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.

Don't ask me that !

Clearly if you believe in gender then your sex is separated for it

But if you believe in gender I have yet to see anyone define women without either waffling about just knowing , excluding a lot of females or quoting a lot of stereotypes

I don't feel confortable with the term 'pregnant people' because it feels like it deletes the woman out of the scenario and it almost seems like 'women' have become inanimate.

We need to remember, without women, the human race would stop. Full stop.

I believe in equality for all.

IT IS NOT ABOUT MEN NOT HAVING PERIODS. It is acknowledging that people who were born female and now live as male or as non-binary still have a uterus and therefore can still menstruate and get pregnant. This isn’t about men claiming to be women to access changing rooms and blah blah blah, the usual MN trans hysteria.

Ditto chest feeding. And the language isn’t used for everyone, it’s allowing people to have the option of language that’s more inclusive to them if they wish it. I was a pregnant woman, and I breastfed. I have been involved in the care of people who now identify as male and have given birth and chosen to chest feed. It doesn’t take anything away from my experience by allowing them to have theirs.

All of this

Definitely yes of the first point (about knowledge of sexual difference being socially constructed). I don’t understand what you mean by the second “trans people can have unmediated knowledge of being the opposite sex”? What do you mean by “unmediated”? certainly I think trans people can have knowledge of sex which can’t be reduced to the material fact of their body parts.

They don't feed from their chest
They feed from breasts

It's not your chest you check for signs of breast cancer is it?

Or will you start giving mammograms to men ?

How do you tell a child that bleeding down there isn't right if you call all children children not boys and girls ?

It's stupid language that obscures real and valuable information

I am not a woman if woman is gender

What am I ?

I think trans people can have knowledge of sex which can’t be reduced to the material fact of their body parts

Where would this knowledge come from?

The very fact that transmen can get pregnant proves that sex exists independent of gender

This is exactly the difficulty I have.

I do not want to define myself according to gender because I find it regressive and sexist. It has no meaning for me. I don't have a gender identity because I don't think the knowledge that I am female has anything to do with gender. I don't want other people to apply labels to me that I don't agree with, or to put me in a box with people I don't think I have anything in common with, on the basis that they claim we have some sort of shared identity.

I do want to define myself as a female person. I want a word that means female people - all female people and no male people - and I don't want male people to use that word to describe themselves.

But because some people have arbitrarily decided that woman is now a gender identity that some male people have and some female people don't have, I am being put in a box I don't want to be in, without my consent. The only way to escape this box is to say that I am not a woman. But then people will try to label me as non binary, or some such nonsense. I am not non binary. I am binary. I am female.

There is no other word for female people. "Women" is the only word we have. And even if we were to accept that woman is now a gender identity, and that if we want a word that just means female people we need to come up with a new one, very few people would use it. Because that's not how language works. Women has been used to mean female people for well over a thousand years, and until five minutes ago nobody was suggesting it means anything different. Even now, almost everyone believes that it means female people. And it does mean female people. But it also now means male people.

So we no longer have a word for female people.

And even if we made up a new one, you can bet your life that male people would start using it to refer to themselves. Hell, some of them are already calling themselves female.

That's why this colonisation of language is so insidious.

any knowledge of biological sex is socially constructed

That's bollocks. Animals 'know' about biological sex. They may not be able to conceptualise it, but they don't need to - they know. My dog knows if he's interacting with a dog or a bitch, he doesn't check the collar colour.

I have knowledge of what male means.

But not first hand knowledge because I am not male and never will be.

The same is true of trans men.

YANBU. The right to an abortion is a right specifically for women and girls.

Many Christians can and do know themselves to experience a deep personal knowledge of God. Does that mean God exists?

Historically and today, people devote their lives to God by living as monks and nuns. Many experience this "transition", if you like, from a world of secular concerns to one that centres God, as living the life they are supposed to be living. Does that mean God exists?

If your answer is no, then why does the real but subjective experience of gender by trans people prove gender is objectively real but the real but subjective experience of God by religious people does not prove God is objectively real?

We don't even have a definition of woman amd man gender identities either so I don't even know how anyone can know which one they have.

If you want to be taken seriously at least define your terms.

It's deliberate.

They refuse to define their terms because it's impossible to do so without having to admit that it's all absurd, sexist nonsense.

any knowledge of biological sex is socially constructed

If this was true then the human (and every other living thing that sexually reproduces) would have ceased millenia ago and the world would be a barren rock.

Sexual reproduction is hardwired into animals.
In fact I'd go so far as to say it's the MAIN driving force in nature, the point of existence - procreation.
And to do that we are very aware of who the males are and who the females are.
Males instinctively know when the best time is to mate with females (yes even in humans), phermones play a massive part in animal reproduction, women's cycles align when living in large groups, and a whole host of other physiological responses happen THAT WE DON'T EVEN CONTROL OR ARE AWARE OF happening in our bodies, because it is WIRED to do this.

Men smell different than women. This is not "socially constructed". It is a biological fact.
Two people taken to a desert island when infants with no knowledge of sex will most likely reproduce. When I say "people" I don't mean "people" with "identities". I mean a male and a female.

How do you explain isolated African tribes who manage to reproduce with no wester knowledge of biology?

Absolute hogwash.

YANBU OP, many well-constructed replies already to explain why, too.

IT IS NOT ABOUT MEN NOT HAVING PERIODS. It is acknowledging that people who were born female and now live as male or as non-binary still have a uterus and therefore can still menstruate and get pregnant

No it’s not. It’s about uncoupling women from their reproductive (including lactating) functions so that men who identify as women don’t get hurty feelz (as notbad says).

All of the terms - womb carrier, vulva owner, menstruator, pregnant person, bodies with vaginas etc - are so that men, who do not fit in these categories, can still call themselves “women” without having to be constrained by actual biology.

If it was genuinely about making transmen feel comfortable then we’d see similar terms to describe men, such as ejaculator, testicle-carrier, prostate owner, penis haver. But we don’t, do we?

The frustration is that the problem is entirely created by a very specific but currently dominant narrative around trans experience.

If they had found new words for inner genders instead of insisting that Man/Woman, which were already perfectly useful existing words used for types of body, absolutely have to mean inner gender instead and no other words will do, all these problems they now encounter because the "right" word for their body is the "wrong" word for their gender simply wouldn't be a thing.

It makes no sense at all to say on the one hand sex/biology are different things, then on the other try to make them have the same names. Unless, of course, your concern is less about recognising and accommodating inner gender alongside sex and more about removing any recognition of sex at all.

I wonder which sex would suffer most from that? The one who is already the default human and therefore has laws and society that work for it by default, or the one that has always been treated as the exception and whose rights and protections different to the default only exist by explicit definition?

At least testicles come with their own perfectly designed carrier bag. It has not been clear how women carry, or are meant to carry wombs 🧐.

All of this.

If they had found new words for inner genders instead of insisting that Man/Woman, which were already perfectly useful existing words used for types of body, absolutely have to mean inner gender instead and no other words will do, all these problems they now encounter because the "right" word for their body is the "wrong" word for their gender simply wouldn't be a thing.

They didn't even need to find new words - 'feminine' and 'masculine' already exist. Maybe those didn't mean exactly what they wanted, but surely would have been much more appropriate words to use rather than appropriating and ruining the vital word 'woman'.

Yes, we all know God made scrotums from left over elbow skin.

There are a lot of TW who think uteri (plural?) will soon be available in the latest "plug n play" editions, because it's that easy.
Maybe they will come in lovely handbags?

Do you literally not understand that the two parts of your argument contradict each other?

If women cannot “know” their biological sex without this being already socially constructed, then trans people can’t access a knowledge of the opposite sex either, can they? All that can be communicated about sex is actually gender.

Unless of course you believe in some kind of mystical communion of souls, Jungian collective unconscious, Platonic idealism or theological holism.

But it hardly makes sense that it’s radical social constructivism of sex as “gender” for “cis” people; but mystical trans-social knowledge of the biological sex underlying “gender” for trans people.

That would just be a religiose theology of the gender-elect, wouldn’t it?

I’m a HCP and I sometimes use the term “pregnant people”. Women are people, it’s normal to use gender neutral terms sometimes. I usually say pregnant women.

it’s normal to use gender neutral terms sometimes.

Why would you use a 'gender term' (neutral or otherwise) when it's a sex term that determines if someone can or can't be pregnant? Can't you see that makes no sense whatsoever?

I agree the conflation of sex and gender has resulted in the most ridiculous bollocks in terms of understanding of basic concepts and clear expression. This thread being a shining example.

Push back. All the time. Truth and clarity matter.