NHS - still happy to use the word 'Men' in their inclusive world

[WeWillLookBack]

The NHS are a total mess. I have just started looking into the peri-menopause, as I was reading I realised that the have totally removed the words women / female from the entire section - with one exception

www.nhs.uk/conditions/menopause/

In reference to Testosterone -

'It's not currently licenced for use in women, although it can be prescribed after the menopause by a specialist doctor if they think it might help restore your sex drive.

I did find out about the male menopause, where the NHS happily use the word 'male or Men 11 times on one page.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/male-menopause/

Typical

No surprise there - inclusivity is all about centring men. Men must not be inconvenienced in any way, or be expected to change or alter anything nor accept any changes or alterations.

There's a surprise.

But women don’t matter unless they are men, surely?

www.nhs.uk/conditions/early-menopause/

This page uses women lots of times.

The early menopause was updated Feb 2021. The actual menopause pages May 2022. They are working there way through - updating to remove the word women. The male menopause page was due to be updated this year too - obviously no changes needed

Current secretary of health is Steve Barclay. Anyone know how we contact him to ask him to do something about the language used. Sajid Javid promised to do something about it but wasnt in post for long enough

I have already complained about this twice (for different reasons).
Both times I got back the stock response about the NHS being committed to using inclusive language.
The powers-that-be are not open to logical arguments against the wording used in the page on menopause. I pointed out that to use the word 'you' when talking about the reader is dangerously misleading as it may not necessarily be a woman who is reading the page about menopause.
No response from them.
I will have another go in a while.

Fuckers

that’s it…thats all i got

Who authorises this nonsense?

Well duh, only males and male females matter, female females can do one

Exactly!
If they were actually wanting to appease everyone and creat an equal society, then surely shouldn’t this read ‘ball havers’?
it’s clear arms day that they’re out to just shut women up.

Wouldn't it be better to simply complain about the word "men" being used on the male related pages, using whatever arguments have been used to remove the word "women"? Play them at their own game. They are not being inclusive because some women have prostates etc etc...

Wouldn't "ejaculators" be more accurate?

Wsnkers?

Wankers!

Yes. The rainbow is everywhere within the NHS.

I understand the massively misogynistic sexism of it all but its too risky to try to play them at their own game because the stakes are too high here. It’s appalling that NHS info is being written in such a way that many people will misunderstand key NHS health information that they need to absorb (and know is relevant to them in the first place). It’s not on to politicise health information which we all need to be able to access.

Most people can appreciate that using unexpected, complicated, euphemistic non-everyday language in official information can confuse or alienate its users. That goes for anyone especially if they have English as an additional language, low literacy, learning disabilities, are just pressed for time, or they have barriers to understanding the written word of whatever kind. That will be all of at some point in our lives. People think they are being ‘inclusive’ (by centering the feedings of a some men…) don’t give a crap about the many many many people in those actually vulnerable groups, clearly.

So keep writing- to the NHS and copy in Steve Barclay. If you already have got a response saying the language is inclusive when it is not, fine, just forward that.

The answer is for the NHS to use clear, accurate biological sex-based terms in all its communications - including where issues of gender identity and health are described., so that readers can understand the health issues relevant to them.

Everyone is perfectly free to think whatever they want about gender identity politics. Whatever. But humans can’t change biological sex and we all have a sexed body from our conception to death, whatever adaptations are made along the way. Biological sex-based health differences are therefore going to be real for as long as we are alive. We all need to be able to know about them.

Typo, should read : ‘That will be all of us at some point in our lives’ ie because of our older or younger age, barriers to learning that we might have, our level of education, our life circumstances, our health status, our inherited or acquired disability, whatever it is, at the time we need to access the health information.

It is completely unacceptable to put up any kind of barriers to accessible health information, which is exactly what is happening here. It doesn’t matter if it’s done in good faith, or not. It’s the exact opposite of being genuinely inclusive. One group’s political validation should never get to trump everyone else’s straightforward access to key health information.

Plus it’s also not acceptable to make our healthcare services feel essentially hostile to women, half the population. Which is exactly what these sexist language changes and erasures actually do. We’re women. It’s just how we were born and that won’t ever change and we all need to live with that fact. Gender stereotypes are the problem here, not the basic facts of human biological sex.