Anti abortion protests in US - problems for transwomen - Daily Mail and Huffpost and the importance of words...

[wibbletooth]

Sorry, rubbish title but hopefully you’ll see what I mean in the post...

A Daily Mail (I know, I know, but bear me out) article about the threats to abortions and Planned Parenthood declaring it an emergency caught my eye.
www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7088431/Planned-Parenthood-declares-state-emergency-womens-health-six-states-restrict-abortion.html

Their president - Dr Wen - is quoted as saying ‘these bills will most harm women of colour, trans women, and women who live in rural areas or don’t have the means to travel to obtain an abortion’.

Obviously shocked to see that it explicitly listed transwomen as needing abortion services I then checked the link to Huffpost where the quote was taken from, where it actually specifies ‘transgender and gender non-conforming communities’ rather than transwomen... obviously a very different proposition.

So it caught my eye for several reasons:

• transwomen needing abortions when obviously they don’t - might peak a few people but also wonder why the put it when it’s wrong but there again some groups might like to have it in print. Shouldn’t have got through editors though and if it gets required without the Huffpost as source then it gets seen as a printed fact.

• thought it was interesting that they have shortened transgender and g n c to transwomen despite the fact that is the one group under the stonewall trans umbrella it definitely doesn’t apply to.

So I guess this is just logging the poor reporting - thought it should be seen and to make sure that the horrendous attempts to curtail women’s rights in some US states don’t sidetracked into a trans argument (although support for those who need abortions would be welcome from everyone!).

Well, this is difficulty in the mainstream press. The terms that a lot of the posters here are familiar with are pretty opaque to most of the general public, still.
That's why you get those pro-TRA glossary articles barking out instructions about the correct terminology.

It's hard to properly discuss it here with clarity because of the silly restrictions, but there are still plenty of people who think that 'transwoman' refers to a biological woman who believes herself to be the opposite sex.

This confusion is both the design of those trying to fudge the language, and why many of us here refuse to use the word 'woman' in relation to human male at all.

Yes I was going to say the journalist thinks that transwomen are biologically female people who want to be men, as do lots of people.

I wonder if it isn't that PP will not be providing other services as well as abortion related ones. I believe that at least some of them distribute hormones to trans patients.