Twitter can't find the right word

[littlebillie]

Twitter are struggling to find the right word

It's so fucking insane and genunely dangerous when it fails to give clear information to, eg, pre-menopausla women who don't mentstruate for whatever reason. And of course it fails to give clear information to anybody because it is such word mush.

The people who write this trash forget that there are still many many people outside their mad ideological bubble who would read that garbage as meaining "safe for certain particular subsets of women depending on their menstruation status."

at ‘autistics with a cervix’

In that same section, there is a tweet from Twitter Moments from January:

The @WHO revised its pregnancy vaccine guidance on Friday, stating “we don’t have any specific reason to believe there will be specific risks that would outweigh the benefits of vaccination for pregnant women.”
Although it is a quote.

I was thinking yesterday, that when I first stumbled into all this via JKR’s tweets, I didn’t understand the one about menstruating people. I thought it specified which “females” exactly it was referring to (i.e. not pre nor post menstruating “females”)
so I thought it was fine. Thankfully those wise people on Twitter who tell you to “educate yourself” prompted me to do so and made me change my POV. I did indeed forget about people who might not understand words like menstruate or cervix and I didn’t foresee being called a cervix-haver, uterus-owner etc and I feel quite stupid and ashamed

Don't feel stupid and ashamed EyesOpening. I can remember posting on mumsnet my bafflement and anger that there seemed to be so much growing hostility to transpeople. I just didn't understand, then, that the hostility was to this terrifying trend towards erasing the reality of sex and the associated single-sex rights -- not to transpeople as such. The movement is SO bizarre and extreme and imperialistic that it was hard at first for me to get my head around it. Who could have anticipated such extremism?

I think the term Adult Human Female may have been better. Or is female being turned into a "dirty" word like woman

Just what JKR said in the tweet that unleashed such unwarranted hatred towards her:

'People who menstruate.' I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

This is ridiculous.

@Random789

Don't feel stupid and ashamed EyesOpening. I can remember posting on mumsnet my bafflement and anger that there seemed to be so much growing hostility to transpeople. I just didn't understand, then, that the hostility was to this terrifying trend towards erasing the reality of sex and the associated single-sex rights -- not to transpeople as such. The movement is SO bizarre and extreme and imperialistic that it was hard at first for me to get my head around it. Who could have anticipated such extremism?

Thanks. I’m just owning up to my mistake/lack of thought for others as I posted on here that I couldn’t understand the outcry over the phrasing. I think the turning point for me was seeing that it wasn’t happening for the word “men”

@Hexinthecity

at ‘autistics with a cervix’

It was in January, trying to encourage women with autism to go to a cervical screening because research showed they were less likely to attend their screenings.

twitter.com/AutisticUK/status/1351183014760509448

Doherty et al. (2020) found that Autistic people were "significantly less likely to "attend on schedule for screening programmes. "

It's crucial that Autistics with a cervix attend their smear appointments. Info about the process can be found here:

Wow

@DentonsFringeArnottsWaistcoat

Well, it’s par for the course now isn’t it 🙄, but it was the bit at the end that struck me - who the fuck was thinking that just ‘being around’ someone who was vaccinated might affect your periods? 😂

Naomi Wolf tweeted that.

It's a direct response to Naomi Wolf a few days back.

New piece from Dr Em on this very subject.

twitter.com/PankhurstEM/status/1385476893412110339?s=20

From Dr Em's piece:

Have you noticed an increased push for woman as costume, woman as womb, woman as sex toy, woman as purchasable? Sandra Lee Bartky has outlined how ‘sexual objectification occurs whenever a woman’s body, body parts, or sexual functions are separated out from her person, reduced to the status of mere instruments, or regarded as if they were capable of representing her’.1 This is what is happening when terms such as ‘people with vaginas’, ‘birthing people’, or ‘cervix haver’ are being used to describe women to make some men happy.

It is easier for States to remove women’s rights, or permit companies to, when they are not sex based, like our oppression, because terms such as ‘people’ and ‘parent’ obscures the discrimination based on sex and that these are issues specific to women. For example, when Poland banned abortion for women, Amnesty responded by claiming it as a people’s problem, as if it impacted males in the same way.

The thing is though, just a headline 'vaccine doesn't affect women' wouldn't have carried any message at all and would have been confusing and misleading - the news story is about menstrual cycles and fertility, which is why I'm baffled they brought post-menopause into it and why they didn't just say 'menstrual cycles and fertility' which would have avoided the bizarre confusing phrasing. It almost feels deliberately goady!

WTF is Naomi Wolf smoking?!

I watched a Ted talk once by a woman who was born without a womb.

Is this guidance meant to cover women like her or not?

It almost feels deliberately goady!

Or deliberately playing to the woke audience for cookies.

Naomi 'nanopatticles' Wolf is firmly in the TWAW camp, by the way.

I know Naomi is very vocal, but 'just being around people who have had the vaccine' is completely bananas - when and how did she get so credulous and, well, dim?

It’s like they’re playing that board game called taboo where you have to describe something without mentioning the actual word. Only it’s not a bloody game. Fucking ridiculous.

Jesus Christ. Gibberish. Absolute gibberish.

It’s such gibberish that I’ve caught contact stupidity from being around it, and now I can’t articulate just how batshit it is.

Good god, so much word-salad! . In order to get the important message across, could they not even bring themselves to use the acronym "afab"? I thought this was an acceptable term on twitter? I know we all know that it's observed or recorded, but at least it does identify the correct demographic....

Why didn’t they just say ‘Women and trans men’ if they wanted to be clear?

'Women and trans men' is regarded as not being inclusive of those female human beings who identify as non-binary, gender queer etc.

This is the inevitable consequence of denying that 'women' is an umbrella term describing all female sex human beings and allowing it to be considered a gender identity which some may identify into or out of.

Naomi has lost the plot, her popcorn, her glasses down the back of her seat, and the exit sign. As well as her shit.

They can’t say ‘women and transmen’ because that leaves out non binary, gender fluid, agender etc etc etc people who will then get hurt feelings.

And they can’t say ‘women, transmen, non binary and other gendered people’ because that will include a mix of, erm, menstruators and non-menstruators.

What a problem they have created for themselves.

The headline could have just said something to the effect of "Vaccine doesn't affect mensruation" since that was the substance of the text below. It wasn't about whether it was safe over all for 'people who menstruate' (unless you think that menstuating is all they do -- which come to think of it is typical of the reductionist attitudes to actual womanhood this language betrays).

It's like the writer felt that they HAD to get into this business of displaying their tortured redefinition of womanhood even tho , for the purpose of this particular headline, there was no need to bring in Newspeak.