"People with a cervix" vs "men"

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I have just seen a conversation between a facebook friend of mine and some of her other friends about the way women's health issues are discussed in contrast to how men's health is discussed. I think my friend could be gender criticial but she got a lot of TRA answers. I've copied some parts of the conversation in here. Do you think my friend (person A) is gender critical? I'd like to write something to support her and counter some of the replies she got, but I'm not exactly sure what. She is in her 20s, which is significantly younger than me, so I'm not sure if I should weigh in on this at all.

Person A: Friends who are more educated about trans issues than me please can you explain to me why the word “woman” is so fraught with potential for causing offence while the word “man” is not? It’s jarring to hear women’s health issues discussed in terms of “people with a cervix”, “pregnant people” or “vulva owners” while men’s health openly says “men” rather than e.g. “people with a penis”? I’m too scared to ask on Twitter but I want to know.

Person B: I think they're are fewer penis and associated plumning specific health problems to be concerned about. Prostate and testicular being the two that spring to mind, so there's less need to try and be inclusive I guess? Also virtually all men are terrible with their health so making it less obvious to the literal man in the street that "this means you" could be a bad idea I guess. Certainly the long running fear of a prostate check in popular culture does nothing to encourage positive outcomes for men. Statistically we're most likely to kill ourselves pre 40 years old and after 40 our poor health choices catch up with us and kill us anyway.

Person C: Yep it's a double standard that absolutely shouldn't exist. I don't think "woman" or "man" is offensive in either context, but it's not accurate because it includes groups of people who don't have the relevant reproductive organ and excludes people who do.
Imo it's a combination of things.
A) General structural misogyny which means that charities that deal with female reproductive anatomy come under more scrutiny and are under more pressure to be inclusive.
B) pushback against inclusive language tends to come from cisgender women under the umbrella of "women's rights", and so if women's charities include people who aren't cisgender women, they need to explicitly signal that.
C) cis men are less likely to seek help/regular screening meaning that health charities specifically name "men" bc they are trying to target this demographic (i.e. the "cis" is silent)

Person D: I think twitter is probably not the best place to get information on this kind of thing haha. I agree that terms we aren't used to are jarring but I think in this case more accurate and useful especially in regards to healthcare. Re a possible gender divide on how terms are used, I agree that people need to be more careful about using people with penises etc in the right context as much as pregnant people etc. Not an expert on this but can definitely help find resources on particular questions. DM me?

I'm not sure, she may well be.

I'd be itching to point out that many women are unaware of how many "holes" they have, let alone what a cervix is, so this language obfuscation problem is not just something to be considerate of regarding men.

(A friend taught Health and Social care and came in to the staff room is despair once, having had to set the homework of asking her female year 10 class to go look up what the female anatomy is, as they'd no clue)

Well - Person B has summarised the whole deep seated misogyny of the whole shit show - there is "much less need" to not use the word man.

Funny that hey.

I'd anticipate Person B is the most likely to actually be prepared to go full on TRA where it suited him but the pre=omigentaure clause will still be easy to justify.

BTW - I don't think Person A is 'Gender critical" - I think that she things what 99.9% of the population do - that sex is a biological fact and the word woman is defined on the basis of biology.

Hard to tell really. She could just be offended by the refusal to refer to women as women but not be GC, I suppose. I think you'll need to hear more from her.

This reply really pissed me off Also virtually all men are terrible with their health so making it less obvious to the literal man in the street that "this means you" could be a bad idea I guess.

We weren't allowed to use this "excuse", were we? When we pointed out that women who received poor education, women with language barriers etc could be harmed by this terminology. We were just told they should 'look it up then'.

Person B gave me the rage. I hate how he turned this into a conversation about how hard life is for men. But it was actually person C I most want to reply to. From a bit of Facebook stalking she seems to be a young, educated woman. And she believes this shit.

This is one of the areas where I think the misogyny of this whole movement is most obvious.

At the exact same time that the Eve Appeal are falling over themselves to make sure they are being 'inclusive', at the time when #onlyfemalesgetcervicalcancer is considered 'hate speech'... This is Prostate Cancer UK's current advertising campaign.

It's like they are rubbing it in or something: look what we are allowed to say, MAN, MEN, MAN ner ner na ner ner!

I know this is not the case, and it's a good campaign. It's clear and to the point which is what you need when you are talking about cancer awareness. Not fucking pussyfooting around afraid that you are going to offend someone with statements of biology. The double standards are absolutely shocking.

"C) cis men are less likely to seek help/regular screening meaning that health charities specifically name "men" bc they are trying to target this demographic (i.e. the "cis" is silent)"

Well I'd ask Person C exactly how the fuck logic applies to this sentence?

eg smear awareness campaigns are aimed at women who are not likely to seek screening - that is why they exist - why can't this demographic be targeted and how THE FUCK is this different to the previous men?

To be honest though Person C is going to have an awful moment of realisation at some point in time in the future when she realises that "ciswomen" are the ones for whom womens rights are in fact needed

I think there are two separate points here:

1. Communicating about health care - 'person with a cervix' is only clear to people who know they have a cervix. If your goal is communication it would be better to talk about women and trans men.

2. Recognising the impact of sex. At a policy level it needs to be recognised that periods, endometriosis, some cancers, menopause, pregnancy etc. affect the female sex, regardless of how they identify.

If you only talk about 'people who have periods' or 'pregnant people', or people 'with a cervix', you will only ever be talking about a minority. However, losing access to education because of periods will have a lifelong impact, and this will be compounded by all the other things that only happen to women.

Also virtually all men are terrible with their health so making it less obvious to the literal man in the street that "this means you" could be a bad idea I guess.

cis men are less likely to seek help/regular screening meaning that health charities specifically name "men" bc they are trying to target this demographic (i.e. the "cis" is silent)

Bless. The men can't be expected to shoulder the responsibility of already understanding the health message being communicated .

On the other hand if a woman doesn't know what a cervix is, she has only herself to blame.

Honestly cannot be bothered with the arguments. It’s all so much blah blah blah. Just call me a woman. That’s it. Me and half the world. That’s what we are called.

Yep. Just use the word woman. Use it

Everyone knows what a woman is. They really do.

It’s not like we ar3 rare things that no one has ever heard of

I would be tempted to say that it’s yet another example of men and women being held to different standards and increasing misogyny as evidenced by some of the other comments she has already had, then suggest that they should all read the Invisible Women book to see how biased society is against women and it’s so ingrained that it’s not even noticed any more - from cars being more dangerous to drugs not working the same, ppe that not only doesn’t protect those women that wear it but can damage them and leave them vulnerable to being attacked - and so many more examples. Suggest they read it to see how the world is biased against women because it’s not until they are aware of the problems that they can take steps to ensure that they as women are not compromised and help to make society work better and fairer for all.

People with a penis or people with testicles is way more understandable than people with a cervix. Cervix is internal.

Also menstruators is nonsense as menstruation is not a constant process. You don't know when you will start, when you will stop. Exercise, pregnancy, BF, can all make them stop or be irregular.

The excuses given are very bad excuses. All the diseases of the prostate, the testicles and the penis, at a minimum, are equally likely to be of concern to the majority of trans women who retain their genitals and also to all male-bodied nonbinary people than they are to the so-called cisgender men.

And if menstruators is used when talking about period poverty and so on, then 'ejaculators' or something similar should be used in ads about condoms and on their packaging.

This obvious difference looks to me very sex-based: Either it is caused by women giving in and being inclusive when men do not care at all and refuse to give in or it is caused by the same kind of sexism which permeates so many other areas of life: Women's interests come last.

I was heartened why I got my cervical screening invite this morning. 'Cervical screening is for women and people with a cervix.'

They didn't shy away from using the word 'women', and didn't exclude trans and non binary either. Why this is so hard for other organisations to do, I don't know.

It's fine if trans men want to be referred to in this way, but it's horrible to just assume women will be happy with being reduced to body parts .

The Prostate Cancer UK ad was shown when I was at the cinema yesterday and it brought me back to this issue. We had that great Bodyform ad but it still had to include a TM for inclusivity. We have charities to do with women's health falling over themselves to be careful with language, not wanting to be seen to offend anyone apart from those who consider themselves to be adult human females. Then we have these ads aimed at men with no non binaries or TW in sight. Why people don't see the inequality is baffling to me.

This may be a useful link when dealing with those who deny it's a problem to erase the word 'woman' in favour of 'person with a cervix'. Turns out it's very much a matter of life and death to use accurate language and alert women that smear tests are very important.

https://www.jostrust.org.uk/node/666780?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsbDq-Zq86wIVAeztCh3TZwGaEAAYASAAEgISLDD_BwE

C) cis men are less likely to seek help/regular screening meaning that health charities specifically name "men" bc they are trying to target this demographic (i.e. the "cis" is silent)

There is (currently in England) no screening aimed exclusively at men. There is cervical and breast screening for women. There is bowel screening for everyone over 60. There is no screening for prostate cancer. The reasons are said to be that PSA testing is unreliable and that the majority of prostate cancers are slow growing so unlikely to be a problem. The result is that we have more prostate cancer deaths than breast cancer ones.

@TalbotAMan

C) cis men are less likely to seek help/regular screening meaning that health charities specifically name "men" bc they are trying to target this demographic (i.e. the "cis" is silent)

There is (currently in England) no screening aimed exclusively at men. There is cervical and breast screening for women. There is bowel screening for everyone over 60. There is no screening for prostate cancer. The reasons are said to be that PSA testing is unreliable and that the majority of prostate cancers are slow growing so unlikely to be a problem. The result is that we have more prostate cancer deaths than breast cancer ones.

It is not clear if the number of prostate cancer deaths is caused by the lack of a screening programme, though of course a better test could make a difference and is absolutely worth pursuing.

More information from this site (prostatecanceruk.org/prostate-information/prostate-tests/psa-test#why-isnt-there-a-prostate-cancer-screening-programme):

"Some studies have found that screening with the PSA test could mean fewer men die from prostate cancer. But it would also mean that:

many men would have a biopsy, which could cause side effects
a large number of men would be diagnosed with a slow-growing     cancer that wouldn’t have caused any symptoms or shortened their life
a large number of these men would have treatment they didn’t need, which could cause side effects.

Other studies have found that screening may not reduce the number of deaths from prostate cancer.

Although there’s no screening programme for prostate cancer, the Prostate Cancer Risk Management Programme gives men over 50 the right to have a PSA test on the NHS – as long as they’ve talked through the advantages and disadvantages with their GP or practice nurse."

Screening is under constant evaluation to check the benefits outweigh the downsides of stress, unnecessary intervention etc.

At the moment prostate screening is considered to have more downsides than up.

When I was young you started getting smears when you became sexually active. I went to get my pill at brook (anonymous) at 16 and they recommended screening. Ended up having a colp at 16, by myself, in a central London hosp because they picked something up. Later they realised that changes were normal in younger women especially if they smoked so they raised the age.

Mammograms are also questionable in terms of help Vs harm.

Anyway my point I think is that prostate screening doesn't happen because men are neglected, but because at the moment it's judged to cause more harm than good.

The signs and symptoms of various issues eg prostate cancer, testicular cancer have charities and NHS putting info out there, and it does seem to be aimed at men rather than people with X body part.

Mammograms are also questionable in terms of help Vs harm.

Yes - this was discussed on ‘More or Less’ on radio 4 this week. If you mass screen a healthy population for something you have to weigh up the benefit of catching a disease early against the disadvantages of over diagnosis.