Vanishing girls

[ArabeIIaScott]

They call us pupils
they call us students
they call us young people
they call us 13-18-year-olds
they call us learners

That's not my name.
That's not my name.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-65695115

Article on period products works very hard to avoid using the word 'girls'.

thanks, Brunch, that's a very good point, too.

They've been caught out on this before as well: when it's been highlighted & admitted, yet continues, it really is quite explicit bias.

https://reaction.life/bbc-at-sharp-end-of-pushback-over-gender-neutral-language/

Extract:

Hill later told The Telegraph that she had her own experiences of being “attacked and de-platformed for questioning the ideological direction of travel”, after being previously lambasted by trans-activists for taking issue with gender-neutral phrases such as “birthing person.” She said the BBC piece was a “classic example of data being obscured by de-sexed language.”

The erasure of gender-specific language in women’s health remains divisive as the debate on sex and gender continues to rage online. Only a few days ago, Forbes tweeted a link to an article, explaining how Covid-19 doubled the risk of serious complications during pregnancy and used the term “pregnant people” instead of “pregnant women.”

The phrasing ignited yet another backlash. “The word you’re struggling with is WOMEN it’s really not that hard to say is it!” one person tweeted. Another wrote: “Pregnant WOMEN. This is a risk factor that only women can have. It’s a women’s health issue.”

And:

What’s more, a recent study has found that referring to women with gender-neutral terms like “birth-givers”, referring to breast milk as “chest milk” and replacing the word “mothers” with “pregnant people” can put women’s health at risk and jeopardise decades of work to improve gender bias in medical literature.

The paper’s authors write: “Desexing the language of female reproduction has been done with a view to being sensitive to individual needs and as beneficial, kind and inclusive. Yet this kindness has delivered unintended consequences that have serious implications for women and children.”

Jenny Gamble, a professor at Coventry University and one of the paper’s authors, said the researchers had acknowledged that words are changing to ensure inclusion but that sex-based language is “important due to sex-based oppression.

“Confusing the idea of gender identity and the reality of sex risks adverse health consequences and deeper and more insidious discrimination against women,” she said. “Sex, gender, and gender identity are not synonymous but are being treated as if they are.”

it really is quite explicit bias.

Completely. It's bald sexism.