Line managing someone who talks about "pregnant people" - how to gently tell her to use "woman"?

[LittlePrecious]

I am line managing someone on a project about pregnancy.

She keeps using the phrase "pregnant people" and it turns my stomach.

What I want to say is "Pull yourself together, get a fucking grip, and use the word woman". But I feel I need to be slightly more tactful than that. But I'm not sure what to actually say because its such a blindingly obvious thing to have to say.

I work in academia where things are fraught. I don't want this backfiring on me.

Please do you have any suggestions for how I can phrase "just fucking say woman, its not a dirty word" tactfully and without putting myself at risk? I may need to commit this phrase to writing as well so there may be a paper trail.

Thank you!

Don't gently tell her anything, she can say pregnant people if she likes! Who are you to police her choice of language?!

Her boss who requires her to stick to biological facts.

@SirChenjins as a PP has said, NHS literature refers to pregnant people. She's consistent with the NHS. Also, the term "people" includes women therefore she is factually correct.

Perhaps in some part of the NHS but not all of it and there is a move to stop it, and rightly so. The RCOG uses women - so use that.

You could refer to the Plain English Campaign which is focused on making public information clear and concise. It's so that people of all intelligence and literacy skills in English can have the best chance of understanding public communications.

I also like what Cofaki says - just change it, no discussion.

I think there’s an academic point here too, if you start using data……issues which affect ‘pregnant people’ v the population as a whole compared with issues which affect pregnant women v the population of women will give very different results; so it is really important to use appropriate language otherwise the data won’t make sense

The term "people" includes every human on the planet and is therefore incorrect.

When you start dismantling the word women from pregnancy all sorts of things happen. When it becomes ‘people’ what you are allowing is for all ‘people’ (both male and female) to start having a say on important issues like abortion rights etc.

If you're at a university, and you're her line manager, are you actually responsible for the research output?

If you're her supervisor or project lead, this would seem to be within your remit. If you're head of department or such, and not connected with the research project, I'd leave her to work with her research group and peer reviewers.

I would write women, but academics should be able to choose (and defend) their use of language. They shouldn't all sing from the same hymn sheet. And their managers shouldn't undermine this.

If it's a project you're actually working on, different story and room for an academic discussion.

You are perfectly reasonable for preferring real life language and not using the identity driven alternative.

Watch out for any action that looks like mobbing.

A checklist created by Leymann, the Leymann Inventory of Psychological Terror,
23
lists 45
mobbing actions and sets a threshold for deeming that mobbing has taken place if one or
more happens around once a week over at least a year. These actions can be grouped into
five broad categories, each centred on a aspect of the victim’s life that is harmed:
● self-expression and communication (such as being denied expression, facing
continuous criticism, threats and denial of contact)
● social contacts (being ostracised from colleagues)
● personal reputation (malicious rumour-mongering, being treated as if mentally ill,
being ridiculed in terms of beliefs, private life, nationality and other characteristics,
suffering sexual innuendos)
● occupational situation and quality of life (being denied prestigious or new tasks,
being given jobs that are meaningless or low-status)
● physical health (made to do physically strenuous work, physical threats or abuse,
damage to property and sexual harassment)

https://sex-matters.org/posts/publications/academic-mobbing-what-university-management-needs-to-know/

Push back immediately on any instance of mobbing and name it for what it is.

It's time to reclaim normality in universities.

If I told the academics I manage what stance to take on ideological issues, there'd be murder.

The make-up and hierarchy of the project team matters in this case, but this would be a project discussion, not an order from the boss.

I wish that male people could get pregnant. Maternity services would be turbocharged.

Does 'people' not encompass everybody, and therefore incorrect as everybody cannot get pregnant, only women?

Not when it's preceded by the "pregnant" condition.

See also: tall people, blonde people etc.

Pregnant people is perfectly correct. It is not as clear as pregnant women, this is true. But it's not incorrect.

For the people (ha!) above saying it's "not incorrect"... well, sometimes it results in incorrect comparisons, advice, statistics, policy...

For example:

Replacing a word with another of different meaning as if they are synonyms makes communications inaccurate or confusing. For example, in a growing number of papers, the severity of COVID-19 disease in pregnant women is being misrepresented by comparing “pregnant people” to “non-pregnant people” (40, 85–92) when the comparator in the research in question is “non-pregnant females.” Given the greater severity of COVID-19 disease in males (93), this misrepresentation means readers may under-estimate disease severity in pregnant women. Highly regarded organizations like the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (40) and the Australian Department of Health (85) have made this error, and research containing this error has been published in the eminent New England Journal of Medicine (86). In the Australian Department of Health case, the mistake appeared when a previously published document was updated and a seemingly simple and innocuous “find and replace” undertaken with the word “women” switched with “people.” This change made the statistics on disease severity incorrect (see Supplementary Material 1 for further details). Carelessness may partly explain such errors, but there appears to be no easy way to straightforwardly communicate scientific information about female reproduction without using sexed terms. The misrepresentation of research and health communication during a pandemic ought to raise serious concern about how inappropriately desexing language can undermine public health.

And also:

Desexed language can make it unclear who is being referred to. Does “breastfeeding people” mean mothers, infants or both? Are “postnatal people” those who have just given birth or those who are providing postnatal care? Using the phrase “breastfeeding parents” rather than “breastfeeding mothers” or “women,” both suggests the partner is participating in the act of breastfeeding and makes invisible the sex of the person breastfeeding the child. In this way, desexed language obscures the practical and power imbalances in relationships, decision making, and economics that breastfeeding mothers may face because they are female (98–102). Similarly, avoiding references to “girls” means that their very specific vulnerabilities as pregnant minors or minor mothers may be overlooked (103, 104). A mixture of sexed and desexed terminology within the same document can be particularly confusing [e.g. (105–107)]. Assisted reproductive technologies which can separate the genetic, gestational and social contributions to parenting increase the importance of accurate language rather than obscuring matters by using internally contradictory phrases such as “female sperm” as an example (108). We would argue that using “female” to describe a biologically male person with the gender identity of “woman” is inappropriate and that in order to accurately denote the sexes, “male” and female” should be retained as wholly sexed terms (109).

These quotes are from Gribble et al,

Men and women can be tall, men and women can be blonde, only women can be pregnant.

Good for you. I'm also pregnant, and find the term 'pregnant people' degrading, to the point that I've raised it with both my midwife and consultant. Does your 'very happy' trump my 'insulted' just because you don't care, or like to please others (men). Similarly, I am not a 'birthing person' I am my childs MOTHER.

This perhaps, for me, comes from a place of believing that I was medically unable to become and sustain a pregnancy for almost two decades, which on some level made me (rightly or wrongly) feel inferior to other women whose body worked 'correctly' regardless of if they wanted it to perform that particular function. Motherhood was something I could only dream of (or so I thought) and something I relish in now. Being referred to as a 'pregnant person' or a 'birthing person' is as damaging to my MH as potentially being referred to as a woman (which is biologically accurate) is to a trans woman, so why do their 'needs' trump mine.

OP, I had a similar issue when submitting an academic paper which explored the roles of women in a particular context. Footnotes were my friend, as has been suggested by others. I also think it's wrong to shy away from these tough debates, especially in academia, it's exactly what academia is for!

Why include a group of people that can’t ever get pregnant as well? That’s makes no sense.

Would you be equally comfortable if she said pregnant people, sacks of spuds and traffic cones? It includes women so surely you support that too?

Just explain how the RSPB use the word women to mean a whole group of people with a range of identities and that if it’s okay with them then it should be okay everywhere else. 😀

This. Is it really worth it?

Ask her to use 'women and pregnant people'? Still inclusive but centres the fact that the vast majority of people who give birth are women, who still face disadvantages in the health system?

The vast majority are women? Who on earth are the rest? This nonsense speak just makes people sound ridiculous.

I volunteered for a women's rights group called sister supporter, about protecting women from "pro life" protesters outside the clinic.

They used words like "pregnant people" mainly because many of them were uni students.

I made a point of saying "women and girls" in all my conversations and actually, they just all went along with that. I think they just needed permission from an older woman to speak properly

According to that logic, "pregnant mammals" would be "technically correct" as well. Or possibly "pregnant vertebrates?"

This person is a contributor on a research project OP is in charge of. So contrary to your claim, it is indeed OP's right - indeed, responsibility - to ensure consistency of concepts and terminology.