'Vagina owners'

[hellohelp]

I haven't posted to this area of MN before but I do read the threads and often have an opinion (but usually others have said what I'm thinking and much better than I could)

Anyway back to my reason for posting. After a late period this month and lots of negative pregnancy tests I've been on google to see what other reasons could be causing it
My mum was diagnosed with ovarian cancer S1C 12 weeks ago so am a bit more anxious of reproductive health issues
So I found a page with 12 reasons for your period being late
One of them starts off with 'Most vagina owners begin menopause between the ages of 45-55.....'

VAGINA OWNERS? Why not just say women?

Most mingefolk begin menopause between the ages of 45-55...

I went on Boots.com and couldn't see mention of vagina owners. They talk about females and women and there's a note that says "NOTE: This article/page uses the terms ‘male/man/men’ and/or ‘female/woman/women’. Please note, this is in reference to the sex assigned at birth."

That aside, I strongly disagree with the terminology and don't consider myself the owner of my vagina any more than I think I own my eyes, legs or stomach.

Well at least they're trying to appeal to everybody. Sex assigned at birth is a nonsense phrase though.

If I understand correctly SAAB is a phrase that used to make sense in the context of so-called 'intersex' conditions where sex was ambiguous and so one really was assigned at birth.

I may be wrong about that.

But whether I am or not, it makes no sense in the context of a non-ambiguous birth.

Being an owner of something suggests it could be sold.

No other body part could be referred to in this way.

Awful

Well as long as it works two ways but it doesn’t. prostate cancer it impacts men, not penis owners.

btw my vagina owns me, not the other way round.

Sex assigned at birth,do they roll a dice or something and then fill the form in, Sophie born at 1010 on Tuesday the 24th hang on Male.

Mingefolk. Fucking hell, I laughed so loud I woke up my pussy (cat) 😂

Just rolls off the tongue. I love it!

I'm giggling at the thought of phoning my doctor surgery for an appointment and insisting I want to be seen by a penis owner 😂

are we going to rename the opticians as the doctors for eye owners? orthopaedics as the doctors for bone owners?

Hahahahah

It’s disgusting, dehumanising and the opposite of progressive and inclusive

I have a pedantry issue with this - surely the solution is just to talk about vaginas, penises, uteruses etc directly? “Cervical cancer is more dangerous and prevalent than you might think. If you have a cervix, you’ll need to attend smear tests regularly.” Or “if you have gonorrhoea, xyz stuff will happen to your penis, go and get antibiotics”. That at least circumnavigates the argument about whoever has that specific sexual organ.

@CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau I think there's a lot of logic to your suggestion but in my opinion you run the risk of missing individuals who aren't fluent English speakers or have a learning disability (I'm not sure if that's the correct way to phrase it, no offence intended). Woman is straightforward to understand.

There's also a small percentage of women, especially if they haven't had children (yet or ever) who don't realise they have a cervix - it's not a body part that's visible or discussed much - you just have to be ill the wrong week of biology class! Even if it's only 2% that's still a lot nationally. So I'd really like to see the word woman used, even if "and people with a cervix" is added - I think you run the risk of vulnerable women missing out without it

And the thing is, I don't know I've got these organs.
Do I have ovaries? Very likely, I get a period each month. But no one's ever gone and looked at them.
Does my husband have a prostate? Very likely - but again, no one's ever actually looked.
Do I have a spleen? Never had any issues so I expect so.

We make assumptions ever day about the biology of our bodies based upon the facts of how the vast, vast majority of humanity is made up.

I'm a human, therefore there is a strong likelihood that I have a spleen.
I'm a woman, therefore there is a strong likelihood that I have ovaries.

If you remove the biological categorization in medicine, you remove the assumptions upon which all medicine is based. So if eventually I get a leaflet saying "if you have <insert biological organ> then do X", well, there comes a point where I may not know whether I have to do X or not.

This question of "how can we group life in a useful and helpful way" is of course why taxonomy exists, and why removing taxonomy is totally backwards from a medical perspective (even before thinking about the social implications).

This is completely exclusionary towards people who would struggle, because of language or cognition, to know which body parts they have. Ovaries, fallopian tubes, womb, cervix, vagina - there is quite a lot to remember. This seems like a very elitist suggestion tbh.

Disappointed as my MN history shows I own a Vulva but not a Vagina. Sad times

But then I wonder if I can buy a Vagina from the same place?

Surely “vagina owners” is even more exclusionary on those grounds? And this debate is so entrenched that maybe taking the focus away from the people who “own” the body part and just on to the body part. They could try using words similar to “food pipe” and “wee hole” as frequently happens to me in hospital.

Woman is the only sensible descriptor and that's why the word woman should never be used to describe a male bodied person (and to be clear, if you were born male bodied, you still are male bodied).

We have to rename ourselves as and when needed to ensure males don't feel left out. As soon as 'vagina-owners' becomes the normal term used, men will want to be transvagina-owners, and we will be relegated to cis-vagina-owners.

It's basically that image of a caveman dragging a cavewoman around in the mud by her hair, only the updated version. Sorry, CaveVaginaOwner.

Thank you for giving me a laugh at the end of a hard week.. even if you didn't mean to!

That at least circumnavigates the argument about whoever has that specific sexual organ.

But why circumnavigate? Only men have penises and only women have vaginas!

The point I’m making, which may be cowardly or transphobic depending on which side you’re on, is that there is an entrenched debate which has turned into people (not you guys for the most part) being fairly or extremely nasty to each other - not saying there are equal levels of nastiness on both sides. I was suggesting a compromise to be used until the debate becomes less stuck, and obviously it wasn’t perfect as I just got it off the top of my head on an internet forum. We are where we are, and surely at least from a utilitarian point of view the focus should be on maximising access to care while if possible reducing offence, but the former is more important as you’re unable to be offended if you’re dead due to not attending a cervical smear from being a trans man or misunderstanding language, for example.

Transmen know they're females and the women who don't know they have a cervix are at risk if we followed your advice. To protect people, the NHS needs to use words accurately and stop giving in to the anti women rhetoric which the women hating organisation which is Stonewall is promoting.