'Pregnant people'

[StickySundew]

I know there are more important battles, but this pisses me off and we've learned that gender-centric language is used as a wedge.

Only women get pregnant. Don't try to erase the relevance of female sex. This doesn't happen to men - all the info my friend with prostate cancer gets refers to men with prostate cancer, not 'people with prostate cancer'. There'd be outrage and a lot of hurt if someone tried to set up support for 'people with prostate cancer'.

This time it was the Food Standards Agency, issuing a reminder about the groups most at risk from salmonella poisoning.

I just wanted to let off steam.

So that I have a bit more excuse, let's have an utterly pointless voodoo poll to see how many enablers and TRAs are hanging around.

Anyone remember womb carrier?
Hit social media asome time ago, I think it might have come from something in South America.
Utterly bonkers, as if we cart them about in our shoulder bags.
Gillian Philip, a writer who was cancelled and retrained as a lorry driver, had womb haulier in her twitter name for a good while, sometimes taking the piss helps...🙄

I agree - but the nonsense can be avoided by using I/we/you as standard, which in turn helps to improve health literacy and breaks down the patient/clinician barriers. I use this in my work and have great delight in rejecting ridiculous wording like pregnant people by taking this approach. I hope that one day common sense will return, but in the meantime, I/we/you removes the ability of anyone to write pregnant people.

Only WOMEN can become pregnant and NO woman “identifies” as a woman. We just know we are a woman!!

It's illogical and annoying, but I have to confess it has a laughable aspect to it. Just thinking about a trans man or a non-binary (whatever the hell that is) in labour and giving birth. I wonder if, as the baby travels down through their cervix and vagina, these numpties actually give their heads a wobble and think "you know what, maybe I am a woman..." How can you do the most womanly thing of all and maintain your delusion. What were WHO doing when they decided trans was not a mental health issue?

Also why would they want to do such a womanly thing (pregnancy and birth) if they think they are a man? None of it makes sense!!

Is it? Because, as a pp has said, you don't need people/person/woman/man - pregnant is a female term by definition whatever the individual might identify as.

You might need to clarify the species, but that's been pretty clear in any context I've seen "pregnant people" used.

Lots of things like this pass themselves off as "inclusive" but are actually less clear, less accessible to speakers of other languages or those with learning disabilities.

No impact assessments are carried out, no one asks the groups affected. Not really inclusive at all.

Can’t remember the last time I saw a pregnant man. Oh, wait…

my first thought is that it’s an umbrella term for girls/women/ladies

Female covers that - or 'if you are pregnant'.

There's only one type of person who can get pregnant.

Yes, ‘if you are pregnant’ is fine. Neutral so includes women with special identities, and doesn’t erase women.

But actually if they just put ‘pregnant women’ it would really be fine. The pregnant female humans who are under 18 or under 16, would likely recognise that the word ‘woman’ includes them in that context, especially if they (hopefully) have an adult in their life helping them to navigate the messaging they need to read in their pregnancy.

This “one type of person” has a name which seems to be problematic for some strange reason.

.

I'm quite comfortable with 'woman' for everyone who gets pregnant. In reproductive terms you have to be an adult to conceive, so perhaps it's the biologist in me that reckons that in the context of her pregnancy a teenager can still be referred to as a 'pregnant woman'. As a writer of grant applications - where word counts are often tight - I'd say 'pregnant women and girls' is all very well if there's room, but it's a mouthful.

(For the same reason I'd like a sex-unspecified singular pronoun to spare me from 'his or her' and 'her or him'. I've started trying to use female singular pronouns when I can't, or don't want to, rewrite to avoid singular pronouns. No complaints or confusion yet!)

Imagine taking a uniquely 'woman' experience and removing the term be used for that group of humans. The argument that 'well women are people' misses the point. Of course women are people, but using those terms literally strips women of the language used to discuss their own unique experiences. It's part of the erasure of women as a sex class.

it sort of chimes with biggus dickus from life of brian.

awful

To me, this is where inclusivity tips into exclusion. In trying to be sensitive to the needs of trans-identifying women - a minority group women might be more empathetic and sensitive to - they exclude the majority group. Unfortunately, the answer is usually for the minority group to just put up with it (the Welsh, Scottish and Irish are often lumped in with the English).

I wonder why the minority group have so much power in this situation!

I'm in two minds about this issue actually.

I agree that "pregnant people," "people who menstruate" etc. are annoying, particularly in official communications. Even worse are the convolutions such as "people with a uterus," used in adverts for cervical smears. It can also be confusing when you get statements like, "10% of people will suffer endometriosis" - do they mean 10% of women? 10% of all people (so around 20% of women)?

On the other hand, I have long used occasional phrases like "pregnant people" myself - not to be inclusive, and long before trans ideology. I suppose I do it because for me, women are the default, so "people" can sometimes mean "women", and "pregnant people" is an extension of that. Maybe it's because I went to a girls' school, or because I'm a feminist and I usually centre women. I don't know.

Yes, we know some women have such sexist ideas about other women that they literally cannot bear to be called "women" so demand to be called "men" or "non-binary" or other labels to make it clear they are not whatever this thing they believe all other women except them are.

However, we really shouldn't be treating that like it's a reasonable thing to say about other women.

Women are just adult female humans. The roughly half of the adult human population that is female in all our diversity.

We aren't a personality trait so it's incredibly offsensive and misogynist to claim we are, and it's deeply demeaning to women for any organisation to support that view of us.

The other important thing to realise about de-sexed language like "pregnant person" is not just the woman dissppears from view but that the sexed nature of pregnancy itself disappears from view. It becomes something that's only relevant to the "person" it is happening to while it's happening, after which they go back to being a "person" again.

But the fact that only female people can get pregnant is significant to women not just when we are pregnant. It has affected how society has treated us and thought about us pretty much since we have had society, and that has knocked on effects for every woman even if she herself is never actually a "pregnant person".

@peetieswie Why would someone who “identifies” as male want to do such a womanly thing? If you believe you are male, why would you want to get pregnant and give birth?

I used to do that, but I don't any more, because as I have aged and gained experience so has my understanding of Feminism, and I realise things like saying Pregant People because hey, half of people are women so why do we need to separate ourselves? that should be fair may not work like that in a society that isn't fair to start with.

For me, society's tendency to "default to male" makes women and women's different needs and perspectives become invisible if we aren't advocating for ourselves and making sure we are visible.

this is the most important aspect to me. I am in the US and the conversation after Dobbs that included "pregnant people" really bothered me. It removed the fact that this issue was about women and women's health and needed to be seen in this light.

It's amazing how the language of women has is been rolled back isn't it? Even by women.

We need to remember that this whole "inclusivity" lie started because the men who wanted to appropriate women's identities, language, sport & single sex spaces decided that they were being excluded by society's evolved understanding of women's rights.
Before trans extremism, nobody was wibbling about the words women, mother, uterus, menopause, pregnancy etc being bigoted. Any man demanding to play in women's sport as a woman would have been ridiculed and if trying to access changing rooms and showers with women would have been arrested.

Hence the need to intimidate, threaten and bully in order to silence women and decent men (TWAW #nodebate etc) It's been a masterclass in male power and bullying. It was never innocent and never about inclusivity.

It was a naked power grab, misogyny on steroids, from the outset.

@MrsOvertonsWindow power grab is spot on.

It's funny how people accept the so inclusive" to remove the language of one sex class. As someone pointed out earlier, if this had been happening to men there'd have been a mutiny from the outset.

Instead we have countless useful idiots proclaiming that of course we shouldn't talk about women and mothers in relation to pregnancy, breastfeeding, the menopause etc and openly denying known facts and science with no hesitation.

It's so obvious that these people never think about the lies and nonsense they're uttering. They're so caught up in the need to pander to this self identified group of vulnerable bullies that their complicity in excluding women from society in this way completely passes them by.