'Anyone With A Cervix'

[User456987]

I don't know what's worse here. 'Anyone with a cervix' (so presumably including infant girls??), the complete absence of the word women, or the #dropyourpants hashtag.

So cause my friend and others great distress rather than a bit of education. How sensitive.

When it comes to health messaging, it is important to make it as clear as possible to be understood by asbwide a cohort as possible - eg people with learning disabilities or communication issues will struggle with messaging that obfuscates, especially when that obfuscation is about the person the message is aimed at.
Women, girls, females, men, boys, males.....these are clear and easily understood words.
Education is important, but so is the clear messaging - because it is not as simple as just educating someone, when they have difficulties processing information, have problems with understanding, have a limited vocabulary....

I get that some people find it traumatic and upsetting - but health messaging has to be about clear communication.

“We are all smear ready” is extremely condescending and minimises the fears of women who have real anxieties and concerns.

“Drop your pants” is awful and just draws attention to the reasons why many women avoid being tested.

It’s like someone had the intention of making the worst advert ever.

When it comes to health messaging, it is important to make it as clear as possible to be understood by asbwide a cohort as possible - eg people with learning disabilities or communication issues will struggle with messaging that obfuscates, especially when that obfuscation is about the person the message is aimed at

I wonder where those who advise on these things about "inclusive" language will be if law suits start hitting because drs didnt make it clear that it was something that say all the women and girls in the family should be tested for.

We live in a time where we have to put hit liquid warnings on coffee cups amd nut allergy warnings on a packet of peanuts ti avoid lawsuits and complaints. But it's OK to dilute messages and obscure medical.facts? Makes no sense.

And it's the drs and medical staffs necks on the line. Their jobs. Their careers etc

Wheres their protection?

Just trying to understand here... are people arguing that the potentially hurt feelings of a small minority are so important that it is worth a large number of women dying from cervical cancer of lack of screening?

As calling for “people with a cervix” means that they won’t understand that they need to go?

And we are the bad guys? Wow!

Yes that's what I've read.

I mean when you put it in any other context it sounds utter odd....

Do your children with feet need new school shoes. Come and get their feet measured at Clark’s.

People with eyes, come and have a free eye test at spec savers

I’m not sure it’s possible to make language so inclusive that it includes everyone without getting to the stage that the language used becomes either meaningless or protracted.

@PumpkinSpiceWoman

Yes, it's bad to not specify age groups.

Hence, transphobes have to stop saying "only women menstruate", because they know girls aren't always women.

Plus, maybe stop being transphobic and acknowledge that some women don't menstruate but some trans men/boys and non-binary people do? How does that harm you?

Huh? Irrespective of a repetition of some belief system to the contrary, the indisputable biological facts still remain.

The only people who do menstruate are women and girls. Women (and girls) have ovaries and these are part of that whole cycle.

And you're right; juvenile female humans are more correctly girls. Now, sometimes people do call adult women 'girls'.

Just calling other people names because they eschew your belief system is ... a bit zealous. Irrationally so. There are many competing belief systems and philosophies in the world. Not all of them can make us profess a belief in theirs as the one true belief, as much as they'd want to. It would be/is a bit off if they start calling people names if they don't adopt their beliefs.

If objective scientific fact is to be disputed, then real concrete evidence has to be given. Bit of a higher barrier there than 'It is true because I believe it'.

p.s. trying to insult other people by calling them names for not believing the same as you, or merely for trying to preserve the safety, privacy and dignity of women, says more about you than them.

Trying to insist that reality must be adjusted to avoid upsetting your beliefs is such a good look, isn’t it? Oh, wait…

The people who run these campaigns have no interest in reaching out and increasing the number of women going for smear tests etc. I can’t imagine any workshops or test groups are done to judge these campaigns and their effectiveness. They aren’t looking it from other’s POV. It’s all about what sounds trending and cool. Even young people are not going to be brought in by stupid hashtags and campaigns about dropping your pants. There really should be more studies done to show how this “woke” campaigning does nothing to help people.

Plus, maybe stop being transphobic and acknowledge that some women don't menstruate but some trans men/boys and non-binary people do? How does that harm you?

It harms my ability to talk about sex based rights and protections that women need regardless of how they identify.

It encourages the idea that any reference to sex is distasteful.

Women need clear, accurate language, not euphemisms.

Hence, transphobes have to stop saying "only women menstruate", because they know girls aren't always women

The NHS doesn’t invite WOMEN for cervical screening until they are 25.

Quite happy to talk about ‘women and girls’ where appropriate.

Only biological women can menstruate. This whole thing makes me angry.

Anyone with a cervix is an absolute insult. We are women, still being degraded and insulted to make other people feel better.

It's fucked up.

@merrymouse

Plus, maybe stop being transphobic and acknowledge that some women don't menstruate but some trans men/boys and non-binary people do? How does that harm you?

It harms my ability to talk about sex based rights and protections that women need regardless of how they identify.

It encourages the idea that any reference to sex is distasteful.

Women need clear, accurate language, not euphemisms.

Hear! Hear!

Plus, maybe stop being transphobic and acknowledge that some women don't menstruate but some trans men/boys and non-binary people do? How does that harm you?

It harms women and I'm a woman. It harms us by

• reducing us to a bodily function
• erasing the articulation & acknowledgement of our presence
• erasing words which describe us, therefore erasing us
• stopping us speak about our lived experience

I don't mind if it's something like "girls, women and transmen" - that is inclusive.

It is not inclusive to erase the words which describe the existence and experience of 50% of the population.

I still just cannot understand how the feelings of some people are more important than the lives of others? It is just bizarre.

So to accommodate the feelings of males, women have to die? A male who identifies as a woman has the right to not get shaken in that belief and that right supersedes the right of biological women to receive understandable and life saving information. Do you even see what you are writing?

I understand that it is hard for women who had a hysterectomy and badly wanted children. I truly understand after having struggled with infertility. But we all have things that are hard. What about women who have lost children?

Shall we ban all pictures of children in public places? Shall we ban adverts to vaccinate children (leading to more deaths) to avoid triggering those women with pictures of children?

Quite wool the self absorbed meeeeness demanding that the world contorts itself out of shape so some ppl don’t get hurty feels because they don’t like biological reality is unbelievable!

I’m infertile but I dont for example go around demanding the words mother, mum and mummy are erased or berate the NCT for excluding women who can’t give birth or wage campaigns against Mother's Day for being ‘infertilephobic’

I’m infertile but I dont for example go around demanding the words mother, mum and mummy are erased or berate the NCT for excluding women who can’t give birth or wage campaigns against Mother's Day for being ‘infertilephobic’

And if you are female you will suffer from infertility for sex specific reasons, and may have received sex specific treatment.

Recognition of sex isn’t an affirmation or a value judgement. It’s the reality we have to live with, and sometimes cope with, regardless of how we identify.

recognition of sex isn’t an affirmation or value judgement

Fuck that’s such a blindingly good point merry

Plus, maybe stop being transphobic and acknowledge that some women don't menstruate but some trans men/boys and non-binary people do? How does that harm you?

Those people are all biological women. Some would just prefer to term themselves as something different. Which is fine, we can have women and

However either everyone equally gets to use the words that fit their reality and identity, or no one does. Stop erasing 99% of the female population and making their words and identities and names a dirty word. It's not inclusive. It's not intersectional. It's not kind.

Often infertile women, post menopausal women and girls are used for their agenda. If such groups had issues with pregnancy, smear tests etc linked to being female why hadn’t they spoke up before, why do they need some group of males to speak for them? It’s ridiculous.

I don't think there's any evidence that this came from a long historical wave of campaigning from female people who were infertile, menopausal or too young to menstruate.

Any more than there's a mass campaign by women who have suffered miscarriage and worse, and/or infertility, trying to get everyone including MN to stop referring to hurtful, awful things like mother and baby groups, baby clothes sections in supermarkets and parenting forums. It doesn't happen. Those women, despite their pain, seem to manage not to resent and wish to erase other women, and to tolerate those things being in the world without being for them, however sad they may be about it.

And I say that as someone who ran out of Tesco in tears the first time I encountered the baby clothes section after one of the miscarriages.

@merrymouse

“Recognition of sex isn’t an affirmation or a value judgement. It’s the reality we have to live with, and sometimes cope with, regardless of how we identify.”

This is a great point. Why is recognising an inherent biological difference offensive? Why is the aim for trans women and women to be considered exactly the same ....when of course we all know there are very real obvious differences.

Further than that. If being a woman has no link to biology....why would trans women have surgery and take hormones specifically to change their bodies to be similar to women’s bodies?

Just to expand on a point made previously - screening changed in November 2020. The sample of cells taken is now, initially, tested for the HPV virus. If this comes back positive then that sample is tested further with a 'traditional smear' to test for pre cancerous cells. Thus women are no longer being asked to go for a smear test, because they're going for an HPV test initially.
I presume the HPV virus can also be found on other vaginal tissues, but can't comment on whether women who've had surgical intervention to remove their cervix need to be tested.

I haven't had a smear for 22 years when I was spoken to so appallingly, I decided to take my chances with nature.

I've only ever had one.

But after reading this campaign I, oh, no, wait, hang on, no. That campaign has done nothing to reassure me that any future experience would be any less appalling than the first. In fact, it pretty much guarantees it.