NHS - 8 out of 10 people under 40 will get pregnant within a year...

[Wickstead]

If they have sex without contraception regularly.

Bet they won’t....

FFS.

Yep - still BS. How do you complain? I don’t see a link on the page.

8 out of 10 people having sex?
All people?
Including same sex attracted people?

Essentially they are incapable of bringing themselves to use the words woman or female in an NHS info piece about conceiving a baby :/

It reads as though the NHS content writer assumes the only type or people who will look at that page are the type of people who ovulate, which is extremely sexist.

To be fair I cannot actually find this upsetting page at all, despite trying.

I have however found a load of stuff on NHS website about the coronavirus vaccine for pregnant women or women trying to conceive and the information uses the words woman/women throughout.

Gcnq a google of "NHS getting pregnant" brought it up as the first hit.

www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/trying-for-a-baby/trying-to-get-pregnant/

Bloody idiotic, whoever wrote it.

This is the original which has been fucked about:

The original makes sense.

I don’t understand the whole men can’t pregnant thing. If I’m a trans man with female sex organs then I can still get pregnant?

@fairynick

I don’t understand the whole men can’t pregnant thing. If I’m a trans man with female sex organs then I can still get pregnant?

Because biologically trans men are women. Obviously.

I'd also suggest any transman reading an NHS website or leaflet about getting pregnant isn't quite as triggered by being referred to as a woman as some would have you believe.

Plus there should be additional information written appropriately for a different audience. The rewritten advice isn't really fit for anyone.

@Beamur

Plus there should be additional information written appropriately for a different audience. The rewritten advice isn't really fit for anyone.

Precisely. If you've been on cross-sex hormones, your fertility is unlikely to work precisely like that of a woman who has not been messing around with her hormones. So the 8 out of 10 figure may well not apply to you - you may be much less likely to get pregnant.

And the 8 out of 10 figure certainly doesn't apply to "people" because that would imply the whole human race. Maybe qualified as "people with uteruses", but certainly not a blanket "people". That just makes the author look like a fucking eejit. In fact I think it's quite likely that the author looks like a fucking eejit because they are in fact a fucking eejit.

I gave them feedback about this not making sense and got the following reply:

"We have removed the line “8 in 10 people under 40 years old will get pregnant within 1 year of trying by having regular sex without using contraception” as there has been feedback about the word “people” people misleading. 
The page is written to be inclusive and uses plain, easy to understand language. Our content is tested to make sure it can be understood.
This page is written to be directed at the person who is trying to get pregnant and knows they can get pregnant. We learnt through user testing that this person is the majority reader of this page.
For more information about how we write, please visit https://service-manual.nhs.uk/content/how-we-writee_"

They have changed it, but it still isn't 'inclusive' of women, and it's not easy to understand either.

Just got this response to my comment:

“Dear User,

“We have removed the line “8 in 10 people under 40 years old will get pregnant within 1 year of trying by having regular sex without using contraception” as there has been feedback about the word “people” people misleading.
The page is written to be inclusive and uses plain, easy to understand language. Our content is tested to make sure it can be understood.
This page is written to be directed at the person who is trying to get pregnant and knows they can get pregnant. We learnt through user testing that this person is the majority reader of this page.”

Even their reply is appallingly written. Who tests their content and by whom do they make sure it’s understood?

And whoever wrote the reply still can’t bring themselves to type the word “woman”.

I complained about the wording at the top of this thread via a feedback form, together with others it's probably why they changed it to the new version. Here's what they replied to me:

Dear User,
We have removed the line “8 in 10 people under 40 years old will get pregnant within 1 year of trying by having regular sex without using contraception” as there has been feedback about the word “people” people misleading.
The page is written to be inclusive and uses plain, easy to understand language. Our content is tested to make sure it can be understood.
This page is written to be directed at the person who is trying to get pregnant and knows they can get pregnant. We learnt through user testing that this person is the majority reader of this page.
For more information about how we write, please visit service-manual.nhs.uk/content/how-we-write

Whoops, x-post

Good God, that reply is so stupid. If they're targeting the "majority reader who knows they(!) can get pregnant" why don't they use the pronouns that the "majority reader" uses?

A silly reply. It doesn't remove the ambiguity.

Dear service-manual nhs, 'woman' is not a dirty word, and it is not nice to imply to your female users that their existence has become some kind of nasty secret they shouldn't talk about. It is possible to add additional language for those who need it without erasing and confusing everyone else, with that everyone else forming 99% of your user base.

Directions to the grip shop can be found below.

This page is written to be directed at the person who is trying to get pregnant and knows they can get pregnant.

But a person who is also a bit vague about what one might do with sperm?

Note to author of stupid web page:

When you are in a hole, and already 3/4 of the way to Australia, STOP DIGGING!

Their reply is as I suspected, they are assuming the sex of the reader and assuming that the female reader of the page already understands all about human reproduction.
Their plain and simple language only works because it makes all these assumptions. It therefore is misleading for anyone outside of their (imagined but not explicitly defined) category of expected reader.
Personally I think that's really poor.

Their plain and simple language only works because it makes all these assumptions.

And the over-riding assumption is that although we all know that only women can become pregnant, this fact is distasteful and not to be spoken.

It's not 'inclusive', it's offensive.

Yep.
It's not just poor. It's shitty.

@merrymouse

Their plain and simple language only works because it makes all these assumptions.

And the over-riding assumption is that although we all know that only women can become pregnant, this fact is distasteful and not to be spoken.

It's not 'inclusive', it's offensive.

Exactly, and in a few years time how will we indicate to the female children with the body type that supports gestation that they may soon start bleeding regularly and that their friend who is also ‘female’ but with a different body type that produces small gametes won’t and that is not a health issue that needs investigating.

There was one on Twitter recently. An autistic charity alerting ‘autistics with a cervix’ to the fact that they may need regular screening for cervical cancer. But how would they know if they have a cervix?

How do they understand whether they are of the female body type that has a cervix or the ‘female’ body type that doesn’t??