BBC 'pregnant people' again

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Was reading this interesting article on managing type 1 diabetes and pondering the issues at hand when...

Why are they using 'pregnant people'? It gives me a jolt every time I see it. It makes me feel so sad!

Link to article -

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-62184812

Jeremy Clarkson, in his Times column on the weekend was writing about about trying to get his cows pregnant with a bull. He wrote:

With a bit of luck, he’d get them all up the duff at roughly the same time, which would make calving easier, and shorter, in nine months’ time. Yup, as Countryfile’s Adam Henson said recently, cows have the same gestation period as “people”. I know he meant “women” but he’s on the BBC, so he couldn’t say that.

^^

I read that article, and the rage system engaged so bloody hard that I logged on and complained.

I'd urge everybody else to do the same. It would have taken no more than ten minutes if I hadn't rewritten my complaint to sound more reasonable and less furious.

Complained.

Where did you lodge your complaint?

It is hard to articulate the feelings that reading this stuff engenders. I do understand that some would feel it's an insignificant change but it brings me up short every single time I see it, and makes me feel an array of feelings from frustration to sadness, to worry for my children and the future to anger that somehow a lobby to change language in a way that is detrimental to women and girls has happened so swiftly and without consent.

I just googled 'how to complain to the BBC' and went from there.

Dead easy.

Oh, and I said that in my view the article displayed bias as it used terminology associated with a contentious ideology. I went on a bit.

The BBC have a handy complaints form.

You have to choose what the problem is from a list so I decided they were being inaccurate as it's a science/tech article. And I enjoyed using the word "obfuscatory". Pretentious, moi?

Oh, and what they don't tell you til you're all done is that you have to confirm by email within an hour, so make sure you have access to your email account.

Do they mean pregnant women with gd? Or do they mean diabetic women who are also pregnant? Or do they just mean women and subbed in the wrong generic term, they should have used non men? What a joke.

I expect non-men would not have been considered appropriate for either NBs or transmen.

Had it just been women being described as non-men, that would be fine, obviously. 🙄

Naga Munchetty seems to get some stick, (particularly on here this week!) but a) I like her anyway, and b) the other day someone from a cervical cancer charity was on, talking about people-with-a-cervix. Every time, Naga said 'women'. Every single time.

And i like her even more.

I was reading up on menopause on the Bupa website yesterday and apparently ‘People’ experience menopause at around 50. I was enraged, people don’t experience menopause women do, people include men. Anyone who didn’t have an understanding of biology could read that and think every person male or female experiences menopause. I am so sick of this fucking shit.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm7201

This is a science/medical journal talking about menstrual changes and refusing to use the word women.

A quick 'find in page' does show that they in fact slipped up once, losers!!

The references show that other doctors and scientist are more scientifically literate/less woke (or at least were when they were published).

‘I do understand that some would feel it's an insignificant change but it brings me up short every single time I see it...’

It’s because the people using this terminology are preferring virtually anyone over a woman who wants to be referred to as a woman. It’s not strictly about the language, it’s about the bulldozing of the very clear preference amongst women (and particularly women who have been pregnant, are pregnant, or who are mothers) not to be referred to like this. I am my daughters’ mother. When they were in my uterus, I was a pregnant woman. Call me that.

@TheSpottedZebra

I noticed that. She wasn’t having it, was she?

There’ll be people who say, in reply to me, but you’re a person, aren’t you? This language is inclusive of people who are pregnant but not women.

There are so such people. You are disrespecting us for a blatant lie, and that’s why we don’t like it.

No such.

You're all so articulate in outlining the problem.

I know how it makes me feel but find it hard to get it across!

I’ve also complained. Easy to do here www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint

This language is inclusive of people who are pregnant but not women.

Like who? You can't be pregnant unless you're a woman. Yes I know you can identify as a transman or binary, but to get pregnant you still have to be genetically female and physically a woman, like it or lump it. Medical science simply hasn't got to the point where someone who was born a boy can get pregnant when he grows up. No drugs or hormones or surgery can do that. And it's dishonest and confusing for the BBC of all organisations to pretend otherwise.

The BBC has a duty to educate, not to hide the fact that people cannot change their physical reproductive sex. When an organisation like the BBC says "pregnant people" as if someone who was born a boy could grow up to get pregnant, they're promoting ignorance and encouraging young people to take medical decisions that have devastating consequences.

Sorry - or nonbinary.

I've just looked this up on the BBC website and there are loads of mentions of 'pregnant women'. Not seen 'pregnant people' at all.

I’ve complained

The article also links to the journalist who wrote it, I wonder if she’d reply directly if this issue was pointed out to her?