Aaannd another one. British Journal of Midwifery refers to "pregnant people" in the front cover of the January issue.

[FannyCann]

Yet another medical journal, this time the British Journal of Midwifery has a front cover referring to "Pregnant People".

twitter.com/bjmidwifery/status/1479136444555931653?s=21

@lanadelgrey

It’s a rubbish cover line. And yes, it’s something I’ve done in the past. How about pregnancy and the pandemic: developing a vaccination clinic/strategy. Multiple permutations. People is a flat/generic world. I’m not a regular reader of this journal so no idea what their usual covers are like and obviously you are not persuading people to pick out it from among the glossies in your local WHSmiths but sorting out the ‘sells’ on a cover is quite important for any mag really

It's not going to win any design awards, for sure. But neither is it erasing women-centric language, taken as a whole. 'Women' are right there in the mission statement at the top. And in the feature-specific coverlines on the left.

I think the vitriol on this thread is... misdirected.

Plus, 'Pregnancy and the pandemic: developing a vaccination strategy' would be a great newspaper/webpage headline; but a bastard to typeset on a mag cover 😎

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one. I was really annoyed to see similar content on the positive birth company IG page smh

I’ve fired off a letter of complaint to the editor, I realised there’s no point me getting annoyed on mumsnet chances are the people responsible for this won’t read the mumsnet feminist board.

@Rightsraptor

And being ratioed for it. Curiously, the words women & mother also appear on the front cover. Inconsistent, to say the very least.

Maybe because women and mothers are people? The terms are not mutually exclusive.

*I'm glad to see I'm not the only one. I was really annoyed to see similar content on the positive birth company IG page smh
*
Last year the Positive Birth Company had the audacity to write in an IG post that "birth is not a woman centred event" because apparently men have babies too. They can get to fuck.

@Citadel 😱 gtfo.... seriously

My point was partly shit headline and you could do a whole lot better in half an hour than the couple of minutes I spent without the use of person unless you were trying to make a particular point. As for typesetting, a bit last century, no?

@Dinosaurwoman

I’ve fired off a letter of complaint to the editor, I realised there’s no point me getting annoyed on mumsnet chances are the people responsible for this won’t read the mumsnet feminist board.

This cheers me. I will write too.

Are you an ARM member - next issue of the Mag will be a good one!

I hope so! I had ARM down as another lost cause.

@lanadelgrey

My point was partly shit headline and you could do a whole lot better in half an hour than the couple of minutes I spent without the use of person unless you were trying to make a particular point. As for typesetting, a bit last century, no?

Would 'typography' be a more acceptable term than 'typesetting' to you for 'using whatever layout software you are working with to adjust fonts, leading and kerning for aesthetic coherence'?

Times change. The dimensions of a page don't.

And sometimes, saying 'person' instead of 'woman' or 'man' is the very opposite of 'making a point'. Or it used to be.

I just can’t believe we live in a world where we have to pretend that men can get pregnant too.

All the idiots in the replies with what they think is such a clever gotcha with ‘aren’t women people?’

Missing the point deliberately.

We have to continue to speak up and resist or we will genuinely reach a point in the night too distant future where you just cannot say woman at all. And the misogynists will have won, helped along by the idiot handmaidens cheerleading this because they’re too thick to understand they are being erased and too arrogant to listen to the the older, wiser women warning them.

A vaccine for pregnant people?
People as in all human beings: children, men and women?

Err… What ethics committee would ever have approved research to find a Covid vaccine for pregnant.. children? or pregnant men?
What sponsor of that research would ever have..?
What insurer would ever have..?
What researcher would have wasted anyone’s time trying to..?

Journals really shouldn’t misrepresent the research that they are reporting on. There’s absolutely no fucking way that researchers pissed around during a global pandemic looking for pregnant ‘people’ to develop a vaccine for. Nor would they have bothered to so for pregnant fairies, gnomes, pixies, elves or any other made up category.
Sex is real. Gender is social stereotypes, made up bullshit. ‘Gender identity’ is just a political school of thought, not an actual biological sex-changing process. Humans can’t change sex. A few of us may need professional support to come to terms with that. Fine.

‘People’ don’t get ever pregnant, only women get pregnant. We ALL know that. Women are a constituent of ‘people’ but ‘people’ will never specifically just mean ‘women’.

‘People’ in general also tend to dislike lying and gaslighting and being told day is night. So I don’t know a journal addressing health care professionals dealing with birth, thinks it’s going to achieve by promoting this nonsense.

@OperationDessertStorm

I’ve just realised my work intranet page uses ‘pregnant employees’.

If pregnant is not defined as "growing the baby" / "with child" all the dad's should apply for maternity. It's only fair 🤷🏼‍♀️

@multivac

They have chosen the same order of words as I would have done. 'Pregnant' needs to be the main one that jumps off the page - putting 'woman' next to it means you can't use 'woman' or 'women' anywhere else - 'pregnant women' is also, ironically, somewhat tautological, thus making the phrase weaker in a coverline than 'pregnant people'.

If it weren't for the ideologically driven language policing happening elsewhere, this wouldn't raise an eyebrow.

It's a professional magazine about women their pregnancies and the provision of services.

Is the big headline story about getting women who were not getting a C19 jab because they were worried of the risk to their baby? Or just getting women boosters? Encouraging women who are trying to get pregnant come in to specialist clinics?
If so then use the word woman
Play around with the subheadline stories if need be.
The use of people rather than woman was poor editorial choice.

@DaisiesandButtercups

I hope so! I had ARM down as another lost cause.

Me too the past couple issues but I’m told change is afoot.

It's not just them, this was a post from my local hospital birth centre last year!

Do they do anything similar for black women - where maternal deaths are higher?

survey.phonic.ai/61114010ca8a368c93d3de4c - the royal college of midwives are doing a survey (answers recoded for some reason) about the wording used for birthing. Interesting…

@buffyajp

The irony is the word midwife means ‘with woman’ so they best get themselves another job title. Idiots.

Excellent point.

What is weird is that in the smaller straplines they talk about episotomies and women, and mixed feeding and mothers.

So they acknowledge that only women are going to experience episiotomy and that women who give birth are mothers not fathers.

So why the pregnant people nonsense? They should at least have the courage of their convictions and be consistent.

Maybe the writers of each article are asked to supply their own straplines or running titles? So this is influenced by the writer of the article in question.

Calling us bodies with
People that

Has a subtle effect but with huge results.

Language is important.
Ad companies, politicians, retailers, corporations and loads more as incredibly careful how to word things.

To make things sound brilliant, to obfuscate meaning, to distance things from those impacted.

That's why the phrases collateral damage and friendly fire came into being.

To distance from we've injured/killed a load of civilians/ordinary people. We've attacked our own troops.

Distancing women/girls wholesale from female specific biology has two impacts-

It separates all the things that happen/are done to us because of our biology from them all relating to one group, into a different group for each thing.

Rather than abortion, medical scandals, various cancers, majority of sexual assaults and raped, anything related to pregnancy all happening to one group, women.

It becomes.

People who need abortions
People who had vaginal mesh for birth injuries
People with cervixes
Students being sexually assaulted at school, peer on peer sexual assault (v seen as standard recently)
Pregnant people

It separates, destroys the obvious connection, reduces emotional reaction.

Eg
Mothers at X hosp becoming seriously ill after giving birth at X hosp
People at X hosp becoming seriously ill after birthing at X hosp

Mother women girl all invoke a larger and more strongly felt impression than people who language.

Using some other language upgrades that are being pushed/ used. And taking a bit further as well.

Boys reveal experience of being sexually abused by scout leaders.
Young people comment on sexual misconduct youth leader claims.

Language is important.

For the group of 4 billion with no actual shared commonalities.
The massive writing magazine cover wording, for people to note, and for most subconsciously and some consciously, was a memorable low-

Bodies With Vaginas

@Linearpark

Maybe the writers of each article are asked to supply their own straplines or running titles? So this is influenced by the writer of the article in question.

Normally that’s the sub or editor who would create the title - possibly whoever does the layouts could amend wording. Either way - ‘someone’ got the memo didn’t they?

To PP

I haven't seen (but may have happened) any complaints that people have episiotomies.
And very little around specifying must be people who mix feed.

On the latter chest feeding, men BF too are around obv. Oh and body feeding.