Cancer Research: anyone with a cervix

[Aloneinacrowd70]

Not sure how to link to Twitter, but Cancer Research UK have a pinned tweet which says:

'Cervical screening (or the smear test) is relevant for everyone aged 25-64 with a cervix. Watch our animation to find out what to expect when you go for screening #CervicalScreeningAwarenessWeek'

Everyone with a cervix? I think in their attempt to be inclusive, they are potentially excluding women who may not know about their own biology. Plus, they still refer to men with regard to prostate cancer:

www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/prostate-cancer

It's only women who are unable to be named, apparently.

Trans men oops sorry

This is how Cancer Research UK describes prostate cancer.

www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/prostate-cancer

Prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is cancer that starts in the prostate gland, which is a walnut sized gland at the base of the bladder in men.

This is how it describes cervical cancer:

www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/cervical-cancer

Cervical cancer is when abnormal cells in the lining of the cervix grow in an uncontrolled way. The cervix is the lower part of the womb. It is the opening to the vagina from the womb. The main symptom is unusual bleeding from the vagina. Finding changes in the cells through screening can help to prevent cancer developing.

Not a mention of the word woman.

As a HCP I can tell you about half of the women I have treated have little to no idea what their cervix is or where it is.

This is a dangerous campaign and will lead to far fewer women up taking essential testing.

I looked at the comments and yup, they are getting a caning on Twitter.

Someone there mentioned that the biggest prostate cancer charity is called Men United. Which is problematic surely?

I had a look at their site and let's just say it isn't inclusive of current ideology.

I'm guessing that that TRAs haven't been bullying and harassing them into being more "inclusive" though.

I would love for someone to tweet them to ask “how do I know if I have a cervix”, their would take some time to put together I imagine.

Thank you for sharing your experience Circle

Just to bolster the point, this is a quote from the Vice Article from 2016 that I posted earlier:

In a recent survey of 1,000 British women, 44 percent were unable to identify the vagina on a medical illustration of the female reproductive tract. Even fewer were able to identify the vulva, with 60 percent failing at this task. Overall, only one third of the women questioned could correctly place the six labels—vulva, vagina, cervix, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries—on the diagram.

It really shows that it's women and women only that cannot be named. Why isn't this kind of weasel worded shit not being written about men?

Ha. Janice Turner on Twitter is on the case.

"Funnily enough haven’t seen much literature on “people with testicles” or “people with prostates”...

twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/1007293055463018499

Yes Janice! If you read this, thank you!!!

This is really poor policy from CRUK (who I don’t usually criticise, they have funded a fair amount of the work I’ve done and colleagues have done and are doing.)

The wording is not in accordance with any of the conventions of clear and plain English in medical or scientific communications. The word women needs to be in there. Any woman who has had a total hysterectomy with cervix removal will be informed they don’t need one - many hysterectomies leave the cervix intact so simply using hysterectomy is not enough.

If you’ll pardon my turn of phrase, they need to stop fannying around and use the clearest most accurate language they can - and that needs the word ‘woman’ in it.

This is a bad call from CRUK. It needs to be fixed.

Only women have hysterectomies. Only women have a cervix. Only women.

OKay?

And that's another off my list for donating money to.

Hmmm - what’s the most glaringly obvious way you can ensure that ‘people’ stop and think about whether or not they have a cervix and might need a smear test and therefore this might include them.

Ffs actually risking CANCER so not to offend 0.03% of the population?

As a woman who literally stood and watched her mother die from a woman’s cancer, I find this wording very troubling.

Even after surgical removal of various parts, you can still develop cancer of those parts, as some of the cells remain.

Surely the easiest-to-understand wording should be used to encourage as many as possible to come forward, and then the health care professional booking the appointment can ensure that the appointment is appropriate to the patient.

A poster on the thread linked above highlighted a study demonstrating that a significant number of men surveyed by a Prostate Cancer Charity did not know they have a prostate. I think it reasonable to assume the same may be true for some women with regards their cervix.

Quite. For my age group, cervical screening has colloquially been called a smear test and I could inadvertently pass that on to my daughters. Until they have a baby, they might not relate to health information that only calls out to cervix-havers.

This compartmentalisation, parceling up of women's bodies into functions, and the dehumanisation, the lack of reference to it as part of a whole, of a person, is much more easily done with women because we are seen that way so often already.

As a set of parts - often sexualised - or treated as "other" to the standard man.

When this language is applied to men it becomes obvious how ludicrous is it.

There is also the familiarity of woman as vessel - often less important than one of her parts - in history around pregnancy and abortion. We are often not deemed competent to be in charge of our bodies, others have to control them. Parts of us are "problematic", other parts are "sexy". Often the same parts when used for different things or on different people...

Where this language ends - the logical end point of there being no group term for cunty people any more - is in a confusing mish mash of non consistent terms that many don't understand.

So when talking about pregnancy, it might be "uterus havers"
On sex, we are "non prostate havers" (according to teen vogue)
For cervical cancer, we are people with a cervix
When it comes to periods, we might be menstuators, at other times ovulators
And then it starts to get tricky. How do you know if you are an ovulator? There is some evidence it has happened, after the event, but this evidence is not conclusive.
When the terms to describe us start to reference things that we can't see, that are internal, it all gets very circular. Because, how would anyone know that they have a cervix? Apart from by knowing that they are female, and women and girls have cervixes? If you cannot teach that women and girls - female people - haave cervixes, then how to female people know about them? Is it taught by referencing some other part of anatomy? - Like, "people who menstruate are of the type that often have cervixes"? But, this is innacurate. A 4 yo or a 70 yo may well have a cervix but not menstruate.

And so on and so on.

Without any umbrella term for "the sort of people who have these shared characteristics" then how is anyone to learn, to know, to understand any of this?

my mother also died from a "woman's cancer". in part because, like many women, shame kept her from reporting symptoms early enough. she grew up in a time when women just did not speak about their bodies.

it is devastating that, when it seems women were just starting to speak (vulvas, vaginas, cervical mucus - i have learned quite a lot over the past few years) they are told to be silent again.

also, as i think has been mentioned, most def having parts cut out does not prevent the cancer risk. if it's cancer caused by HPV, it can just affect whatever parts of the reproductive system are left. i was hoping smear tests would be widened to take this into account.

The Eve Appeal (from website)

"The Eve Appeal is the only UK national charity raising awareness and funding research into the five gynaecological cancers – womb, ovarian, cervical, vulval and vaginal.

We were set up to save women’s lives by funding ground-breaking research focused on developing effective methods of risk prediction, earlier detection and developing screening for these women-only cancers. Our charity has grown and developed in parallel with our core research team, the Department of Women’s Cancer at University College London (UCL), taking place in 31 institutions across 15 countries. We have played a crucial role in providing seed funding, core infrastructure funding and project funding in addition to campaigning to raise awareness of women-specific cancers.

The world-leading research that we fund is ambitious and challenging but our vision is simple: A future where fewer women develop and more women survive gynaecological cancers."
eveappeal.org.uk/about-us/

and why does this matter?
"Every day in the UK 58 women are diagnosed with a gynaecological cancer and 21 will die, The Eve Appeal are determined to change this for the future of women everywhere"

Refusing to use the words female or woman is an obvious effort to reduce the number of women who present for screening to only those who know what a cervix is and that they have one.

This beggars belief. I knew about smear tests and that as a woman I would have to have them long before I knew what a cervix was.

Are they trying to reduce the NHS workload by reducing the potential numbers of patients with this nonsense?!

The Times on this today:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/smear-test-campaign-drops-the-word-woman-to-avoid-transgender-offence-263mj7f6s?shareToken=877595fe49a4691a70db1b28b0409488

Looks like I’ll be donating money to the Eve Appeal instead....

And there's women whose first language isn't English, I can't say it's a word I've come across in any language teaching.

Not every woman has a cervix, not everyone with a cervix is a woman. Seriously, what even is controversial about this?

widow you don't think they should use the word "women" to describe... women?

Fiona Osgun from Cancer Research UK said: “Cervical cancer develops in anyone who has a cervix. This includes women as well as people with other gender identities such as trans men. But screening might not be relevant for all women such as those who have had a full hysterectomy. We phrased our information on cervical screening awareness week to reflect this.”

When did 'women' become a gender identity? Do 'trans men' not realise that they are biological women?