BBC word salad

[Motorina]

The BBC have an article on endometriosis. So far, so good.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdx9w9r7z1wo

Except the authors are tying themselves in linguistic knots to avoid implying that this might be something which impacts only one sex. The old fashioned kind. With a womb.

“Only those who are eligible for gynaecology.”

I think you mean “women”.

Hold up, are the BBC gatekeeping eligibility for gynaecology now 😱.

Since alot of people are going to have to google the word gynaecology, I can see this will be lost on alot of women especially those who don't have English as their first language. How inclusive of them.

In fairness, the word woman was used throughout the article, not just within quotes. I'm not sure why they adopted this weird formulation in just the one paragraph (unless there are some weird wrinkles in eligibility - I have just the one ovary, perhaps I need to check my eligibility status

The uses of women in the article are either in direct quotes or the name of something (an organisation; a report). Using women in that paragraph would mean the BBC themselves stating that only women (and girls) need gynaecologists. Clearly wrongthink.

I think what they were trying to say was:

Hospital waiting lists for gynecological treatment (expressed as patient pathways per hundred thousand head of female population) are longer than for every other specialty, in all of the home nations.

An annoying fact in itself, and they bodged the explanation.

Have they improved it since this was posted? Currently there are several normal-sounding references to women in the article, not just in quotes or organisation names. E.g. "There are currently more than 50,000 women in Wales waiting for hospital gynaecological services," - a case where it wouldn't even have been particularly jarring if they'd chosen "people". It makes me wonder whether measuring waiting lists in the unit of people on the list per head of population eligible for the service may just actually be a thing, so that this odd wording is just what happens when you apply that? (E.g. if you wanted to judge waiting lists for children's services you'd want to do that by comparison with the number of children - you might say "when you take into consideration only those who are eligible for pediatrics", and conceivably you might say that rather than "children" to avoid getting into precisely what age range is eligible?)

I think they think including "women" in the quotes gets them off the hook of actually having to use the ghastly word itself for clarity.

Eligible for gynaecology 😂 A new one to add to the ever-increasing list of what a woman is.