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!

lol, not sure why I got deleted. I was saying I didn’t want to do to Millennials (who are not teenagers but adults) what was done to my generation in terms of clinging to old fashioned language.

The funny thing is I am probably older than eyeballinthesky who accused me of ‘ageism’ while blatantly infantilising professional adults as being ‘teenagers’. The irony.

No I do not mind pregnant people. I am not at all bothered about language evolving.

That’s not what you actually said. You were offensive in your ageist language.

How can it exclude unless you think women are not people? if using person/people makes women invisible, then how can chairperson include women while pregnant person/people exclude women?

Logic fail.

Chairman excludes women because women are not men

Chairperson includes all people who can chair a meeting: women and men

Pregnant women excludes girls, transmen and trans boys.

Pregnant person includes all people who can conceive: women, girls, transmen and transboys.

People is simply the plural of person.
People: ”Humans considered as a group or in indefinite numbers. Often treated as a plural of person,especially in compounds. "People were dancing in the street. I met all sorts of people. This book is not intended for laypeople."

You really think I would re-post word for word a post of mine that got deleted?
No that isn’t exactly what a said, I paraphrased so as to hopefully not get accused of being ‘ageist’ against myself again.

transmen are women that’s how they’re pregnant

and I very much doubt you’re older than me & fjr the record, I didn’t report your post. I’m all for letting people’s posts stand

I would suggest you just let her say pregnant people if she wants to. You say pregnant woman if you want to. I agree with the poster who says pick your battles. Let her get on with it.

I would certainly hope you wouldn’t repeat your earlier offensive post - you know why you got deleted.

Thank you for letting me know you didn’t report it.

Transmen used to be called women, but Millennials have decided this shift in language and thinking is their contribution to our civilisation.

I really do not. I was writing about my own life experience. Sorry it was offensive that was completely unintentional and I still don’t know what was wrong with the post.

‘Pregnant people’ is not an example of language evolving for goodness sake!
It’s inaccurate because people includes all humans some of which are biological men who cannot get pregnant. Even if they think they can.
It excludes the people who are the sex who have the large gametes even if they are unable to achieve a pregnancy they’re still women

Personally I would just leave this one. She’s allowed to say it, she’s not breaking the law. You would come across as pretty horrible if you start having a go at her about this.

“Pregnant people” doesn’t include “all people” any more than “young people” or “disabled people” or “sick people” or “athletic people” or “French people” or “working people” include “all people”

Pregnant is a qualifying adjective delineating which subset of persons we are referring to.

It was ageist and offensive. I’m glad you’re sorry though.

@Mummy2024 - "... OP needs to tread carefully as the employee can probably put in a formal complaint against her if she makes a thing out of this. The employee only wants to keep the project politically correct and gender impartial. There are gender based equality laws, so if I were them I would tread very carefully"

But the employee is participating in a scientific medical research project into pregnant women (according to the funding proposal) that is being led by the OP.

The employee's concerns about political correctness and gender impartiality have absolutely no place in a scientific study - this isn't some social studies or humanities based project.

If you don't understand the medically significant importance in pregnancy studies of not confusing "sexed" language with "gendered" language and of making sure that communication is as clear and simple as possible, you cannot have read this artcile which has already been linked to twice. You might not think it's important but researchers do.

Frontiers | Effective Communication About Pregnancy, Birth, Lactation, Breastfeeding and Newborn Care: The Importance of Sexed Language (frontiersin.org)

And as others have pointed out, there are no gender based equality laws. It's unlawful to discriminate against someone who has undergone or is starting gender reassignment, but how can using the term "pregnant women" in this study discriminate against anyone? It's referring to sex, not gender.

Chairman excludes women because a man can only be a man.
Chairperson includes women because a person can be either a man or a woman.

So a person (or people) can be either male or female.

Pregnant person or pregnant people refers to "people" who are pregnant.
Just like with tall people, or brown-eyed people, the qualifier is that they are tall, brown-eyed or pregnant. As "people", they could be either male or female people who happen to be tall, brown-eyed or pregnant.

Obviously, only female people (women) can get pregnant. But using pregnant people asserts that men can get pregnant. The only reason you read "pregnant people" as meaning pwomen is because you know that men can be tall or brown-eyed, but never pregnant.

Women is the name we give to adult human females. Identities are irrelevant - it includes every female adult on the planet and who has ever lived. All "People who can conceive" are women.

Pregnant as a qualifier for women indicates the subset of women who are pregnant. Who are the subjects of the study.
Edited for clarity.

You have explained it clearly in a few short sentences!

They were women and still are women, but don’t want to be called women.

So the question is whether it is sufficient for them to be referred to as something other than women by all the staff during maternity care on a case by case basis OR do we also have to also remove all written references to ‘women’ in documentation for the sake of this tiny number of people to the detriment of everyone else?

Material reality is important.

The issue is differentiating between specific people, and when we are generalising.

If specific pregnant women find being called a woman upsetting and ask people to refer to them as men, that's not (much) of an issue. It's not causing confusion to other people and messing up statistics.

What we are discussing here is a research project specifically about women.

As has been said umpteen times upthread, not being clear about language risks statistical inaccuracy in the research, and difficulty in communicating the findings. Is that worth it to avoid upsetting a vanishingly small number of theoretical pregnant trans men who will likely not come into contact with the research anyway?

I, and many others here, don't believe it is.

(As an aside, I'd love to know what percentage of women identify as a man AND get pregnant AND still want to be referred to as a man AND want all references to woman, mother, etc removed from literature. It's got to be absolutely miniscule, yet keeping them happy is deemed by sme worth all the damage this is doing to women, non native English speakers, neurodiverse people, the visibility of women's health and countless other things. That's an interesting trade off which says a lot about how some people view women and mothers).

There are no gender equality laws. The Equality Act does not list gender as a protected characteristic.

The OP quite rightly doesn't want nonsense written in a document that will reflect on her.

There are reams of posts discussing how changing language in a non universally agreed way does affect society as a whole - maybe read some of them if you are interested?

Oh and if you believe my views are due to my 'low self esteem' rather than my critical thinking, it's not very kind to say I should essentially buck up and do better - why doesn't that equally apply to anyone upset by 'pregnant people'?

Your true colours are showing.

Exactly @AstonScrapingsNameChange its the difference between the personal and the general

when research about pregnancy or maternity is being carried out, it needs to be stated at the outset that we are only talking about biological women as only women can get pregnant. People includes men, men cannot get pregnant

And I can’t believe in the 21st fucking century this is having to be spelled out!

@Theeyeballsinthesky it's almost like words have meanings and if you want to communicate a specific meaning you need to choose the most specific word!
🙄

Innit!

We know exactly why TRA want to divorce words from their accepted meanings for oooooh well since people began to speak really

how odd thats it’s only been in the 21st century that some people have decided that it’s sooooo haaaaard and like almost impossible to know if someone is biologically male or female

therefore we better just hand over women’s rights to men

I'm so sick of this shit, I really am.

Back in 2016 say, before all this went mainstream I could understand people thinking 'why not just be nice, who cares' - well for about 10 minutes until they'd read up on the issues.

But now? Ignorance and lack of critical thinking can't just be a default position if you're demanding that society reorganise itself in a way that significantly disadvantages 51% of the population.

It's like trying to have a sensible conversation with a toddler who has their fingers in their ears and is singing la la la can't hear you!

Pregnant People does include all people by definition of people
’disabled’ ‘athletic’ etc still includes men and women which is what the argument/debate is about
Your last paragraph has it
That’s what most posters are saying!!!!!
FGS is it me????
It’s going in circles

Pregnant women excludes girls, transmen and trans boys.

These are all women or girls, though.

Even JKR uses those terms.