To ask you not to tolerate the term "pregnant people"

[flashbac]

It might seem harmless and kind but it is not harmless. I'm seeing the term alot at the moment due to the horrid state of affairs across the pond.

Pregnancy, abortion, menstruation, menopause. These are issues that affect women and reasons why men have sought to control us, to control our bodies. We are seen as vessels, chattels, playthings, property, servants, and then, when we can no longer get pregnant, as useless rubbish. All due to our biological function. If you tolerate language change so these things are seen as 'people' rights issues that affect both 'men' and women we lose the truthful and valid argument that bad and oppressive practices, laws, policy decisions etc, e.g. banning of abortion, are rooted in misogyny, which of course they are.

Abortion bans are because of misogyny. Especially in countries where there is no free maternal care, no statutory maternity leave or pay, no shits given about the children once they are born. This is a women's rights issue, a sex based one. And we, as a sex class, must never take any rights we have for granted.

To the religious right of most faiths, women AREN'T really people. Even religious-right women, like Justice Amy Barrett, seem not to regard other women as truly people. Just there to be 'surrendered wives' and walking incubators for embryos.

To the religious right of most faiths, women AREN'T really people.

And the genderist left don't consider women to be 'people' worthy of words to define ourselves either. What is astounding is that the left have conned so called liberal feminists to the extent that they have been prepared to give away our words in favour of men in the name of 'progression'. The liberal feminists have been so busy trying to enshrine the rights of men to include themselves in the definition of 'woman' that they have had their eyes off the issues that most impact women.

It is under the watch of the democrats that women have lost abortion rights in the USA.

Rather than enshrining abortion rights in statute the left has been busy letting men with special identities rape women in prisons, compete and win thereby remove the right of women to compete and win in sport and gain the lucrative college contracts that go with it, gain access to rape crisis services for women who are raped by men, enabled and applauded the 'transitioning' and mutilation of children, the list goes on.

What a time to be a woman. Both religious right and the left seek to remove our sex based rights.

Language absolutely does matter. It's not neutral. If you think that pregnant people is acceptable then you are absolutely part of the problem.

@Intheflicker

Why didn’t you care?

do you not care about women’s rights in general?

are you happy to be seen just as a vessel to facilitate others?

I hate chest feeding as a Term. Chest implies lungs. Men have breast tissue. I'll always thunk people who say chest feeding are idiots

Chest feeding is even more insidious actually, because that feels like a male term rather than a female term. Men have breasts tissue as you say, so even if we must keep up a fucking ridiculous illusion they can feed with them, why change the term?

Genuine question and not trying to be goaded but I don't understand why someone who is living life as a man would actually want to be pregnant, one of the most feminine things a person can do. (I get the desire for children but a surrogate could be used)

Also, why 'pregnant people' but not 'people with prostrates' or 'people with testicles'?! Because they use the word 'men'. Because that's what they are. Why am I a 'womb carrier' yet my husband is a man not a 'Penis owner'?! Totally sexist bullshit undermining women. Oh, sorry - womb carriers 😡

I agree with Felineweird.

I think we should distinguish between the use of the term "pregnant people" in the context of maternity care, and in the context of abortion.

I totally agree with others who say that if you have chosen to get pregnant and have a baby, you are doing the most female thing it is possible to do - in the sense that getting pregnant and having a baby is basically the only thing female people can do and male people can't do - and so your dysphoria about your female body cannot be that bad. You do not need sexed language to be removed from women's healthcare communications in order to avoid triggering you. The people demanding this, such as Freddy McConnell, are on an ideological mission and must be told no.

When it comes to abortion, I think it is more nuanced. If somebody who identifies as a man or non binary has an unwanted pregnancy and needs an abortion, these services should be inclusive of them. If you are a pregnant person who does not want to be pregnant, labelling you "woman" if you find this upsetting is only going to add to your trauma, especially if you do have severe dysphoria about your female body and are already finding pregnancy very triggering. That doesn't mean we should remove the word "woman" from abortion healthcare, or pretend for even a single second that it is a people's rights issue rather than a women's rights issue, but I can see the logic for having additional inclusive language to support people with trans and non binary identities who are seeking an abortion.

I hate this term. It makes me sick. Roe vs Wade is an attack on women’s rights not people’s rights. Don’t distract from the optics of male politicians/ judges taking women’s rights away.

So many brilliant comments. This is a battle women can't afford to lose - for ourselves, our daughters and granddaughters. And also for the men in our lives. Society depends on truth-telling - it's the basis for our understanding of human existence, our place in the world and how we share our experiences with one another.
Politicians, medics, educators and others who try to tell us fundamental facts are wrong are doing so much damage.

But it's not the job of anyone to have to validate someone's identity it was their choice to transitiom akd they shouod only have done so in the knowledge that its their issue and their issue only. Nonpne else is obligated to even vare let alone go alomg with it. It's the height of entitlement tbh to constantly expect staff wherever you go to be a part of your identity. What if thsie staff do not consent to being used that way. Especially if in doing so they confuse, offend, exclude the rest of the women and girls they are dealing with. Its healthcare therfore should be dealing in facts and accuracy especially as informed consent is so important and should complications arise akd lead to legal action where do you think staff would stand if it emerged they indulged the idea men could get pregnant.

Not sure if this has already been posted but here's a fantastic piece from journalist Janice Turner in the Times that highlights what's happened as part of this "journey" to eradicate the identity of women as an identifiable sex class. Share token:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/502e7594-f642-11ec-84c1-32e852e780b0?shareToken=78287785a87991568ce17bcff923f4f5

but I can see the logic for having additional inclusive language to support people with trans and non binary identities who are seeking an abortion

I would be less bothered by the use of “inclusive language” if it went both ways. If men were referred to as testicle-carriers, prostate havers. These organs in men get cancerous and they represent an important men’s health issue.

Yet it’s only women who are referred to as their bodily parts - vulva owner, womb carrier, or as their bodily functions like menstruator, birthing bodies.

If it was about inclusivity the language change would affect both sexes. That it’s not, is a reflection of how transwomen are striving to decouple the word “woman” from reproductive functions and anatomical structures that only women have.

Don’t be fooled by #bekind and so called inclusivity. This is a men’s rights’ movement.

Some excellent points here. I see myself as trans inclusive & I work with young people, some of whom are trans. I respect them & the way they identify. Where I have a problem with this however is where this comes at the expense of women. I feel similarly about religion in that I live in a diverse area with a large Muslim community. I respect that they have certain beliefs but do I want to be governed by sharia law? absolutely not.
I think it’s interesting to look at other marginalised groups who have had to reclaim language & think about the difference here. The key issue is that changes in language (which were absolutely necessary) did not completely dismantle or threaten another group in the same way.

Brilliant article as ever from Janice, and this is an excellent point:

"Other political movements respect their elders even when their views no longer align with modern mores. Black Lives Matter would never forsake Marcus Garvey or Malcolm X; the LGBT movement deifies those who in 1969 bravely defied homophobic police at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. Feminism alone lays waste to each preceding generation of leaders, campaigners and thinkers as impure, backward, irrelevant, wrong."

Also love her point about needing the word "woman" to place this in proper historical context against the long, long history of women's oppression.

I agree it’s all ridiculous,

Great article.

I think one of the biggest issues for feminism as a whole is that the full understanding of how women are oppressed by society comes quite late. I didn't get it until I had children.

Its easy for young women to dismiss the issues faced by their fellow women (and themselves in time) because they just don't get it. Support for the TWAW position seems to me to divide across age ranges, with middle aged and older women being the ones being more critical of it.

Yes I get your point, but I was referring specifically to abortion care, which obviously doesn't need to be inclusive of anyone male.

I get the impression that trans women don't generally want men's healthcare communications to refer to "people with penises" or "people with prostates" because they don't want the public to be reminded that they have penises and prostates.

Sinead Watson - a detransitioned woman - also made a very interesting point, which is that when she was in the grip of gender dysphoria, she would not have wanted to be referred to as a "menstruator" or a "person with a cervix" because she didn't want to be reminded of her female body parts.

When it comes to healthcare I think there is a difficult line to walk between the need to include minorities and the need not to exclude or invalidate the majority.

That's why the overall debate around abortion needs to be framed as a women's rights issue, or a female healthcare issue, because that is exactly what it is. It's really problematic to not have a word we can use to describe "female people" as a class. But I don't see the problem with actual healthcare information about abortion referring to, for example, "pregnant women, trans men and non binary people" to make it clear that these services are inclusive of all female people. "Pregnant people" is not specific enough, because the word "people" includes male people.

In the context of maternity care, as I said above, I take a different view. If you feel that strongly that you aren't a woman, don't get pregnant and have a baby, which is the one thing only women can do. If you choose to get pregnant and have a baby, you can cope with being called a woman, which is a much smaller thing than all the other things you will have to cope with in order to grow, birth and feed a baby from your female body.

As said many times upthread, erasing the word woman from anything to do with female biology only suits one group, males who identify as women. If woman=female body then these male people are excluded and they hate this, hence the need to forbid the use of women in this context. Patriarchy and MR activism in action.

If a Trans-identified female can cope with the very female trauma of carrying a child for 9 months, giving birth to it then breastfeeding I think she's proved herself ok with the biological functions that define being a woman and she should just get over herself when it comes to official language and take one for the women.

And the genderist left don't consider women to be 'people' worthy of words to define ourselves either.

Possibly. But the left, genderist or otherwise, have extremely little influence anywhere in the United States; and none at all in those states where reproductive rights are most endangered.

It is under the watch of the democrats that women have lost abortion rights in the USA.

It is the Supreme Court, not the president or Congress, that has made the decision. And the judges who voted for it were all appointed by Republican presidents.

And what the decision does, is leave abortion rights up to the individual states. That means that if you live in a Democrat-voting state like Massachusetts or California, things probably won't change much. But if you live in a Republican state like Mississippi or Alabama or Utah, hello Handmaid's Tale!

Not that most Democrats are exactly left-wing in any case!

But let's not divide liberals against each other just at the time when we most need to combine to fight the utter evil of the far right! I have no wish to use the silly phrase 'pregnant people'; but it's not those who use the phrase who are leading parts of America to Gilead! It's people like Pat Robertson, a hugely influential American Christian Right leader, who has made such statements as:

"Lord, give us righteous judges who will not try to legislate and dominate this society. Take control, Lord! We ask for additional vacancies on the court."

(i.e. kill off the Ruth Bader Ginsburgs so that the Trumpsters can replace them with the Amy Coney Barretts -as eventually happened, and helped to cause this nightmare).

"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."

"(T)he feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

"I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period."

This is what non-doormat women are up against in right-wing states in the USA.

It is the Supreme Court, not the president or Congress, that has made the decision.

Obama, having promised to codify abortion laws, failed to do so. Biden has also failed to take the opportunity preferring to focus on enshrining the rights of males to enter women's spaces on the basis of claims of gender identity.

There is no point in denying that the inaction of democratic presidents has enabled SCOTUS to repeal Roe v Wade. If it was codified, as it should have been had the democrats really focused on women's rights, then SCOTUS would not have had the power to make this decision.

I use the term pregnant people and have done for years, I had no idea it had all this stuff attached to it. I never gave the expression any deep thought because to me of course a pregnant person is a woman. I definitely count as a "Terf" so I didn't consciously use this expression in a gender political way

I can see what you mean - 'pregnant women' is tautological.

Also love her point about needing the word "woman" to place this in proper historical context against the long, long history of women's oppression

It really doesn't do trans people any favours either.

If men can breast feed. If women can have penises. If men can give birth then how can any woman prove a sex discrimination case when companies can prove they hire women , even if they are all the male kind, and the men haven't been provided with a private breastfeeding room either so it's not sex discrimination.

Talk about turkeys voting for Xmas