Woman is not a dirty word. Stop erasing women.

The word woman is not a dirty word. I can’t pinpoint when it started but the words “woman” or “women” have become taboo to write if the topic doesn’t affect trans women so it has become mainstream to erase women instead.

WOMAN IS NOT A DIRTY WORD. In organisations’ attempt at inclusivity, they have removed the word “woman” or “women” to avoid hurting biological males’ feelings at not being included in issues like cervical cancer screening tests, menstruation, pregnancy, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), etc.

Reddit started censoring women’s health support groups. It has become the norm to silence women who want to talk about female-specific issues.

A few months ago, JK Rowling got so much abuse thrown at her and was accused of being “transphobic” for merely poking fun at an article with the headline “people who menstruate”. “There used to be a word for those people”, she quipped.

The mob came for her and the gist of the message was:

“Trans women are women, they are whoever they say they are. Not all women can menstruate. Not all women have a cervix. Not all women have a uterus.”—Which means that any male who say they feel like they are women should be treated as such.

Click here to read the original tweets and the threats and abuse she received after.

We have companies like The Body Shop referring to females as menstruators and you have the likes of HSE pertaining to girls and women as “anyone with a cervix” or “people with a cervix” because they want to virtue-signal that they’re being inclusive to those who were born biological males and identify as women, to those who were born female and identify as men and to those who identify as non-binary.

People have conflated the meaning of sex and gender that some people think that gender stereotypes such as girls liking pink or dresses means they’re women and that men liking blue or beer means that they’re men. Sex and gender are not interchangeable.

Those people who identify themselves as non-binary feel like they don’t fit the gender stereotypes. They don’t want to be placed in a box. They don’t want to be labelled hence why they call themselves non-binary.

Radical feminists don’t want to be labelled either hence why we reject the word “cis” because there is no gender identity that is not inherently sexist.

We do not consent to being reduced to our biological functions or organs and be called menstruators, uterus owners or cervix havers. How is it progressive and inclusive to dehumanise half of the world’s population? How come marketing material for men haven’t been reduced to sperm ejectors, testicle owners or prostate havers?

We are women because in utero and in birth, our biological sex was observed as female first based on external genitalia then secondly on the basis of if we could produce ova; this is the same for men where their sex can be determined in utero and at birth which is based on genitalia and if they can produce sperm–because in the real world, sex is binary. Intersex is a condition so stop using people with DSDs to validate your existence. You can deconstruct this all you want and use barramundi fish to make your case that there is a 3rd sex to affirm trans identities but you’re only making yourself look delusional. Even archaeologists have found a new way to figure out how to determine sex of cremated individuals.

Women are adult human females. Gender identity ideology will have you believe that it is possible to be born in the wrong body and that the definition of “woman” is a feeling, a thought or a set of behaviours but this is not true. There is no such thing as a female brain or a male brain.

People are free to dress however they want to or present themselves however they want. No one is taking that right away from you. It’s your life at the end of the day. But the truth is, you are either born male or female and even if people change everything about themselves cosmetically and they get their identity recognised and all their documents changed, that won’t change. You can identify as a woman or as a non-binary all you want but your biological sex matters when it comes to healthcare. It isn’t hateful to point this out. It isn’t hateful to say that if you’re biologically female, you can get cervical cancer because only females can get cervical cancer. It isn’t hateful to say that if you’re biologically male, you should get your prostates checked for prostate cancer.

There are biological differences between men and women. This shouldn’t even be debated in 2020 but here we are. We are being shunned for simply acknowledging biological differences.

Why should we protest the alteration of language when it comes to healthcare? Because the male sex and the male body are used as a default for medicines.

Women’s healthcare issues are usually dismissed as hysteria which is why female-specific conditions such as endometriosis takes an average of 9 years to get diagnosed.

Wasn’t it only a few years ago when we had the CervicalCheck scandal with HSE? Dozens of women were given the wrong smear test results and they withheld this information for years. 20 women are now dead.

You’d think that the HSE would have learned that treating women as second-class citizens isn’t right. When we were told that change is under way, we were hoping that perhaps women won’t be treated as an after-thought but it seems that the word “woman” has been completely removed under the guise of inclusivity.

Woman is not a dirty word. Your version of inclusivity isn’t inclusive to those who don’t subscribe to gender identity ideology. Your version of inclusivity isn’t inclusive to girls and women whose first language isn’t English, mostly girls and women of colour. Your version of inclusivity isn’t inclusive to girls and women who may be of a disadvantaged background, who wouldn’t have been educated to know the language well enough to identify that they have a cervix.

Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust in the UK released statistics in 2017 stating that 44.2% of women were unaware what the cervix is.

Is it too much to ask to also be included and not be disregarded in issues pertaining to women’s health?

The word woman is not a dirty word and we will not sit idly by and have you remove the word woman because it might make other people feel excluded because they don’t have and can’t have the organs of a human female.

I urge you to express your disappointment at HSE for treating girls and women as second-class citizens yet again by removing the word “woman” and “women” in cervical screening tests.

If it really was for inclusivity, how come the marketing material for prostate cancer doesn’t refer to men as people with a prostate or prostate havers?

Why is this an issue?

When it comes to healthcare, what hasn’t changed is the fact that there is clear sexism when it comes to females’ healthcare, whether consciously or subconsciously we can’t tell. But what’s obvious is that when women talk about their pains, they are dismissed.

We need to have clear language and be able to talk about healthcare affecting women without gender identity politics. There are sex-specific issues that absolutely no one can identify out of. Sex bias in healthcare is real and we need to address that.

According to University of Maryland academics, Diane Hoffman and Anita Tarzian who published The Girl Who Cried Pain, which is an analysis of the ways gender bias plays out in clinical pain management, they concluded that women were more likely to be inadequately treated by healthcare providers. One study they examined indicated that women are more likely to be given sedatives for their pain and men given pain medication. This is attributed to “a long history within our culture of regarding women’s reasoning capacity as limited”. It’s incredibly important that healthcare remains sex-specific as not only are males and females different physiologically but also because medications have different effects on our bodies depending on our sex.

This shouldn’t even be up for debate but this is how much women are treated as 2nd class, as an after-thought, how much our feelings are pushed aside for the sake of identity politics’ inclusivity. The whole point of healthcare information is to target the right people to get checked, to get screened. When you generalise it, the message is saturated. It just becomes noise. It disregards class and race and frankly, it stinks of Western privilege.

If you’re as incensed as I am about this, let HSE know. I did up a template you can use to email them. You can copy and paste some of the information I’ve provided in this post. The emails to send it to are: info@cervicalcheck.ie, yoursay@hse.ie, digital@hse.ie, crpg@hse.ie & internalcomms@hse.ie

#WOMANISNOTADIRTYWORD Letter Template:

To Whom It May Concern:

It was brought to my attention the new wording that you have used on your Cervical Cancer screening marketing materials fail to mention the word “woman” or “women”.

The word woman is not a dirty word. The whole point of cervical test screening is to get women to have their cervix checked for cervical cancer. When you remove the word “woman” or “women”, you aren’t being inclusive to women at all.  You aren’t being inclusive to women whose first language isn’t English, mostly women from developing countries and women of colour. You aren’t being inclusive to women who may be of a disadvantaged background and may not have been educated enough to know that they have a cervix because they are female.

You are playing at identity politics when you’re supposed to be neutral and focussed at bringing the best care possible.

If this was about inclusivity, how come the word “men” are still mentioned in all marketing material for prostate cancer?

If this was about inclusivity, you could use “women, trans men and non-binary females” instead.

Your marketing material both online and offline should reflect this.

The word woman is NOT a dirty word.

Stop erasing women.

If this is truly about trans healthcare, then you should put up a system that will record trans people’s birth sex in order for health professionals to give the proper care trans people need. You are wasting resources sending out invitations to cervical screening letters to trans women who are registered as female because of self-id while trans men, who are biologically women who may not have had hysterectomies are being disregarded.

That’s how much women are considered second-class, that even after identifying as a man, they’re still dismissed.

Regards

Feel free to let us know what their response is.

radfemireland