feel they can sit on the fence by telling women like me "oh we don't really mean it, we just need to make women who do not like to be seen as women feel included", I can only make sense of it in the way it actually written, which is that "women" are some sort of personality group, one to whch I have no idea if I belong or not.

Can you not see, by trying to sit on the "women and..." fence, you are actually disempowering and demeaning everyone? Female people who are supposed to just carry on understanding "women" means women in the original sex-based meaning, and trans identifying female people who are being pandered to with language no one except them is actually suppposed to take seriously?

Yes that's wrong and that's why I said it's best to say women and people with a cervix.