@changeypants - I’m sorry to hear about your mum ❤️
My mum was born in 1950, failed her 11 plus and went to work in a lampshade factory age 14. By the time I was about 6 I used to spell out my school absent notes for her. In hindsight, I suppose she was dyslexic but, well, that definitely wasn’t a term she would’ve been familiar with. She had enough trouble writing ‘stomach ache’ without me there to help.
I can’t say if she’d have realised ‘people with a cervix’ was aimed at her or not. I’d ask her, but I can’t. She’s dead.
My mum died at 54 of what her own mum would’ve cheerfully referred to as ‘women’s problems’.
If only she’d had enough brains to realise all those stomach aches were her cancerous ovaries killing her from the inside.
So, if some of y’all ‘can’t see the problem with it’ please take a moment to think of my mum, and how I stood in a hospital room with a nurse holding me upright so that I could hold her hand while she died.
And how I’ve been a motherless daughter since my early 20s.
Maybe if we all take a moment to think about women that don’t have the cognitive or language abilities we do, cancers will be caught earlier, and lives will be saved.
This is why being able to talk about our female bodies, in clear, non academic language matters. This is why being able to request a female-bodied person for an intimate medical examination matters.
And this is why women like me, sometimes, want to spend time with other women like me.
I really, really, miss her.