Queeriods. "How to talk inclusively about periods."

[Lamahaha]

I saw this on a Twitter thread of Glinner, in which he said I'd better be careful. I'm extremely drunk and might tweet something like "Women menstruate".

I followed a few of the tweets and found this website :

periodpositive.wordpress.com/

This is where apparently media & menstrual product companies now working from and get the language. All about "inclusive" language. The words "woman", "feminine", "female" are taboo.

Grovelling apologies offered; I would have thought this was satire had I seen it anywhere else:
rubycup.com/blogs/news/we-need-to-apologize

You know it baffles me that female people fill up thread after thread going this really bothers us, this is wrong, this is bad for us,

and there's always people saying 'but there's no problem' and 'you're not being erased'

On threads full of females explaining the problem.

they feel mightily self-conscious buying feminine health care products

So do 12,13,14,15 year old girls! Which you cannot conceive of, because you have never experienced it what it is like to be female. Because an adult man can buy tampons, you do not understand why a teenage girl may struggle.

But, as you point out, you don't want to understand it.

Rubycup needs to listen to women in all countries. 'using a like term menstruator will be more confusing than helpful' is right. Do they think everyone in the U.K. understands that as clearly as if they used the normal clear English words 'girls and women'?

Re Clarke's " 'we cannot tell you who they are for, they are for children and any child can wear any shoe'" - hooray, about time!

Tampons are only needed by one sex, children's shoes are needed by both sexes for the same purposes, their feet aren't statistically significantly different so there's no need to divide them by gender. This is a good example of the difference. A girl can wear tough shoes suitable for bad weather, but she's still a girl when she hits puberty and needs pads and tampons.

embarrassingly trendy faux-insta- feminism bothers me, that’s exactly the point.

I think you may be in the wrong place, then. Or completely confused. Or haven't read this board.

And I'd say calling women 'people who menstruate' is VERY "trendy faux-insta feminism".

@Enderthedragon

Queeriods?

I'm done.

I accidentally read it as um, er, haemorrhoids.

Oh, dear.

Rubycup needs to listen to women in all countries. 'using a like term menstruator will be more confusing than helpful' is right. Do they think everyone in the U.K. understands that as clearly as if they used the normal clear English words 'girls and women'?

Ah but the white saviours come along with their new language and explain to the poor folk that the term woman doesn’t exist anymore. It all makes sense 🙄

Boring ordinary women just aren't cool anymore it seems

That statement does come across as “foreign people are too stoopid to understand” doesn’t it?

Neither does it fit the narrative they’re pushing. They understand how hard it is to get some countries to give a shit about girls, but what about the young trans people there who menstruate.

Or don’t they exist? 🤔

@dadshere

I don't think that this is about erasing women. Many people, who decide to switch from being female to male (since it is not biologically possible, they still have periods generally) need to use tampons and pads, they feel mightily self-conscious buying feminine health care products because of course, they are not feminine they are masculine now. In their minds, they are being devalued and de-humanised. I just don't understand how men have managed to buy them all these years for their OHs without feeling similarly emasculated. I don't understand it. I don't try to understand it. I don't want to understand it.

My husband used to buy mine, as I would bleed so heavily I couldn’t leave the house. I would change my tampon, have a shower and have to change my tampon again, immediately after getting out of the shower. I eventually had to have a hysterectomy, after ten years of doctors telling me I was too young, from the age of 26-37. Even at 37, on three different types of painkillers and an anti nausea tablet, for my 10 day period, which would sometimes return after a week. Even after fainting in public twice due to the pain, I would get joint pains, especially in one hip, my bum cheeks would get muscle pain, sore back, ulcers over my tongue and mouth. Horrendous irritable bowel symptoms that would have me doubled over.

Even with all thatI still had to argue with them in order to have a hysterectomy. I had endometriosis, that had leaked out of my womb and attached itself to by bowel, which had to be ‘lifted out’ for want of a better description and the endometriosis scrapped off. They also discovered I had a polyp the size of a kiwi on one of my ovaries.

These are symptoms ONLY experienced by women, and to call women menstruaters in order to appease some stupid woke crowd is incredibly cruel, selfish and insulting to every woman, but especially to those who have suffered as a result of their female anatomy. But apparently the women/girls who are sexually harassed, raped, murdered, killed at birth, ignored, spoken over, patronised or simply just ‘offered’ because of their female anatomy can have their feelings ignored, because trans rights (Feelings) are the only rights that matter.

Shit, LillianBland, why didn't you just identify as a man? They'd have whipped your inconvenient women's bits out double-quick-time.

That’s horrendous Lillian🙁

Just in case it's not obvious, you have my huge sympathies for having had to go through such agonies because of your woman's biology, compounded by the misogyny of having your woman's biology completely discounted by those in a position to help you.

There are lots of issues thrown up by the tension between TG & women’s rights which are concerning and need careful consideration, however for me this is not one of them. The replacement terms they’ve suggested seem fine to me.

@JellySlice

Shit, LillianBland, why didn't you just identify as a man? They'd have whipped your inconvenient women's bits out double-quick-time.

Believe me, when I hear them whining about how long they have to wait for their none essential operations, I don’t waste any sympathy on them. Maybe if I had said I was a man, all the symptoms would have went away, cause science! 🤔

@KentuckyBlueberry

There are lots of issues thrown up by the tension between TG & women’s rights which are concerning and need careful consideration, however for me this is not one of them. The replacement terms they’ve suggested seem fine to me.

It’s nit ‘tension’, it’s the whole scale bullying of females by a organisation that is determined to remove women’s rights, even the one to name themselves. If we can’t name ourselves, while male bodied people who identify as trans use the word women, then we lose the protections inshrined in law for the protection of women.

*not

Does that mean Mother’s Day will change to menstruators with children’s day?!

I'd love for them to try that one, we don't actually have 'mother's day,' we have 'mothing Sunday' which, although repurposed as 'mother's day' actually refers to attending the 'mother church'.

Believe me, when I hear them whining about how long they have to wait for their none essential operations, I don’t waste any sympathy on them. Maybe if I had said I was a man, all the symptoms would have went away, cause science

Waiting for healthcare and/or surgery is normal these days for everyone. I too am.sick.of hearing about it because as much as i dont feel anyone should have to wait long periods of time for treatment, they are hardly singled out are they. Operations are cancelled all the sodding time. MN is dull of people who have waited years for their kid to get an echp.

Just stop it. You are not the victim you seem to think you are everyone has to wait you arent special.

That sounds truly dreadful Lillian I'm.sorry you were left in that state

@LillianBland

I understand where you’re coming from, and I’m not saying those things aren’t happening.

I just don’t find the replacement terminology they’ve suggested threatening in that sense, and don’t have a problem with it.

I don’t think that using the terms suggested (e.g. start puberty, parents and children, etc.) takes anything away from women, or stops women from naming themselves.

That’s not to say I support this organisation or their wider agenda (I’m not familiar with them).

I think one of the dangers of this debate is actually conflating all of the different issues involved as us vs. them. IMO it undermines credibility and perceived impartiality when it comes to the areas where women’s rights are materially threatened, such as the proposed removal of legally recognised sex-based protections.

I don’t think that using the terms suggested (e.g. start puberty, parents and children, etc.) takes anything away from women, or stops women from naming themselves

They arent doing it to men though. So its alot more sinister than you seem to think. Some of us have been watching this play out for years.

@SarahTancredi

Fully prepared to change my thinking on this. What would be the equivalent example in the case of men?

I dont think there is an equivalent for men really.

Men arent dying in childbirth are they. Yet women of colour are 5 times more likely to die even.

Men arent dying in menstruation huts.

Menstruation is a huge event in a girls life globally. It has so many dangerous connotations there is nothing I can think of that could be removed from men that would hide the pain and suffering from the world the way that women and girls being written out of their own suffering with periods does.

Even in developed countries that should say

It's deeply inaccurate language.

Beginning periods is neither ‘becoming a woman’ nor ‘starting puberty’. It is just one step in both those processes.

Women’s health is not ‘reproductive health’. It is health specific to women’s biology. It does not include testicles and prostates, for example, because they are irrelevant to women’s health. It does include breasts, despite them being irrelevant to reproduction. (Check any prostate cancer website for the language they use. No erasure of men there.)