Oh come on New Scientist...!

[bobbinon]

You are supposed to be a bastion of scientific rigour!

Ffs

I know I always go against the grain here but I think 'people who menstruate' is perfectly clear - it's not all women, it's specifically taking data from those who regularly menstruate. If they said 'women's cycles' then I'd question whether menopausal ones etc were skewing the data.

I am menopausal if by that you mean perimenopausal but I still regularly menstruate. My sister is younger than me and has PCOS so has intermittent periods. I don't think your point is valid.

What's wrong with saying 'ethnicity affects the length of women's menstrual cycles?' or even 'ethnicity affects the menstrual cycle length'. It's like they needed to who how progressive they are and conflate this with being much less understandable.

I know I always go against the grain here but I think 'people who menstruate' is perfectly clear - it's not all women, it's specifically taking data from those who regularly menstruate. If they said 'women's cycles' then I'd question whether menopausal ones etc were skewing the data.

Not really. If you're analysing data about women's menstrual cycles it should be obvious that you're only using data from women who are still menstruating. And if you wanted to make that clearer you could say 'women who menstruate'.

Yes, but why not say women who menstruate ?

Also women are, scientifically, people.

Women are, scientifically, also mammals, animals, assembleges of atoms, hosts of microorganisms and objects with physical mass.

Generally, membership of a less general group is more useful to convey meaning than membership of a more general one, especially when, as in this case, the characteristic in question is specific to the less general group (taking here of course the more useful meaning of woman as a biological sense rather than the less useful meaning as an undefinable self-identified mental state).

You are supposed to be a bastion of scientific rigour!

It isn’t really. It’s an entertaining science-newsy magazine, not a primary research journal.

Also, LOL at an ideology that can accept menstruation may have some correlation with ethnicity but can't possibly countenance the possibility it has anything to do with sex 😂

Well on the one hand, I agree, it’s so idiotic as to be laughable.

But on the other, the fact that it’s such evident nonsense-on-stilts to anybody whose IQ rises above 75, yet there’s a large body of utter eejits buying into it, makes it really sinister.

If a child is bleeding from the genitals, how do you know whether to give them a pad, or call an ambulance? Being that we cannot say 'boy' or 'girl' any more. Is it the one with the pink bow in their hair or is there some other way of knowing?

Apparently buying into it, that should say....

Women who menstruate would have given the clarity required (for people who decided that there needed clarification that a study of menstrual cycles featured women
who have actual menstrual cycles).

Self-identify here is basically an
admission that they’ve no idea who actually filled in the survey. So the people
who reported they were Asian also tended to report longer cycles. But, the responses could have come entirely from a group of bored sixth formers at a boys school for all they know.

Which is to say… don’t bet anything important on the results being that representative of reality. 😁

So the reason I haven't menstrusted for 2 years is nothing to do with menopause and more likely to be related to my immense spice cupboard, then?

If it said "women who menstruate" that wording itself would not be clear whether it involved non-adult females ie girls who are under the age of adulthood and therefore not yet women.

"People who menstruate" is concise and clear, it does not suggest male people are included, unlike other mangled language we have seen, and it also avoids the question of did they/ didn't they include female people who believe they are not women, because the word "women" is played fast and loose with by publications so as to effectively become meaningless. As we have seen from the many people talking about "being a woman" who can't define it.

As I said, I know I'm against the grain here but I don't have an issue with its clarity.

If it said "women who menstruate" that wording itself would not be clear whether it involved non-adult females ie girls who are under the age of adulthood and therefore not yet women.

Again it seems obvious to me that girls would be included. But if this doesn't seem obvious to you, just say 'women and girls'.

You're a man aren't you

Wow - some women? (hope not) passively accepting the removal of the word woman / women / girls from our language about our bodies - and why? No good reason other than to pander to a tiny minority of the population alongside the powerful misogynist tendency.

What can't be named, classified or identified, can't be researched, protected or fought for.

it also avoids the question of did they/ didn't they include female people who believe they are not women

Why is a science magazine pandering to people who have a problem with accepting reality?

If they can't even say the word woman, they're not getting this one's money any more.

Quite. What a waste of paper.

The accepted terminology for girls
tends to be ‘young women’ these days anyway. I don’t think anyone is imagining ‘women who menstruate’ only means adults.

That said, i bet the research did only include adults though. How many 9 year old (self identified) respondents did they have?

The source for this is a paper analysing data from the Apple women’s health study. all the participants were adults.

Which is to say, it only tells us about women who menstruate.

This is the study

"Variation in menstrual cycle length by age, race/ethnicity, and body mass index in a large digital cohort of women in the US"

europepmc.org/article/ppr/ppr553165

There's a link to an open access source for the paper under Full text links on that page.^^

I would like to self identify as Elle MacPherson.

If it said "women who menstruate" that wording itself would not be clear whether it involved non-adult females ie girls who are under the age of adulthood and therefore not yet women.

I have a straw you can clutch.

If it said "women who menstruate" that wording itself would not be clear

"People who menstruate" is concise and clear

The only people who menstruate are women though? Sex = female, gender irrelevant.

And the apple health app collects sex, not gender (specifically uses the words sex, male, and female)

So 'people' is nothing but pandering, political language.

Mind you I stopped reading NS a few years ago when they first started with this nonsense, after being a subscriber for years.