Some people may find this phrasing awkward
The Mayo Clinic blog in September 2022:
Is chestfeeding the new breastfeeding?: Explaining gender-neutral medical terms.
Articles or online posts — even other articles on this blog — are now often using phrases like “person with a uterus,” “pregnant person” or “anyone with a prostate,” instead of the words “woman” or “man.”
Some people may find this phrasing awkward or wonder why it is used — believing that the words “men” and “women” are simpler. The change in language could even feel challenging or threatening.
The change in language could even feel like, and be, part of a ferocious campaign to push women out of sight in every possible context.
“Controversy is created when people feel like gender-neutral terms are erasing the gender binary. And that’s when we get a little bit of pushback, because some say, ‘Well then, you’re basically saying that men or women don’t exist,’ ” says Cesar Gonzalez, Ph.D., L.P. (he/they), a clinical health psychologist and clinical director of the Transgender and Intersex Specialty Care Clinic at Mayo Clinic. “That’s not what we’re saying.”
No, he/they, that’s not what we say. What we say is that you’re linguistically deleting women from everything to do with women, for the sake of pretending that men can be women. We also say that medics of all people should not try to convince us that some men are women.
The purpose is to use terms that are accurate and apply to you no matter your sex or gender identity.
Think about pregnancy, which is often viewed as being an exclusively female phenomenon. It’s easy to use the term “pregnant women” without a second thought.
But there are transmasculine individuals who may become pregnant, and they don’t feel that the term “pregnant women” applies to them. The more neutral term “pregnant person” can apply to someone who is male, female or nonbinary, and everyone is included.
But “transmasculine individuals” who “become” pregnant are women, whether they feel that the word applies to them or not. It’s not the job of medics to prop up people’s fantasies, especially fantasies about something as basic and medically relevant as which sex they are.
Using exclusive terms can be harmful. As an example, contraception is sometimes defined as ways for women to prevent pregnancy, says Dr. Davidge-Pitts.
No, it’s always defined as that, because that’s what it means. Think about it. Contra. Ception. Get it now?
But that definition excludes transmasculine individuals, Dr. Davidge-Pitts says, who then might not feel that they need contraception. And even if they are aware that they need contraception, they may not be comfortable asking for it if they don’t feel that their provider will be accepting of their identity.
Then they need to grow the fuck up. They do not need to change the language for everyone for the sake of their fragile breakable feeble idennniny.
“By not acknowledging inclusivity, we’re adding to health inequity, we’re adding to further discrimination, and we’re adding to people not being comfortable seeking medical care, which then relates to poor well-being and health long term,” Dr. Davidge-Pitts says. “It has this domino effect.”
Hey, guess what, Doc, it works the other way too. I’m not comfortable seeking medical care from medics who talk this kind of drooling pathetic bilge. I want adult medical care thank you very much.
“People who don’t fit into boxes are the ones who experience the most stigma, the most discrimination, the most harassment, the most health disparities,” Dr. Gonzalez says.
Really? Really? Are you sure about that? Not immigrants? Poor people? Homeless people? Addicts? People of color?
I think Dr. Gonzalez just made all that up. A homemade on the spot statistic, which seems highly unlikely to be true.
It’s even more frustrating to try to explain the problems with this because ‘gender neutral language’ is in almost all situations (ie where sex doesn’t matter/should be irrelevant) a good thing. (I like the way the organisation Sex Matters conceives it – in situations where sex doesn’t matter, knock yourself out; in situations where sex does matter, deceit is unacceptable.)
That ‘anyone’ is speciesist unless extended to include animals. Specifically, I am thinking of the carrion crows and other scavengers given to hanging around Parsee cemeteries in India, where the deceased are not buried, but rather are laid out on the ground for any passing animal to have a chomp at.
That lends a whole new dimension to the concept of ‘being with a uterus’ and/or ‘being with a prostate.’ Likewise, it opens up a whole new avenue of opportunity for transwhatevers.
Oh great, medically promoted forced teaming. My understanding is that the preferred and/or technically correct term is DSD, and that “intersex” was considered insulting and misleading. But here we have the MAYO CLINIC using it in order to lump it in with transgenderism, in accordance with the bullshit “Sex is a spectrum!” tenets of gender ideology. DSDs are, in my understanding, a range of discreet, sex-specific ways in which human development fails to achieve the goal of producing one of two types of healthy, functional reproductive tissues and systems that normal development is, ideally, supposed to build. While the occasionally ambiguous or confusing external genitalia may lead to an incorrect “assignment at birth” to the wrong sex*, with subsequent complications resulting from the psychological baggage that comes with socially imposed gender roles, the DSD condition itself has nothing whatsoever to do with putative “gender identity.” To suggest there is some connection (which this teaming up is designed to suggest, like some genderist version of Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Throat) is deceptive.
Where do these two completely different phenomena overlap? Nowhere, as far as I can tell. What commonalities of treatment are there? I would think very few. I can only conclude that this yoking together of such disparate conditions is a politically motivated, not medical. Who gains from this arrangement? Trans ideology. Who suffers? Anyone suffering from a DSD condition, as their actual physiological needs have been coupled to the demands of a delusional belief system that is completely unrelated to DSDs, and may be almost entirely psychological. Have they updated their obstetrics and midwifery centres to shackle them to departments dedicated to studying and promoting the important roles played by storks and cabbage leaves in human reproduction? It would make as much sense as this linkage between transgender “medecine” and the care of people with DSDs.
*The use of which terminology is one of the sole reasons, along with the imputation of sex being a “spectrum” through abuse of the whole “intersex” idea, that transgenderism has ever concerned itself with people who have DSDs. The politically expedient appropriation of concepts germane solely to DSDs is the the only point of the operation, the only reason they’ve been dragged under the “trans umbrella” in the first place. This unethical appropriation provides a good chunk of the supposed “science” that genderists claim to have supporting their ideology. Take that away and they’re left with even less justification and proof for their contentions.
You left out women.
Well yes, because I’d already included women so many times. Don’t want to be TOO repetitious.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Some people may find this phrasing […]
No matter? Isn’t your sex, particularly if pregnant, medically speaking, the primary consideration? Only women can be pregnant, and it’s silly to think otherwise. Secondary physical attributes are *inaccurate* if you aren’t clear about the primary ones, and are more or less irrelevant. Besides, it’s terribly unclear writing.
@6 Not just secondary physical attributes, but superficial ones, or ones that live only in the mind.
Somewhat tangential, but this bugs me a bit too. I would say that contraception is a way for women to avoid pregnancy. Anyone can prevent pregnancy by using appropriate contraception, or just abstaining, but women are the ones who suffer the physical effects of pregnancy. It’s like getting hit by a bus–the bus driver can prevent it, but the pedestrian has to avoid it.
Or am I just splitting hairs again?
WaM, I think on this one you may be splitting hairs. If everyone can prevent pregnancy, then certainly women can, so the statement is not wrong. The fact that men can is possibly irrelevant to this conversation, and think preventing pregnancy is a phrase that works better for most people than avoiding pregnancy. Contraception is a method that requires action in a way that avoiding doesn’t seem to (though of course avoiding often does require action, it isn’t always the case).
My beef was with the next paragraph:
A quack who is giving “gender-affirming care” who does not inform their patient that yes, even a transman will still need to use contraception to avoid pregnancy (or even just cramping), and, honestly, provide it for her if no one else does, should be sued so hard from the inevitable results should be sued so hard by their patient that the doctor’s great-grandchildren curse the day they consigned the family to abject poverty.
The only way for such ignorance to exist is for the doctor to have failed utterly to provide even a modicum of actual medical care to the patient, instead opting for ‘affirmation’.