I am not a "person who menstruates"

[auserna]

AIBU to think that terms such as "birthing person", "partner with eggs", "womb-carrier", "cervix haver", "people who menstruate", "chest-feeder" are not only insulting to women but downright hurtful to those who have any gynaecological and/or fertility issues, including DSDs?

Those terms may be considered inclusive to/by people whose gender identity doesn't match their sex (c.0.5% in the UK) but are exclusive to those with DSDs or gynaecological issues (c.12% in the UK).

NB My figures are rough, partly because the statistics relating to people with DSDs are very contentious and because "gynaecological issues" is a broad term, but they are clearly significantly higher for the latter group.

Honestly this is up there with councils making children sing ‘baa baa green sheep’ and ‘they’ve cancelled the word Christmas’. In other words- paranoid, reactionary nonsense.

In my dealings with healthcare I have never encountered these terms. I am sure you can dredge up some examples to enjoy being offended by, but it is really such a non issue, just an excuse for performative outrage.

We’re heading into ‘they no longer say Easter on chocolate eggs’ season, so that is something to look forward to.

I hate this sort of language because it reduces women to their biology when we're people with personalities and skills.

And came across as rather rude itself in the absurd way a more nuanced view many have explained with some care was framed as being "upset" by "being referred to as people", with and the clear intimation of, "Proper weirdos, they are!"😁

(I mean, to be fair, we would be weird if that's what we thought. Like, random- planet-on-classic-Star-Trek weird! "They're people, Jim, but not as we know them!" "Spock, do you have to be so literal? You used the P-word again. They're very upset, they may attack! Oh no - phasers out, people! Ah, bugger - not people, no, er... Men! Oh, bugger - sorry, Uhura! Er...")

Ahem. Blame the glass of wine and a tough week.

But seriously, sometimes it's hard to take some of these arguments... well... very seriously.

Gah, above obviously a response to Flirts. I promise I can use the quote function... usually.

It's a good point. Many posters who bang this drum relentlessly bang on about how being called a person who (insert whatever you want here) instead of a woman is dehumanising when by definition calling someone a person cannot dehumanise then because all humans are people!

Dehumanising language is when people are compared to animals or objects with no humanity and that is used to justify the mindset that they do not deserve humane treatment. I actually think it belittles the very real dehumanisation of groups of people by politicians and governments who are then demonised by society leading to their abuse to claim being called a person is dehumanising. So it's a good point to highlight in my opinion, because a lot of FWR posters do have a problem with being called a person and a lot of people find that ridiculous.

One more response to the above, then I'm calling it a day on that post (you may be pleased to hear!)

I hadn't noticed the criticism "a lot of bile" in the above - I read it as "bilge" 😅. On seeing it, I do want to post the link again to invite any other reader who can be bothered to click for themselves to see if they can find much "speech or writing that expresses bitter anger or hatred" (M-W). I mean, I agree she's pretty peeved, and I definitely don't agree with all her views, but in this blog at least I've only ever found good humour in the tone and not a trace of "hatred"? (Except for the erasure of women in language to their detriment). I wouldn't read it otherwise.

Perhaps seeing Hill's (OK, fairly acerbic!) analysis of (what she sees as) a sexist trend in language as "bile" could make it easier to assume that others would be genuinely upset at something as inconsequential as being called people? I dunno.

I think you may be conflating two different phrases here.

The objection to dehumanising language isn't usually to the phrase "a person who ... [ insert uniquely female biological or social experience ]", it's to constructions like "menstuators" or "ovulators" or "gestating bodies" that do remove the humanity of a complete person and refer only to functions as if they were separate and unconnected, losing the recognition that if one is a "gestating body" then one is very likely to have also been a "menstruator" and an "ovulator" and ones life expereince will be informed by all these things, whereas if one is a "sperm carrier" than one has never and will never be any of those others so ones life experience cannot be formed in any way by ones response to them.

Whereas the objection to the language "people who..." is not that is is de-humanising but that it removes the specificity of which humans all this happens to. It breaks the connecting thread between the sex based experiences and challanges of women by which we can recognise these are shared experiences and, yes, at times, shared injustices. And to be clear, I am not meaning the simply biological experiences and challenges but also the social, domestic, public and political experiences and challanges that arise from our sexed bodies in a specifc society. Not biological experiences, but nevertheless rooted in the reality of our biology, something that regardless of what we may do with our language is an inescapable and unchangeable fact.

Losing specificity of the single sex group "women" in favour of the mixed sex refers-to-all-of-humanity "people" disconnects us from our history and each other. It denies us the language and framework to connect our individual experiences with the consequences of being women (female bodied) rather then men (male bodied).

So, while the construction "People who..." is not dehumanising, nevertheless it is still reductive of the reality of being female and not male. And in a society framed and shaped by Patriachy is not a minor oversight.

Certainly, concern over losing the language to express the commonality and differences between women in favour of simply mixing us into an indistinct soup of differences and commonalities between "people", where the challenges that come specificallly because we are female can no longer be clearly recognised and articulated, is not something that I as a Feminist would consider "ridiculous".

"Dammit, Jim, I don't know what to use. She says they're upset by 'person' as well as 'people' now! Let's leave this crazy planet! Beam me up, transportation-system-controlling-person!"

"Gah! Spock, kindly, that's exactly the distinction I've been trying to make to you. This lot down here are crazy, and we're leaving right now before they kill us. But good ol' Scottie did have a bit of a point earlier when he said you were reducing him to a function with no humanity - just show some respect and use his name or title, FFS!"

More seriously, re: your point about "it belittles the very real dehumanisation of groups of people by politicians and governments..." - what makes women's dehumanisation in this language "not real"? Or its consequences insignificant? (The worst I read of was some recent research into women with head injuries in prison, the data of which was wholly corrupted by the inclusion of transwomen, who have different skull thickness. Cos they're women, and no different, right?! The most upsetting for me personally was a video account by a Black woman who explained how the current association of women with their bodily functions can be, for people familiar with this, distressingly similar to the language used by southern slave owners to describe their "females" with reference to their functional value).

My views are pretty simple here. I think that systematically removing the language that a historically oppressed demographic needs to describe itself and advocate for its needs (and the dismissal of its members concerns as no big deal, and the argument that it's something they should accept for the greater good, as implied above), is the clearest indication imaginable of how much that same oppressed demographic - women - actually need their language. Transwomen have their word, transmen theirs. I'm all for additive language: "women and transmen" etc. But to leave human females with no explicitly unambiguous noun of their own at all (and this less than a century after women got the vote and not many decades after the British recently decided women's husbands didn't have a right to rape them? while we see women enslaved in Afghanistan and the world largely indifferent?) That, to me, is unambiguous and genuinely frightening oppression. (Well, that and the fact that it's not even yet universally acknowledged as such).

Thanks. Really clear - and more patient than mine.

Went for a lower back x Ray recently and I was asked my gender said female and was asked if I have always female and if I am a complete female… wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be offended that looking at me thinking I may have previously been a male

A few years ago I sat in a London hospital waiting room for an early menopause clinic with my 32 year old daughter, who had entered the menopause for the second and final time after years of complex medical problems, pain, misery, medical neglect, surgeries and near-death experiences - she is also a survivor of appalling male sexual violence. Sitting opposite were two young men wearing clothing and make up that would have befitted porn stars on an night out, one had a moustache, the other a full beard, both were very loud and chatty and frequently got up, one at a time, to have a walk around the waiting room. They were utterly oblivious to the agony of the women, many in their teens, 20's and early 30's that were struggling with the most complex gynaecological problems and the emotional devastation that accompanied them. Why wouldn't they be? They have no conception of what being a woman is and they were being indulged and pandered to by society on an unprecedented level. Womanhood is not a costume that can be worn by a man.

My daughter called herself a biological failure, she felt her body was defective. Her experience as a woman cannot be diminished by supposedly well meaning imbeciles that always prioritise a man's feelings over a woman's very existence. I am so sick of this crap. Sex is an immutable, biological fact. Saying so is not unkind, it is just stating reality.

Women's healthcare is so undervalued and under researched and my daughter spent so many years of her young life going to GP's and emergency rooms only to be told there was nothing wrong with her, that it was all in her head, until she had to have emergency surgery and nearly died - and even then they cocked that up! Obfuscating and outright denying biological reality literally endangers women's lives.

Yes, exactly. That was my point.

Yes, this is similar to the stance that trans women are women, but biological women are "cis" women.

2024 Ministry of Justice data confirmed that around 62% of "trans women" (biological male) prisoners had at least one conviction for sexual offences. In comparison around 19% of male and 4% of female prisoners were sex offenders. Surely the discrepancy is glaringly obvious for all to see.

You say:
"Very very few sex crimes are committed by trans people. They are predominantly committed by men, as we know."
Please tell me you are aware that "trans women" are in fact biological males, hence the need for women to have single sex spaces, as men are staggeringly more predisposed to commit sexual offences against women and children?

We seem to be living in terrifyingly misogynistic times when using the word WOMAN has become a flash point for mens rights.

I think when people use the term gender critical they actually mean gender realist.

Edit* Just for clarity, I am a gender realist.

I find this argument a bit disingenuous, this is a much deeper issue that is deliberately obfuscated by trying to frame it as all about being kind and inclusive.

Please google La Leche League and their focus "on inclusive language like chest feeding and human milk feeding" and their encouragement of "trans women" i.e. biological males, breastfeeding babies.

Women are advised to cease taking the combined (oestrogen containing) contraceptive pill whilst breast feeding, then consider the feminizing hormones that men have to take in order to "lactate" to chest/breast feed a baby. Then please google "Peripheral Precocious Puberty due to Exogenous Estradiol in a 3-Year-Old Girl: A Case Report" and think about the as yet unexplored implications of all of this on a child's future health.

It is a very contentious issue whether men that have been taking feminizing hormones can produce nutrient rich milk, and the possible effects of those hormones transferring to the baby through the lactation, more research absolutely has to be done in this area before La Leche League and the NHS (amongst other organisations) promote the agenda of "trans women" "breast feeding" - and yes, that promotion absolutely includes the very real use of so called gender neutral language in professional settings.

When do we start to question whether a man's wishes should trump a child's healthy development?

Also please consider googling the evolutionary anthropologist Katie Hinde to learn about her amazing research and the emerging evidence of how important and ingenious a phenomenon Mother's breast milk actually is.

La leche league are common knowledge because of how bizarre their 'campaign' was, I don't know anyone who took that seriously. You can bring up fringe extremists for any subject it doesn't mean there's an actual threat. Perhaps if the NHS start taking policy advice from them.

I could quote a hardline Islamic cleric and say that we're under threat of Sharia Law and Christmas being banned. Most people would recognise that as racism and not reality. Same situation.

Yes, that is why it is akin to the Daily Mail 'they've cancelled Christmas' confected outrage. If you dig enough you will find examples to back up your claim, but they will be obscure and far from mainstream. In reality, this is a non-problem and the aim is to stoke division and direct anger at a minority group.

No.

It's about the moral right of 51% of the population to retain the name that gives us our social and legal identity and connects us to each other and to our history.

Trans "women" are a minority group of men. Trans "men" are a minority group of women. Their self identity is ultimately based in sexist ideas about what type of mind is "right" for what type of body. It is not an reason to redefine every single human being on the planet into the same sexist framework.

If the only way trans people can be happy in themselves is to impose their sexism onto the rest of humanity than I'm sorry but it's too much of an ask. It's not fair, it's not reasonable and it's not a true reflection of who we as humans are. They need to find another way.

I don’t think trans people are ‘imposing their sexism on the rest of humanity’ and more than I think Muslims are imposing their traditions on us, you can’t wear a poppy, the word blackboard is banned - insert made up outrage of choice. You are amplifying a few extreme views to stoke hate and division- there is too much of that in society already.

The equivalent to what genderists demand when they demand employers, healthcare providers and public bodies use "trans inclusive" (ie sexist) language "women and other people who menstruate men" would be for Muslim people to insist that public discourse and legal identities start referring to Muslims and Infidels. This is not happening.

The genderist sexism however is happening.

Trans rights activists insist that trans women are women and trans men are men because they have the minds of women and men.

In what way is that not a sexist belief that only some types of minds are right for men and for women?

Insisting that society consider "women" and "trans men" to be different types of "people who menstruate" changes us from simply being the half of humanity who are female in all our diversity and with any type of mind into the people who have whatever type of mind it is that transmen feel they don't have.

In what way is that not imposing onto all women a sexist reduction of who we are?

No, I'm quietly getting on with things whilst managing not to berate other women, but there's a queue of TERF's waiting to tell me how I'm betraying the sisterhood.

Now I'm fairly convinced you're not arguing in good faith, I'm afraid. This is a laughable analogy and easily disproven with quick googling of the organisation's scope and reputation, and by skimming the link I posted above of hundreds of examples of such organisations reducing women to bodily functions.

I'm afraid you're just not coming across as convincing when you perceive Millie Hill's witty words about this issue as poisonous "bile"... yet apparently avoid making any reference to CatsAreBetterThanMen's moving account of the physical and emotional harm that can be caused to women by the theft of their shared language and collective identity.

The contradiction here is similarly obvious in the posts dismissing women's concerns as "petty" and "unkind", and this issue as insignificant. The truth is that there is at least as strong an argument that transwomen claiming the words "women" and "female", and insisting on "she" instead of "they"/"zey" etc., is similarly "petty" and "unkind" and unnecessary. I'm interested as to where posters supporting the latter and condemning the former see the stark difference they appear to see - a difference so stark that it validates one as essential and the other as laughable or moral anathema - and whether they can articulate their reasoning.

Rhinos has done a great job of explaining our reasoning. Briefly put, if transwomen are women, then the people who are currently enslaved in Afghanistan and 70% more likely to be injured in a care accident in the UK due to their bodies, are left no word at all to name themselves and each other. In contrast, if transwomen are transwomen and transmen are transmen, then everyone has a word.

I'm just not seeing any argument from "the other side" that convincingly opposes this view - a view, after all, that acknowledges these competing needs, and considers how they can be addressed without one of these two groups being completely dissolved and silenced. I don't want transwomen/men to lose their identity, and I also don't want women to. The above - each having their own word, in a context of sensible acknowledgement of biological sex where required for everyone's health and safety - is my answer to this twisty mora dilemma. What's yours?

Because thus far, it seems to simply be that one group should defer to the other: "Silly women making a fuss about sacrificing or compromising their language!" and even positing arguments for retaining the original meaning of "woman" as irrational, hateful and extremist. Such extraordinarily emphatic dismissal of an entire demographic as being unjustified in even advocating for retaining its own descriptor can only ever serve as proof of just how much that demographic needs the language to advocate for themselves: of how devalued they currently are.

Meanwhile, beautifully expressed, step-by-step explanations of our (fairly straightforward) argument, supporting data (eg. Millie Hill's blog and transwomen's sexual offending) and intensely moving anecdotes (eg. my Black woman's Youtube vid. and Cats' daughter) seem to be being ignored, or sidestepped as too complex to address, or straight-up misrepresented. Seeing this happen quite honestly doesn't help to convince, either.

Well yes. Feminists care about women's social rights and status as a whole, and that means we often seem weird and angry to women who just care about their own lives and their own status. Twas ever thus. You should have seen what some women said about the Suffrgettes!

Although since the topic of this thread is not imposing sexist and false distinctions between women (female people) based on beliefs about gender, TERF was rather the wrong word to pick wasn't it? MERF certainly, but someone arguing that trans identifying female people are still women is hardly excluding trans people from Feminism.

I also notice you haven't even tried to answer my question, just dismiss me as a person. But surely such a simple question should be easy as anything to answer?

Trans rights activists insist that trans women are women and trans men are men because they have the minds of women and men.

In what way is that not a sexist belief that only some types of minds are right for men and for women?

Insisting that society consider "women" and "trans men" to be different types of "people who menstruate" changes us from simply being the half of humanity who are female in all our diversity and with any type of mind into the people who have whatever type of mind it is that transmen feel they don't have.

In what way is that not imposing onto all women a sexist reduction of who we are?

Well post-menopausal women don’t menstruate so I guess they can’t call them that. I’ve never given birth so I’m not a birthing person or a chest feeder so you can’t call me that 🤷‍♀️

Meanwhile cis men are always still referred to as men I’m guessing.