Pink news: "Disgusting transphobic lie" that 'only females get cervical cancer'

[CheeryTreeBlossom]

According to PinkNews "UK's biggest cervical cancer charity shuts down disgustingly transphobic lie that 'only females get cervical cancer'"

I genuinely thought this was a parody account.
Honestly I think satire is dead now.

@serenityNowwwww

I just googled the word "smear" on the NHS and it mentions women and people
With cervices.

I googled the word "prostate" and it just refers to men. Not people with prostates.

Ffs.

I agree it was the hyperbolic language that made me really think it was a pisstake.
And the "shut down" from the cancer charity was essentially saying "anyone who has a cervix should get screened regardless of gender ID".

Then on their own website which they link to:
Who has a cervix?
Women are usually born with a cervix.

You may have a cervix if you are:

a trans man and/or non-binary person who was assigned female at birth
a man who has a difference in sex development (DSD) or is intersex.
In rare cases, women with DSD or who are intersex may be born without a cervix.

If you have had surgery, such as a hysterectomy, you may have had your cervix removed.

If you are not sure whether you have a cervix, it is best to speak with your GP.

Where is the cervix?
The cervix is part of the female reproductive system. The female reproductive system is made up of the:
vagina
womb (uterus)
cervix
ovaries
fallopian tubes.

So no, not a shut down. In fact it exactly agrees.

However pink news editorialises this as
"As Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust emphasised, anyone with a cervix can get cervical cancer – so people with cervixes should attend regular screenings with their GP.

This includes trans men, trans masculine people, intersex people and non-binary people, as well as some trans women who have had gender confirmation surgery."

Which is in fact, a lie. And directly contradicts the charity's advice on their website.
The last thing the NHS needs is when there already is a backlog of smears thanks to Covid is any additional TW thinking they should have one.

The issue is Jo's cervical trust see the twitter hashtag as talking about gender identity when "female" means it was entirely about biology.

like the way that in the 16 hours since they posted that article on Twitter, they’ve posted the same group of articles multiple times to try and bury the one they’re getting ratioed on.

That's classic PN practice.

SanFranBear - I love the Fortean times! I’ve been reading it on and off since I was a student!

[quote nancybotwinbloom]@serenityNowwwww

I just googled the word "smear" on the NHS and it mentions women and people
With cervices.

I googled the word "prostate" and it just refers to men. Not people with prostates.

Ffs.

[/quote]
I think - I may not be sure here - that a f2m won’t be wanting a neo-prostate crafted for them or go around assuming that they have one. Maybe that’s why they aren’t mentioned there - ‘people’ without one naturally don’t really care/want one.

Now that doesn’t explain why testicular cancer mentions only men.

They should mention trans women though, shouldn't they?

I don’t think they are on the radar. Funny that.

To paraphrase,

Where is the cancer going to mutate? In a cardboard box?

And i did see some posters making the arguement that ‘woman’ as a term was just a social thing, that it could be handed over so transwomen could just be women and the word female would be used instead, legally and socially and IN MEDICAL LITERATURE etc

How does it go? I've seen it on MN many times.

Meet me in the middle says the unreasonable man. You step forward, he steps back. Meet me in the middle says the unreasonable man.

Aka: give an inch and they'll take a mile. There is no reciprocation, no mutual respect, #bekind is an instruction to female people and is one way only; there is a certain kind of personality to whom you 'being the bigger person' merely makes you a twit they will gladly take advantage of.

The way you deal with such people is very well known to female people who have raised toddlers. Strong boundaries and a thick skin for tantrums. Also see: go LC, NC and LTB.

Meet me in the middle says the unreasonable man. You step forward, he steps back. Meet me in the middle says the unreasonable man

The dance of disillusion

They can’t be offended by the idea that “woman=adult human female” anymore at least.

This insideous creep of redefining language is a problem. Words have agreed meanings. Changing them to fit your feelings is not okay.

The cervical tissue is unique in a woman. If a transwomen has SRS they don't magically get some. If they get cancer at the inner end of their constructed vagina it is not cervical cancer. It is cancer of whatever tissue created it or, at best #bekindness, neo-cervical cancer.

The screening process for cervical cancer relies on looking for abnormal cells. I imagine even the healthiest of neocervix cells will look nothing like a cervical cell.

The treatments for different cancers are specialised - there are different drugs for lung, breast, ovarian, prostate cancers. Prostate cancer cannot identify as ovarian cancer and be treated in the same way.

Survival statistics are unique to the type of cancer.
Cervical cancer is the leading cause of cancer related death in poor countries according to WHO. That fact is shocking when you consider it can only affect 50% of the population as opposed to say skin or lung cancer.
I imagine cervical cancer is much more likely to spread to the uterus. Neo-cervical, well, not so much.

We have a whole vaccination and screening programme around cervical cancer, I don't believe any other cancer type does?

This is medicine. Language matters.
Young female people need to be aware of their risk; charities & the NHS should focus on educating them on it in clear language, not appeasing myriad identities and males.

Alex Massie writing about this in the Spectator - appears this may be a step too far even for those who believe in “be kind, TWAW”.

www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-it-a-transphobic-lie-to-say-only-females-get-cervical-cancer-

“Biological truth is a different matter entirely. It has rules and laws of its own and they are less easily dismissed. Trans women are inherently incapable of experiencing the full biological expression of femaleness. They may be women but unless sex and gender are considered interchangeable they cannot be female. Which in turn means that while they are women they cannot quite be women in precisely the same way the overwhelming majority of women experience femaleness and, deriving from that, womanhood.“

Wow could this be the article that makes people see through the ‘clothes’? 😮

I really liked this line in the Spectator article,

‘Objecting to the suggestion that 'only females contract cervical cancer' by arguing 'but trans men can get cervical cancer too' does not refute, far less 'shut down', the argument; it proves it.’

What really fucks me off about this is that just three years ago the charity referenced (Jo's Trust) released a story stating that almost half of women don't know what a cervix is: www.jostrust.org.uk/node/666780

By erasing the word "women" and instead calling on "cervix-havers" to attend screenings, we run a huge risk of some women failing to attend because they don't realise it applies to them. Not to mention confused males getting in touch and wasting everyone's time. It's bloody ridiculous.

What a sack of fucking idiots (PN, I mean). Has anyone contacted the actual charity to confirm they go along with this stupidity?

Rod Liddle has covered today in the Sunday Times

Don’t touch the truth with a bargepole — that stuff is toxic, my activist chums

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/2535c2ba-c8cd-11ea-a4b9-03f8110e32cc?shareToken=55c542bf1e7d890f1cf5ed2e711db575

As an aside, Rod Liddle's own example from evolutionary psychology asserts a hypothesis which cannot be tested as if it is already proven factual.

In other words, both the right and the left do this, but they don't usually do it by simply re-purposing terms which already have a meaning, such as 'female.'

That's what Pink News did. Almost everyone understands 'female' as referring to a biologically female animal or person, not to gender identity, but Pink News has decided that it is the latter, probably because there are fervent trans activists arguing against any other interpretation of 'female.'

If we lose 'female' the way we have already lost 'woman' in many places, then it really becomes impossible to talk about sex-based rights or sex-based oppression.

One of many things that really offends me about this is the apparent equation of a small lump of tissue from the penis placed in the neo-vagina by surgeons for the hoped-for purpose of increasing sexual pleasure, with a cervix. My cervix is very high and I rarely get acquainted with it, but I do know that if something touches it the sensation is pain, not pleasure. Having heavy periods with big clots and, once, a failed coil insertion, has also taught me the cramping pain of a cervix opening slightly, and despite never having experienced it, I’m sure any woman who’s given birth knows far more about that.

It goes under the heading of ‘unnecessary sexualisation of female functions’. Like fetishising periods, tampons, or even women’s business suits. It’s AGP.

I’m sure they think we enjoy having a smear and/or that anything going into the vagina sexually arouses us (I’ve seen men, probably not all of them explicitly fetishists, who seem to believe this). Having a cervix is so much fun, who wouldn’t want one? And the best bit is you get to go and have a sexy smear!

It’s sick, deranged and deeply disrespectful to women.

Thing is, though, if trans-women with intact male tackle or neovaginas (with or without neo-cervices) are going to front up to NHS clinics asking for a smear, how much time and money is being wasted? You can only 'smear' mucous membranes and there won't be any.

I don't know if anyone has actually done this, but turning NHS and charity leaflets into obfuscating word salad makes it more, not less likely that they will. And more likely that people who do need smears won't realise.

Are we trying to prevent cancer here or soothe egos?

And isn't it all a bit disturbingly reminiscent of Yaniv's disingenuous attempts to get a bikini wax from a succession of immigrant women working alone from their homes and then taking them to court for refusing?

How far from flashing is all this, really?

I don't know if anyone has actually done this, but turning NHS and charity leaflets into obfuscating word salad makes it more, not less likely that they will. And more likely that people who do need smears won't realise.

on a very simplistic note - if I see something that says Women/Woman in a leaflet, noticeboard etc I read it, if it says people, I might if I've got time. I wonder if these 'cervix investigators' (medical staff, understand this

@moose62

Even on the NHS screening advice page it states "if you are a trans woman or non binary person assigned male at birth, you will not need to be screened as you do not have a cervix.".

What the actual fucking hell is this non-binary woo nonsense doing on the NHS website?

What does non binary have to do with sex? You can give yourself any label in the world but sex is constant.