People who menstruate

[lafemme]

NC as this concerns my place of work - (a school)

Brook will be delivering a talk to staff. The synopsis of content is 'people who menstruate - supporting them in period poverty'. Throughout the whole summary of the talk this term is used. This is Brook's wording.

I'm really surprised at an organisation such as Brook using this term - Why not use the term young women/ girls in period poverty?

Is this just semantics? I can't help feeling that the term 'people who produce sperm' would just never be used 

The bleeding would imply something else and be rather concerning.

@SapphosRock

A female can legally transition to become a man and still menstruate 🤷‍♀️

They might not want to but many still do.

And these people are being acknowledged.

It's really not hurting anyone.**

It hurts me to be defined by menstruation (which I no longer do) when I consider myself to be a woman. It hurts me that the word I have always used now includes men and therefore has lost its meaning.

As someone who works in the NHS most hospitals have a name for the specific services they offer to the 51% of the population who have female anatomy.
These services are usually something like "women's and children's directorate" (my own hospital) or maybe where there is a specific specialist hospital like Liverpool Women's Hospital.

Everyone knows what sort of services are offered at a women's hospital and which half of the population are served by them.

Should they be renamed?

Liverpool Hospital for People with diseases related to the anatomy that may menstruate (unless you are too old/too young or not quite right in that department which maybe why you need to come here). Also covering other diseases exclusive to people who menstruate (or did or will or have a medical reason why they don't) but possibly related to other parts of their anatomy.

Of course there is a word for those people. A simple single word and everyone or nearly everyone knows what it means.

Even trans men, who may prefer not to acknowledge that they are a woman, still need female specific health care.

And of course trans women do not have anatomy that is likely to require treatment at a Women's Hospital.

How about we stick with simple words and biological reality. Then everyone will know which hospital to go to if they live in Liverpool or hospital department in other areas and can access the healthcare appropriate to their anatomy.

A female can legally transition to become a man and still menstruate 🤷‍♀️

It's a legal fiction. They aren't, and never will be or can be, an actual man.

... just deleted it. The app's called 'Clue', and they can fuck off.

There are others which respect women more.

Sorry but what this about the Clue app?

Clue have erased the word ‘woman’ from their period tracking app as well as dicked about with some of the icons to make them more inclusive (ie less relevant).

I hadn’t noticed because there are few words in the app. It’s a bit like a kids ‘snap’ game.

I use Flo and FMC (I'm a bit obsessive about tracking). I love Flo but still use FMC as it was the first I found.

I just had a look at Clue's blurb. They advertise their science-based knowledge base yet don't acknowledge the simple science of sex. One user likes that it's "gender neutral".

I only know of people who are capable of menstruating (so women and girls then) using period trackers as they're meant to be used.

The only others I can possibly think of would be men that want control of a woman's fertility. These weren't around when my abusive ex wanted to be in control of my fertility so he had to rely on a calendar and proof of my menstruation in the form of tampon wrappers etc. He'd have loved this app.

Why on earth are these companies going so batshit about this nonsense with something that is biologically impossible for a man?

Apologies if that makes no sense. It's Friday night, I've had a crap week and the wine is flowing.

"People who menstruate" also has the convenient side effect of un-womaning women who're post menopause, which I'm sure is entirely coincidental.

I'm not dehumanizing myself in order to indulge someone else's delusions and/or unhealthy coping mechanisms. I'm a woman, not a "menstruator".

The other effect of using all this language- people who menstruate, uterus havers etc is that it obfuscates that these different things happen to the same group.

Being able to name and draw attention to things that happen to women and girls because they are women and girls, to link them up, is important to improving things for us.

It's similar to the push with crime to say it's not men who (generally) do X it's people.

It's about fragmenting and diverting.

This wording doesn’t seem very inclusive to the girls that haven’t started their periods yet, who may also already be feeling self conscious about this.

Agentnully they would say it's too be inclusive of transmen and non binary (female) people

Why insist on calling people women who do not want to be called women?

Because they are women. 2+2=4 however much the 2s insist they are another number.

You can call people "cis" or "uterus havers" or "menstruators" if they don't want you to, of course, because they're just boring unsparkly women and their feelings don't matter at all.

We know it's all bollocks because the London "Women's" March used it as a direct synonym for women. "X no of menstruators in pariiament" which included women who would have been past the menopause.

I don't menstruate. Because I had cervical cancer and my uterus was removed. I'm 36.

The term 'people who menstruate' hurts me, because it is used to replace 'women and girls'. Where does this leave me?

I'm so beyond fed up with this specious bollocks.

It's really not hurting anyone.

It is reducing us to our bodily functions, yes it is hurting people.

Women here have been telling Sapphos that it hurts us for a very long time, so either she thinks we're lying or she thinks that our feelings don't matter.

I've just taken a look at Brooks' website and the "people who menstruate" seems very on theme actually.

www.brook.org.uk/your-life/gender-a-few-definitions/

I find it interesting that under the definition of "pronouns" they say you should always be respectful of the way people want to be spoken about. I suspect there a much greater number of women and girls who'd rather not be referred to as "people who menstruate" than there who are ok with it.

I have noticed that quite a few people who deliver these types of training are wholly unaware that this terminology is offensive. They've had training from only one interest group, they've been told this is inclusive and they have never heard a diverging opinion.

So, if possible, I would start engaging by asking if they are aware that this terminology is offensive. And then explain why it is dehumanising to women and girls to be reduced to and addressed by bodily functions.

Moreover, the terminology is - as pp have noted - inaccurate.

99.9% of girls go through menarche (that is they have their first period). There is always an underlying medical reason when this does not happen by about age 15. This is called primary amenorrhea and rare. Treatment may resolve the issue.

The prevalence of secondary amenorrhea not caused by pregnancy, breastfeeding or the menopause is about 3 to 4%. Treatment may resolve the issue.

Menstruation is about as universal a female experience as you can get. The only other female experience as universal as menstruation is probably the fear of male violence.

So, only women and girls can menstruate but at any given moment in time, only about 25% do. Not only because they are too old, too young, pregnant, breastfeeding, ill, stressed, under- or overweight, on certain types of birth control or suffering from any number of medical conditions preventing menstruation, but also because menstruation is cyclical and on average limited to one week in four.

A great many of these women and girls are not "people who menstruate". Because they don't. They may in the future, or they may have done in the past, but if you are addressing training to people who menstruate, you're not addressing it at as large an audience as an educator typically would seek to do.

As a non-native speaker, I'd also like to add that there are many more women and girls whose first language is not English and who would not understand this terminology than the number of women and girls who identify as trans.

There are also many more women and girls who lack the cognitive capacity to easily understand the phrase. "Women" and "girls" are well-defined words, clearly delineated and easily understood. They grab your attention if you are a woman or a girl, because you immediately know this is about or for you.

"People who menstruate" does not grab your attention. Because the first word is people, our brains do not react in the same way. By the time you get round to "who" and "menstruate", a great many women and girls will already have decided that this isn't for or about them anyway.

So by using this terminology, you are not just offending a great many women, you are also excluding two larger groups of often vulnerable women and girls in order to include a smaller group. Which makes a mockery of any equality and diversity policy.

"People who menstruate" also implies there's something wrong with using the entirely accurate words "women" and "girls" when talking about who menstruates. And there is too much shame attached to too many of our experiences to allow this to happen.

These words are sex designators, that is they name the female sex and do so in two age categories - adult and juvenile. They do not stand in as designators for sex stereotypes or sex role stereotypes.

So we have precise, succinct and easy words to name our sex. Let's encourage everyone to use them.

”I find it interesting that under the definition of "pronouns" they say you should always be respectful of the way people want to be spoken about. I suspect there a much greater number of women and girls who'd rather not be referred to as "people who menstruate" than there who are ok with it.”

I think you may have fallen into the trap of assuming these activists think non-sparkly, non-brave, merely-biological women are actually people, @BlueHarry.

Haha I mean the kind of "interesting" that identifies as one of those sophisticated looking beard chin strokes

I don't remember who coined the term "support humans" to describe the way that people who insist that stuff like this doesn't harm women, but it really is perfect. From the perspective of people like that that's what women are for, to facilitate the needs and desires of others, so for us to be saying "no, we don't like this, stop it" is like their washing machine complaining about being used to wash clothes. Women aren't meant to have needs or desires of our own and they find it strange and rude that we do.