People with a cervix

[Globules]

This has really annoyed me.

Official documentation from the NHS, aka the national medical professionals, should know that it's ONLY women who have a cervix.

What is this non sentence of all women and people with a cervix?

I see this thread has been moved onto the naughty step. Perish the thought women on AIBU should have a view about the language used by the NHS to describe women's healthcare.

I am gender critical but I don't have an issue with this phrasing as it states "women and people with a cervix". If it simply said "people with a cervix" it would be inappropriate but it retains "women" and includes trans men and gender neutral people who DO still retain a cervix and need to get it checked for cancerous cells.

Cervical cancer can kill.

Many women / trans men do not attend this potentially life saving test.

Cervical screening can help prevent deaths.

Saving lives is the most important thing here.

Can the OP contact Mumsnet to have this thread moved back to AIBU?

A couple of extra words to make it clear everyone with a cervix should have a screening is dehumanising and offensive? How? What is offensive or dehumanising about that?

@WillIEverBeOk why shouldn't transmen have life saving cervical screening? How odd to say that. They're human beings with bodies that can get cancer in them?

Of course I don't get to decide it. I do get to have an opinion about it though. And my opinion is that a national medical institution should not be pretending that anyone other than a woman can have a cervix.

@WillIEverBeOk I want NHS info about screening to reach everyone who might need it. That language ensures it does. You know full well that TM do not think of themselves as women. I know you don't agree with it but that's the way they are.

It's indulging in a delusion. The NHS shouldn't be indulging in delusions. I'm not going to lose too much sleep as long as 'women' is used but the term women and women only is sufficient. If a trans man isn't aware that women only conditions applies to them then a few 'inclusive words' is the least of their problems.

Edited to add - trans man. Not woman. See the problem of messing up language? 🙄

They might not think of themselves as women, but they know they are in fact biologically women.

Literally this

Even if you think that trans men is a mental health issue, is it not still important that they still get the medical care they may need by being able to access a cervical screening test?

I totally appreciate that people have very differing views on trans BUT surely stopping people dying from this fucking awful disease is more important?

I’ve seen someone die a slow and painful death having developed cervical cancer.
She did not have a screening test. If she had, they would have picked it up.
By the time it was diagnosed, the cancerous cells were in her lymph nodes and despite the absolute best efforts and amazing ness of the NHS she died. She wasn’t even 40. Her little children don’t have their mother.

I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

I really hope this gets moved back to AIBU - we NEED to talk about cervical cancer and the screenings.

Those people will require highly-personalised health care because of their disorders of sexual development (they are not "intersex" because it is not possible to be between the two sexes) and personalised health communications will be a necessary part of that.

The mass communication needed to get women to attend smear tests, which includes the automated letters sent from the Cervical Screening Administration Service, needs to be comprehendable by someone with a learning disability or whose first language isn't English, and also understandable by someone who isn't sure what a cervix is or whether they have one. Mass communication hence needs to clearly say women.

Again, I dont think she's actually bothered if the trans men find it offensive. The person who said its offensive is simply saying she finds it offensive to women, as a group. Whilst I understand the analogy of 'the hamster snack', it's not exactly the same thing.

Because women had to fight to get the word woman used as the NHS and other biology related organisation removed the word woman

In the USA the term "Black birthing bodies" was used in medical papers about how doctors needed to see the birthing body as a whole human and not the a birthing bodys birthing process as seeing the whole human reduced the death rates of the birthing body during or as a result of the birthing process.

Black women died in labour at higher rates partly due to doctors attitudes to ignoring the woman at the center of the process.

In the UK the ideology will roll into law so that the law will be for the female body function so people who breed / bleed / have a cervical cancer risk.

Are you ok?

Nope, it just says MEN. Funny that isn't it🤨

Please, someone make this shit stop

That's not how this happens.

For a start there is no 'clean' data for NHS bodies to check who is missing screenings and why. Mens are recorded as women, and vice versa, gender is recorded instead of sex, people are allowed to change their health records to reflect their wishes instead of biological fact. So statistical data which would answer that question doesn't exist, because the trans lobby have been so successful at getting NHS bodies to obscure fact in favour orfideology.

Secondly, the wording might have been approved but it won't have been by a representative panel. If it's anything like my employer (large NHS teaching hospital) it'll have been approved by the LGBTQIA+ group, and no one else will have been asked. There isn't a women's group so you couldn't ask them even if you wanted to. There will possibly have been checks to make sure it confirms to Stonewall's approved wording for their 'diversity' scheme which is very non diverse indeed, and not at all inclusive to women, people with English as an additional language, low literacy, or learning difficulties.

The people with 'lived experience ' of cervical smears are women. Every single person who's had one is female. So the (presumably) female people posting on this thread are the people with lived experience. And a lot are saying they don't want this.

YANBU.

No religious/ideological language should be part of healthcare delivery.

1. Being gender critical isn't the same as racism. The reasons for sex segregation are biological, namely who can make whom pregnant.
2. There are circumstances in which race is relevant in medicine. Sickle cell anaemia prevalence in Black people is one. Ignoring race when deciding who to screen for those conditions is as harmful as ignoring sex when deciding who to screen for cervical abnormalities.
3. Being gender critical has been found to be worthy of respect in a democratic society. Racism hasn't.