For anyone who thinks calling pregnant women 'birthing people' is not a big deal, here's where that leads

[Clymene]

Femcare is an organisation in Canada which provides education and advocacy around periods, seeks to end period poverty and end the stigma and health issues associated with periods.

Look at this tweet in their series about PCOS: 'another complication that may arise as a result of polycystic ovary syndrome is a menstruator having a miscarriage or premature birth of the baby'

A woman who is pregnant is not menstruating you fucking idiots.

This is where this shitty language gets us. Organisations which are created and funded for women's health have completely erased us.

We are menstruators, birth givers, ovary havers.

Ps I am gratified to see that my iPad doesn't like the word menstruator. I'm sure that will change with the next update

Calling someone having a miscarriage a 'menstruator' is inclusively unkind.

Deliriumoftheendless

Sorry delirium just seen you were being sarcastic

Yes where are these free holidays they speak of, where you can lie on the sofa and cover yourself in chocolate each month?
Even those ‘female’ stereotypes alone are fucking offensive, even before you get into the menstruator bullshit. Our lives and responsibilities don’t stop just because we have our period. Which they’d know if they’d spoken to, oh you know, any actual women!!

@Coffeeoverload

Yes where are these free holidays they speak of, where you can lie on the sofa and cover yourself in chocolate each month? Even those ‘female’ stereotypes alone are fucking offensive, even before you get into the menstruator bullshit. Our lives and responsibilities don’t stop just because we have our period. Which they’d know if they’d spoken to, oh you know, any actual women!!

It's part and parcel of the privileged, passive female narrative that some people seem to fine very attractive. They don't really want to listen to or understand the reality.

“post-constructionist”

I want to equate this to “bollocks” although I’m sure it’s very academic-y.

Bleeding pre- or post-partum is not menstruation. Post-menopausal bleeding is not menstruation. Breakthrough bleeding experienced by intermittent contraceptive pill use is not menstruation.

Even women who are menstruating normally only experience it for a few days each month. For most of our lives, most of us are not menstruating. Calling us menstruators make no sense whatever.

Girls and then women, though, those are terms we can happily identify as all our lives. Let's just use them, please.

I know the passive voice can make the language of these pamphlets and web pages flow better (see what I did there?) but frankly most people don't know how to use it and it's just another way to erase us as a sex class anyway. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Back in the day, menstruating womb havers risked pregnancy every time they had sex with an ejaculator. With all the health risks and financial decimation associated with that. "Every sperm is sacred" for the Python fans. We needed an ejaculator's permission to have a bank account. That shit is still going on in the world. And that shit was in my lifetime here in the UK

Fuck whichever adult will have you, I don't care. But acknowledge that I am a biological woman who may or may not have children. We all have mothers. Even if they are shit and someone wonderful does a better job. We all have mothers.

What am I for the 2/3 weeks a month when I'm not menstruating? Or the months I skip a period? Or the weeks I'm bleeding OUTSIDE of menstrual cycle?

It's dangerous (not to mention painfully stupid) & ignores a great many gynaecological issues a woman might have.
I had a cyst rupture and subsequently haemorrhaged, went to A&E about 7 times in the space of a couple weeks. Every time bleeding heavy, losing enormous clots, in excruciating pain. Every time I got told "it's menstruation" eventually my DH paid for me to have a private scan and we finally found out what was wrong. I needed surgery. We are already dismissed and sent away when something is wrong and told "it's meant to bleed" without us being labelled as "menstruators".

You’re right ... it’s just the same old reductive shit from the same old people (men).
It astounds me that even if they’ve had their penises removed they still have great capacity to wave them around 🙄. Can they not just leave us to it for once?

@MichelleofzeResistance

Yeah. Too cynical now to summon up the will to point out the sheer dickish insensitivity of this, but I will signpost the obvious point.

They have made the whopping mistake of using 'menstruator' to mean woman. Adult human female. Because it's inevitable that a word for that collective class. Mistake because it gets in the way of the point, which was supposedly that biological function wasn't sex connected: they're calling pregnant people etc menstruators when they really aren't menstruating.

So we have the whole dehumanising. The reducing of women to body parts. The half assed attempt to join the pretence that there's no such thing as women by replacing one word for another. And any second now the outrage will start that there's a word in disguise meaning 'woman' that's attached to a female anatomy only bodily function and this is exclusionary to male born people.

So menstruator will become hate speech in three, two...…

Brilliant post. Yes. It sums up how abusive the whole thing is. Walking on eggshells, nothing ever good enough.

EverydayDrudge this paragraph of yours

For the sake of everybody, the term woman to describe a biologically female adult human needs to stay. All this trying to skirt round it is making it more of a triggering and loaded term than it ever was.

Is so so true....but also made me laugh because of the phrase 'skirt round the issue'.... perfect metaphor for this whole mess

Thanks Errol.

No worries Marzipan I thought it would be obvious but we do get some types round here who would write that with a straight face.

I’m as disgusted as every other WOMAN here. But I still want to make the point that treating women like shit is what passes for kindness and inclusivity these days.

And really, anyone who has the nerve to rock up here and innocently say “oh hey, it’s not a big deal what’s wrong with being kind etc” after reading the comments from women on this thread YET AGAIN discussing personal and traumatic experiences as to why language matters should just be fucking honest with themselves that they don’t care how much women are excluded, othered, reduced or erased and own their misogyny.

This thread perfectly illustrates what “be kind” means. “Be kind to men or face the consequences.”

And really, anyone who has the nerve to rock up here and innocently say “oh hey, it’s not a big deal what’s wrong with being kind etc” after reading the comments from women on this thread YET AGAIN discussing personal and traumatic experiences as to why language matters

Many of them aren't doing it out of ignorance, though. Because they haven't been told, relentlessly how offensive it is. It's precisely because it is offensive that many people still do it.

Its not kind inclusive language, its dissociative language.

It should be possible to understand why more obscure, less accurate language is harmful, even if you can understand why it would sometimes be appropriate in situations that only involve trans people.

Meanwhile "Whatever you grow will save a bro".

SANDS are in the news for having used this horrible, dehumanising practice too - just today. SANDS. A charity who exist to support grieving mothers, who are already doubtless traumatised having had their status as mothers unexpectedly ripped from them along with all the hopes and dreams they have for that child. Then they see that experience erased by the very charity put in place to help them. It's a horrible betrayal which to me stings more than any of them.

The bereaved women who dare to object are, incidentally, being referred to as 'transphobic bigots'. What they are is grieving mothers. Really, I despair.

And really, anyone who has the nerve to rock up here and innocently say “oh hey, it’s not a big deal what’s wrong with being kind etc”

That's an incredibly kind way to interpret what was actually an aggressive, rude and notably un kind statement phrased as an order. It did not involve any questioning or interest in what anyone else thought or their reasons for thinking so.

Which is typically characteristic of those who go around snarling "be kind"; oddly they never embody or model the orders they like to give to others. I'm also endlessly confused as to why females should wish to 'be kind' to their own detriment towards those who have no belief in reciprocation or equal kindness in return. Because who would? Other than some kind of masochist?

Indeed. The SANDS language was what was unkind.

Whoever was responsible for using it in that organisation, and the leadership team, should reflect on who they’re seeking to help and raise funds from and for.

I do agree Datun and Michelle but I think there are some supportive lib female who will actually believe that just because they don’t mind being called “(insert offensive term here)” then we should all be good little girls and make life easier for the Poor Oppressed Ones (insert trademark symbol here.). I know the main posters here are doing a bit of territorial pissing but I think there’s actual women feeling guilt over a perceived “privilege”’they have been told they have that chirp up without really thinking.

Anyway, today I am a “smear test haver” and I will be discussing my slide into becoming a “post mentruator” I’m sure I’ll sound sane if I ask the non-doctor practitioner like that.

Clearly that should read lib fems but who knows what words mean these days?

It's so dehumanising.

@ethelredonagoodday

Just awful, and the post upthread about trainee midwives is beyond worrying. WTAF?!

Yeah, it’s secret community for midwives in the making fb group which is probably the biggest student midwife group on fb. One of the admins is trans and anyone who mentions anything remotely against the party line is kicked out.

am I allowed to use the C word?

@WishICouldThinkOfAGoodName

am I allowed to use the C word?

Christmas? No it’s still a bit early.

I’m currently pregnant. If anyone refers to me as a birthing person I shall not be accountable for my actions.