Health trust breached it's own equality scheme

[NImumconfused]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9wvrl084g7o

Judgement by the Equality Commission in NI which highlights how decisions are being made without following the appropriate processes. I would imagine that if you weighed up the number of women with poor literacy or English as a second language, versus the number with a male or non-binary gender identity, you would find that opting for gender neutral language would potentially impact more women negatively than positively (particularly if you take into account that the gender identity group knows that they have female biology, regardless of whether or not they like the language used).

That’s a useful article, thank you. My GP practice calls women ‘people with a cervix’ on its SM posts about cervical smears. I’m going to send them this article with my complaint.

I am sick to the back teeth of women being overlooked, as happened here where the investigation showed the board failed to take any other protected group into account when it made the decision to erase women from their literature, because of the sheer misogyny of the men and women who want to pretend that the word woman hasn’t already got a meaning - adult human female. If they want a word to describe their personal identification with regressive stereotypes that’s nothing to do with the nouns already in use for female and male humans. They can make up new words, or steal ones in use in a semantic domain where it won’t cause further disadvantages to already marginalised groups. I doubt anyone would care if they wanted to use the word ‘clabe’ for those with a feminine gender identity, or ‘boofs’ for those with a masculine one, for example; I can think of many other suggestions. It just looks like the most extreme bad faith to choose to take the words which are used to denote the categories of sex in people and use them to mean the regressive stereotypes imposed on those categories instead.

Thanks I’m keeping this article too for future complaints aswell

If I have to fill out another form that asks me for my gender with no mention of sex I’ll make a complaint using this article.

Thanks OP

As an aside this language has. Reeled into mumsnet too

Ever noticed how MNetters
put their baby scan pictures up and ask
What gender the baby is !!

Yes, I notice it - I very rarely read those threads now my kids are a bit older but on the occasions I have seen there is often someone pointing out that the OP meant sex. I always send that person good wishes in my head 😊

Ive occasionally pointed it out. Once I had a nasty comment back. Now I don’t even bother with thise threads

if they want to know their kids gender theyll have to wait many years for them to decide

Sad how some women are removing our identity

People with a cervix should be the easiest one to push back on, as there is definitely research that shows a very significant proportion of women don't know what that means. You couldn't necessarily make the same argument for breast screening, for example.

The health literacy aspect is a useful one for trying to reclaim sex-based language in the NHS, as there's increasing recognition of how it feeds into health inequalities between demographic groups.

PS: I am scundered by the rogue apostrophe in the title!

David Lammy doesn’t even know what it means and thinks men can grow them so what hope have the rest of us got?

It used to be considered good practice for the authors of documents like these - as well as important national surveys like the census - to assume that everything was being translated and explained by an 8 year old child (this does happen in some families) and make sure that any explanations are clear enough for that child to follow.

Strangely enough men’s health information doesn’t label them prostate havers or ejaculators. Can’t think why.

I think that's still the case. Unfortunately I think the people who write this kind of stuff overestimate the reading level of the population, because they tend to be middle class professionals - I saw somewhere recently I think it said around a third of the population are at a reading level below the end of primary school, and numeracy is even worse.

Here's another reason why "people with a cervix" should not replace "women":

An acquaintance of mine (a man) recently had a scan to check out suspected cervical myelopathy, which is very much a condition men can suffer from. The cervix in question in cervical myelopathy is the neck connecting the head to the body, rather than the neck of the womb.

Of course generally 'cervix' and its cognates (as in 'cervical smear', 'cervical cancer' etc.) has come to be used exclusively for cervix uteri (the neck of the womb), which men certainly don't have. But, as my acquaintance discovered, there are still extant medical uses/meanings of 'cervix'. Here are some others: 'cervix vesicae', 'cervix femoris', even 'cervix dentis'; the possession of these is shared by both sexes.

"People with a cervix uteri" is, indeed, coterminous with "women". But, yes, it'd be better in every way to just say "women"; you need to be really very very stupid indeed not to see this.

got back yesterday from my GP surgery where there was a big display of "check your chest"...somehow i thought it was something to do with lung health until i went closer and saw it was about breast cancer awareness. As an ex health professional who worked in hospice/cancer care i actually was a bit flabbergasted. I wish i'd taken a pic of the gender neutral leaflets as they gave no useful health info apart from the "check your chest" line. Both men and women have breast tissue hence why men can also get breast cancer so really we need to get the message out that it is ok to talk about breasts and breast tissue for both sexes/whatever your gender identity.

Oh dear. A rather awkward factual error by the BBC. Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act does NOT include "gender". The reporter is either sloppy or editorialising. Neither of which is acceptable when reporting on how a law has actually been implemented in a court case. I think everyone knows by now that the wording of a law really matters 🤔 Section 75 has a clause about 'men and women generally', not 'gender' and equally not 'sex'. Given that the meaning of the wording of Section 75 is surely up for debate, the reporter who casually glossed it as 'gender' looks a bit of an idiot.

"...breached its own equality scheme commitments regarding its decision to use gender neutral language in an information leaflet for patients..."

The South Eastern NHS Trust breeched it's own equality scheme, The National Library of Scotland breeched it's own EDI policy when it excluded the voice of gender critical women, I'm starting to sense a theme, that may run and run.

The fact that all of these changes have occurred without any thought or consideration given to how actual women might feel about it is becoming more recognised and officially noted. 😁

I think in years to come, when people are looking back on this absurd period of time, lots of eyebrows will be raised about how public bodies have been officially noted to have entirely ignored their duties to eight of the EA’s protected characteristics and quite how often judges have been moved to declare themselves surprised by statements or decisions which have been made. It’s completely ludicrous.

I used to work in a patient info role and clearly remember Jo’s Trust setting out the need for clear language when communicating with women about the importance of cervical screening. I think that charity opted out of showing consideration for women who have barriers to healthcare pretty early on in all this.

Jo's Trust did actually keep using sexed language in their general writing. They did have a separate section on the website for gender identity people, and the notorious list of alternative terms, but they didn't erase women in the way the NHS website did, for example.

Oh I must be misremembering - I have an idea that when I went to get some info from their site when the health service started to avoid using the word women and couldn't find it on there anymore.