Check your chest breast cancer awareness/charity.

[LostMyPantsAtGatwickAirport]

I keep hearing adverts from a charity (Coppafeel) about checking your chest - not breasts - and it amazes me how happy women are to see off our language and anatomy and allow inclusion to basically write us out of an issue that mainly affects us.

I know men can also get breast cancer, but it’s in breast tissue, so using breast is entirely clear and anatomically correct.

On the same radio station I’ve heard adverts aimed at men to have their prostate checked - not once is this information muddied at all by falling over backwards to be inclusive to a small minority.

I thought we were heading out of this abysmal wasteland, but apparently not.

I have complained, but blah blah blah inclusion, kindness etc.

Also stage 4 breast cancer means that the cancer has spread to other parts of the body.

I think that specific language is used is to raise awareness that men can get it too. I don’t think that is particularly well known.

Men can also get breast cancer - in far, far fewer numbers obviously as they have less dense tissue in that area of the body, but the figures are rising fast, doctors don’t quite know why and male awareness of this fact is an important part of the campaign.

women don’t have a prostate gland.

Yes, but that also includes breast tissue on the male chest area

Women and men both have chests and breast tissue.

No, it isn't like that at all, because it presumes nothing about your beliefs or anyone else's beliefs. All that is required for "cis" to be a coherent word is to acknowledge that some people are trans and some people are not, which is not contrary to anyone's beliefs, it's simply a fact - and remains a fact regardless of what you believe is at the root of trans identities.

Nor have I actually called you personally cis or anyone here personally cis, I've simply used it as a collective term for clarity. Like it or not there are times when it's necessary to have a simple word to distinguish between trans people and people who are not trans. You can't force me to use exclusionary language, that is the compelled speech your movement speaks so stridently against, and it is unreasonable to force me to be unclear by denying me clear words to use (and no doubt people would also complain if I wasn't being clear about who I was referring to).

This is off topic on a thread which is about a very serious subject which is very important to me personally so I won't be drawn into further derailing discussion, I will simply repeat: I am not trying to compell your speech. Please do not try to compell mine.

It's not your breast either, and it's certainly closer to the chest than the breast is.

The risk of breast cancer has nothing to do with whether anyone identifies as trans or cis or neither.

The risk may be increased if somebody takes exogenous hormones.

Cancer really doesn't care what is going on inside somebody's head.

I'm normally an absolute stickler for accurate language with these sorts of things ("cervix-havers" can fuck off as a linguistic concept), I cannot get worked up about this one because men can absolutely get breat cancer and I know someone who died from it, so in this case chest and pecs is absolutely fine to include within the ads.

It is presuming of belief in gender

Because gender identity isn’t present in everyone - some people have that as a concept and others don’t

but of course being female our opinions are just plain wrong aren’t they? We don’t really know what our own minds are doing. Daft women.

You have a gender identity - ok if you say so
it’s important to you - ok if you say so

no I don’t believe it’s anything other than a shapes in your mind. Just like religion. Many people believe in god. They feel the presence of god.

Yes, I know. As I mentioned, I have had cancer myself, I am intimately aware of the implications of staging. I mentioned the stage because the cancer spread because this woman didn't realise the lump on her collar bone could be breast cancer, so she didn't get it checked at the point that it first appeared and instead left it too late for curative treatment.

We will have to agree not to discuss it further. But be clear, I do find it presumptuous and offensive to be told I am "cis", and it was once part of this forum's guidelines that users were not to use the term.

No, indeed it doesn't, but this campaign isn't actually aimed at the cancer itself.

Gender affirming care does indeed change a person's cancer risk profile which makes being trans entirely relevant to a campaign like this.

Breast cancer can spread to you lymph nodes which are underneath your armpits and near your collar bone.

Your chest is your thorax and contains your heart and lungs.

Why not just be accurate? As both men and women have breasts and can get breast cancer, why impose gender on the word?

I have not told you personally that you are cis or called you personally cis.

I believe there's quite a lot of terminology that was once against the forum's guidelines but are now commonplace (I remember TIF and TIM were once on the list).

If it helps, participating in this forum means I am constantly having to see terminology that I consider presumptuous and offensive, so we are very much in the same boat. My personal policy, as you might have noticed, is not to challenge anyone else's speech but also not to let them control mine, I think that's actually quite fair to be quite honest.

I’m as big a terf/gc as anyone. But having had BC I don’t care what they call it if it means someone catches it early and they get the treatment they need.

How would one know if one were 'cis'.

If one doesn't suffer from gender dysphoria but doesn't identify as having a male or female gender identity is one cis or trans?

I think that imposing gender on the word 'breast' makes it more likely that people won't get the treatment they need, both because of stigma and lack of clarity.

I think everyone, if you told them to touch their chest, would understand what part of their body you were refering to. If someone told you to touch your chest, would you genuinely believe they were telling you to put your hand inside your thorax? Would you genuinely be at all confused? Be honest now.

Coppafeel as a charity is quite clear that is a breast cancer charity, they use the term clearly and often.

I really think there is very little room for confusion here.

Bluntly, this seems to just be part of the ongoing general objection to anything that acknowledges trans people, because some people just don't want the existence of trans people to ever be acknowledged at all, even in the context of trying to prevent them from dying of cancer.

Trans people have breast tissue though
i cant understand why it’s considered transgender friendly to not use the common word?

In order to sow extra confusion upon a world where anatomical ignorance is so rife that our current deputy prime minister thinks transwomen can have a cervix. That's why.

If you're genuinely unsure if you're trans or not, this is not something I can help you with, please speak to a qualified counsellor.

If you're actually perfectly aware of whether you're trans or not and are just being faux-naive in an attempt to draw me into a lengthy time wasting argument during which you have no intention whatsoever of listening to a word I'm saying - Let's not and say we did.

If you are checking for breast cancer you aren't just vaguely touching your upper body. You are checking your breasts in a specific way.

Again, why not use clear language? What is the problem with the word 'breast'? Why is it different from 'leg' or 'ear'. We have agreed that both men and women get breast cancer. Why suggest that there is something shameful about a man getting breast cancer by avoiding the word 'breast'.

I do understand that doctors have to make treatment patient specific, and when targeting a specific community or treating a specific patient I don't care what words they use.

But why on earth render a word taboo?

It's so regressive.

If someone told you to touch your chest, would you genuinely believe they were telling you to put your hand inside your thorax?

I would automatically touch the skin at the top of my sternum. If you want people of either sex to check their breast tissue, they'd need more context than that.

I'm not being 'faux naive'. If you can't give an objective definition of 'Trans' then it is meaningless, and 'cis' is equally meaningless.

In case I haven't made it clear yet, I really, really object to gender being imposed on anyone. I think women have been trying to escape it's oppression for centuries, and coy references to 'breasts' and 'chests' send us hurtling back to the dark ages.