Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Science podcasts now ‘gender neutral’ about pregnancy

156 replies

WinterNeverChristmas · 28/12/2021 22:42

Listening to the ‘Brains On!’ Podcast about innies versus outies and other pregnancy related facts. Really excited that there was a new (to us), interesting podcast on science for our DC. However, quickly the podcast is all about how a placenta grows within a ‘pregnant person’ etc etc. That phrase was mentioned no less than 20 times. No mention of the fact that it’s actually a woman who has a child. Nope we are pregnant people now. It’s science.

OP posts:
NeedsCharging · 29/12/2021 15:17

People who have periods

I didnt have my period until I was 15 but my mum discussed it with me when I was about 11. She never discussed it with my brother and at aged 11 we were both people who didn't have periods so why didn't she talk to him about what he should expect when his period started?

hugr · 29/12/2021 15:19

@NeedsCharging

Yeah

And there we have it.
hugr is happy to disadvantage women and girls only. The misogyny is strong in you clearly.

I just don't see the point in arguing with someone who is being so obtuse.

It's not the same as BLM. If we were talking about NAMALT and "but men are disadvantaged too" then I'd agree with you. But it's unrelated.

But there you go, you don't think women are people so...

NeedsCharging · 29/12/2021 15:22

It's not the same as BLM.

Both women and black people are disadvantaged groups. As a black woman I fall in to both disadvantaged groups. I find it odd that you wouldn't want to take away "black" from me but you are happy to remove the word woman from me? Why?

YouSetTheTone · 29/12/2021 15:22

Posters on this thread are demonstrating just how many women there are who have internalised misogyny. It’s really depressing.

You know those mental health support groups for men - Shed Groups?
Why does no one go after those, saying how exclusionary and transphobic they are? Women, on the whole, understand why men like these services/ groups etc. Most will say (quite rightly!) ‘totally fine and appropriate that men have these spaces.’ But most of those very same women will attack women who want their own groups/ services etc and even wanting to use the correct word to describe our sex. Why?

Woman = adult human female. Why aren’t we allowed to own this?

youvegottenminuteslynn · 29/12/2021 15:23

[quote youvegottenminuteslynn]**@hugr

I didn't learn about periods at school before I had mine. We had 1 3 day education on it which I was ill for. My mum taught me about periods and people who have them.

And what about girls who have families who don't talk openly about these things?

Girls who don't have a mum, only a dad and no wider family, so nobody older female they trust to ask? If that dad has archaic views and is too embarrassed to do the right thing and be as open about periods as a mum would be?

Those girls NEED to be taught outside of the home and they need correct and clear language in order to understand important things about their own bodies. [/quote]
What about these girls @hugr?

ForestLake · 29/12/2021 15:32

@Whatsnewpussyhat

No man has ever been pregnant.

If any of the minuscule number of females who want to say they are men or anything other than a woman, decide to use their FEMALE organs to produce a baby, (funny how this doesn't 'trigger' them isn't it. Just the word woman) they can simply ask their own midwife and other medical professionals involved to call them whatever they want and stop demanding that 50% of the population pretend THEIR sex based reality no longer matters or exists.

By getting pregnant they know damn well what sex they are. So why should the rest of us pretend they are somehow special or different to any other woman who has a baby?

This.

No one can change sex.

TheWeeDonkey · 29/12/2021 15:42

I just don't see the point in arguing with someone who is being so obtuse

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Oh I'm sorry @hugr I think my irony meter has just broken

Whatiswrongwithmyknee · 29/12/2021 15:46

Do you really not see how ‘people’ is the easiest way to include everyone?

We shouldn't be trying to include everyone when we are describing an experience unique to adult human females. We should, however, be trying to use language which most of those adult human females consider respectful.

Whatiswrongwithmyknee · 29/12/2021 15:56

I didn't learn about periods at school before I had mine. We had 1 3 day education on it which I was ill for. My mum taught me about periods and people who have them.

Well that seems like a solid argument for not helping kids in school know whether they will/ should be having periods or not.

You really have to know how my mum knew I was going to have periods?

We know how mum's used to know when girl meant child human female. The question is how will future mum's know when whether their child should be having periods. This is a genuine question. Are you saying that we should call females girls unless they actively object to that? I can't see how that would be compatible with not mis-gendering and girl/boy/man/woman just being a matter of identity and not biology.

user1745 · 29/12/2021 16:38

@worriedaboutfitness

Saying ‘people’ doesn’t exclude women. Are women not people?
It's a little like if someone made a podcast about racism in the UK and never made any reference to black or Asian people, only people in the general. It's technically correct (they are people, after all), but black and Asian people exist as a distinct group and they have life experiences that result directly from the fact of their race. It's simply not right to gloss over their existence and pretend that when it comes to racism, all people are the same and are likely to have the same experiences. It's a form of erasure. You can't talk about racism without acknowledging race and you can't talk about biology without acknowledging sex.

That's a very imperfect analogy of course because racism isn't intrinsic to non-white people only, and white people can experience racism, whereas pregnancy is intrinsic to women only and men cannot ever experience it, but it goes a little way to show how it might make a woman feel when the word "people" is continually used in relation to something that applies only to women.

eveningbubble · 29/12/2021 16:39

why the hell are intersex people being used here? Either you have your argument for trans or you don't.

user1745 · 29/12/2021 16:50

@eveningbubble

why the hell are intersex people being used here? Either you have your argument for trans or you don't.
I agree. Intersex people are not the ones jumping up and down asking people not to say "woman". In fact many of them are quite offended at being lampooned in this way and having words put in their mouths.

And it's extremely rare for an intersex person's sex to be truly ambiguous. They are almost always identifiably male or female, albeit with abnormal anatomy or chromosomes. It's a disorder of sex development, not the absence of sex.

Whatwouldscullydo · 29/12/2021 17:00

Again like with sexuality many of the arguments put forward by sone trans activists, well they erase those with dsds any way

Like the whole sex is a spectrum thing. If sex really was a.spectrum then a dsd wouldn't even be a dsd. You couldn't have no binary either as the binary has to exist I'm order to define yourself against it.

There's an awful lot of picking and choosing depending on who is the latest demographic to be appropriated to attempt to enhance an argument.

BugEyedBeans · 29/12/2021 17:48

I heard this podcast. I didn't understand or like the term 'pregnant people'.

As a 1980's feminist and aware my concept of gender focuses on political / equal rights, I asked my DS 19 his opinion. He gently nuanced for me how his friends think of sex / gender / sexuality / appearance. He has a good number of friends who identify as genders different from their sex (and even one whose gender is she / them), but are not interested in transitioning to be trans women or trans men.

So could the podcast terminology be a clumsy attempt to include people who - while biologically women (sex) - identify as a different gender? Rather than be focused on trans women?

NeedsCharging · 29/12/2021 17:53

while biologically women (sex) - identify as a different gender? Rather than be focused on trans women?

I dont think the podcast or anyone on the thread is focused on transwomen as it is about pregnancy and transwomen being male cannot be pregnant.

Biology doesn't care what gender anyone identifies as.

bordermidgebite · 29/12/2021 17:54

But gender is totally irrelevant to pregnancy, whist sex is very significant

And whilst many people are happy accepting /choosing a gender label , it's not universal

Many women in particular having had gender used to constrain and hurt them find gender something they want nothing to do with

So here we have gender, a negative thing for many woman in particular being used to replace /proxy for sex in something heavily biological

BugEyedBeans · 29/12/2021 18:09

Yes agree - clumsily mixing sex and gender and offending everyone!

YouSetTheTone · 29/12/2021 18:19

If people want to be ‘kind’ and inclusive and progressive, then smashing gender stereotypes does far more for both men and women than rigidly enforcing them and replacing sex with those gender stereotypes.

FlibbertyGiblets · 29/12/2021 19:44

People who have periods need to know the details about the having of the periods, ideally before they start having the periods, but how can we identify which group of people to tell about periods? It is very confusing.

NdujaWannaDance · 30/12/2021 05:52

There's an awful lot of picking and choosing depending on who is the latest demographic to be appropriated to attempt to enhance an argument.

Yes there is. Trying to have a rational discussion with some of these people is like trying to wrestle a cat. Infuriating and pointless because of the way they twist and turn and wriggle, constantly contradicting themselves in an attempt to evade truth and logic every time.

If any of the minuscule number of females who want to say they are men or anything other than a woman, decide to use their FEMALE organs to produce a baby, (funny how this doesn't 'trigger' them isn't it. Just the word woman) they can simply ask their own midwife and other medical professionals involved to call them whatever they want and stop demanding that 50% of the population pretend THEIR sex based reality no longer matters or exists.

By getting pregnant they know damn well what sex they are. So why should the rest of us pretend they are somehow special or different to any other woman who has a baby?

I think it’s arguable that ‘pregnant people’ even benefits a transman who is pregnant. A transman is undoubtedly very aware of the dichotomy between their sex and their gender identity. They know they’re only pregnant because they’re a woman.

Exactly. THEY KNOW. And they are more than happy to exploit/ignore that dichotomy when it suits them. The body they loathe, the one they say they've been trapped in miserably their whole lives with its female reproductive organs which categorically make them the very thing they claim to detest and reject, has turned out to be incredibly useful and beautiful after all.

It's the easiest, most natural way to give them the thing they want more than anything in the world - a child. Clearly they want that more than they want manhood even, or they'd be seeking irreversible reassignment and testosterone treatment first and worrying about the effects on their female fertility not a jot. But no. What they want is to be a MOTHER first. Becoming a man is clearly of secondary importance.

Yet the rest of us are supposed to collude en masse in some great deception where we pretend men can have periods, give birth and breast feed, and we don't know that women who identify as men are using their bioligical ability as a WOMAN to become a MOTHER just so we don't trigger them into remembering that they are in fact, a woman.

They get to acknowledge that they are actually a woman, by the very act of accessing maternity services, but the rest of us must never speak the word, and don't get to see our own identities as biological women written or spoken about. It's beyond fucked up.

WineAway · 30/12/2021 06:20

@NdujaWannaDance. well said that woman. I say this as a menopausal woman (nor person) awake most of the night due to sweats & a racing heart.

Funny how menopause is never appropriated.

Lifeisbeautiful01 · 30/12/2021 06:24

@bordermidgebite

People eliminates women as a distinct group

Now we know that ( because of sexism and sex related attributes) men more easily get into positions of power , earn more cash, are more likely to commit violence. These are all bad things , driven by sexism not merit

What happens to that knowledge if we only talk about people?

What happens to the actual discrimination?

Hint - if it's only people then we can't prove discrimination but it will happen

Very eloquently and accurately put. We lose that perspective at our peril. Maternity rights, amongst other women’s rights are hard fought and under threat from lack of funding and a very phallocentric view of fertility and birth. Women and girls across the globe are still disadvantaged by their sex, implicitly and explicitly; failing to recognise biological sex and put women at the heart of the issue is deferring to the ‘norm’/ the male. I spent my teens and twenties trying to address women being treated as ‘other’, a subclass of men. Christ knows I never thought we would be letting things slip back so far.
YouSetTheTone · 30/12/2021 09:45

To pick up on your great points @Lifeisbeautiful01
In some third world countries charities are set up in order TO PROVIDE women and girls with single sex loos/ bathrooms. They know that providing these facilitates their safe access to education/ society.

Here in the U.K. we’re being PREVENTED from access to single sex toilets/ facilities.

How quickly we lose our gains and our rights, the things we fought for. How precarious it seems to be - I never believed they were only ‘granted’ but it seems to be true.

Whatwouldscullydo · 30/12/2021 10:40

In some third world countries charities are set up in order TO PROVIDE women and girls with single sex loos/ bathrooms. They know that providing these facilitates their safe access to education/ society

This highlights the racism that's a big part of the ideology. Suggesting that somehow Western men are different and can pee next to little girls and we must allow them to do so.

Men/males are the same everywhere. The attitude towards women is the same across the globe. Western men/males may find alternative ways to control women's lives but but end result is the same.

montysma1 · 30/12/2021 10:57

A man who has a womb is a woman. A woman choosing to present herself as a man, but still biologically a woman.
Nothing can change that.