J K Rowling and the trans furore

In My Humble Opinion
2064

Also, if a primary goal is to prevent takeovers of girls’ teams by malicious trolling cisgender males who are frivolously and temporarily claiming to identify as female, then I think one of the regulations should be requiring transgender-identified team candidates to have a persistent, insistent and consistent transgender identity.

AFAICT real-life transgender athletes in general are only too happy to confirm that they have a persistent, insistent and consistent transgender identity, because that’s the very thing that they’ve spent years trying to make people understand.

2065

I didn’t have my first pap smear untiI I was in my mid 30s. Because I never had any need to get one until then. Unless you are sexually active, your doctor probably isn’t going to give you gynecological exam or refer you to a gynecologist until you’re middle-age. The only reason I got a pap smear was because I wanted to get on birth control to mellow out my cycle. But if I hadn’t requested a prescription, I would been perfectly happen to never get a pap smear.

There are also lots of women who are skeeved out by pap smears and who are anxious about talking about their private parts with medical professionals. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t curious enough to read CNN articles in their space time.

The point that @YWTF is making is a valid one. If dewomanizing language is continues to trend, then maybe one day it won’t be common knowledge that cervixes are a girly thing. The only reason it is common knowledge now is because discussing male and female anatomy has never been taboo, and neither is saying something like “Women need to get their cervixes screened.”

2066

Believe it or not, people from all walks of life get news and information from the internet. Not just the college educated from privileged backgrounds, but also those who didn’t grow up with sex education and who never go to the doctor due to crappy health insurance.

2067

I don’t think it’s “female erasure” to refer to biological facts in a more accurate and specific way than just approximating the more precise category “people with cervixes” by the less precise category “women”.

I get your point about wanting to ensure that cisgender women with low health literacy levels understand that they have cervixes (unless they’ve had total hysterectomies), but I think that’s better achieved by providing that information explicitly, as in the additional statements I suggested.

2068

Who has stated that this information shouldn’t be included? It’s like you are arguing against points no one is making.

I agree with you. Whom is in need of cervical screenIng is a detail that is sorely lacking in this article.

2069

I do believe it
But if they never go to the doctor due to crappy or no insurance, is this article going to convince them they now need yearly screenings? They are not getting any other kind of medical care- not even a free clinic.

ETA I have no problem with more detailed information. But I just have a hard time believing that an article saying YOU, yes YOU! You have a cervix so start going to the doctor every year and getting a pap smear to screen for cancer is going to be effective.

2070

Your own post is clearly implying that some unidentified advocates of “acceptance of gender ideology” are trying to “deny” women this information:

I don’t know whom in particular you meant by that, but I disagree with the claim that respect for transgender rights (by which I mean a concept that may or may not be more or less the same thing that you mean by “acceptance of gender ideology”) requires “denying women access to clear and actionable health information”.

That’s why I replied that I, for one, don’t think there’s anything anti-transgender about explicitly explaining in such an article who has a cervix and who doesn’t. I’m glad you agree.

2071

Why wouldn’t it? If you’re a 27 year old woman who last saw a doctor at age 19, reading that you’re overdue for a cervical screening might prompt you to schedule a doctors appointment today rather than putting it off and then forgetting about it. Just the bit about the HPV vaccine could motivate a call to the doctors office, but if the first line of the article reads like gibberish to you it’s unlikely you’ll read that far down.

It’s a bit elitist to assume that just because someone has a spotty history with preventative healthcare they are somehow unreachable by a news article. As @monstro pointed out, there are all kinds of reasons someone might not be a regular at the doctors office. Ignorance about why it’s important is one of those reasons. An article that fails to communicate effectively is only going to contribute to ignorance.

2072

My point is that if your regular doctor doesn’t mention to you that you need to have pap smears periodically, or even asks you when your last one was, if you have ever had one, I don’t think CNN is to blame. Every doctor I have ever seen has asked me about that, starting in my late teens/early 20s (the age of previously recommended cervical screenings) If you dont ever seen any doctor, the n an article saying that women have cervixes and should be screened is not likely to make them make an appointment.

Not all doctors do, and that is a shame IMHO. Should articles like that have more detail -yeah, more info the better! Do I feel erased that CNN didnt say the word woman? Not even a little bit.

.

2073

I wouldn’t make that assumption at all. Yes, there are people who don’t know that men have breasts, but that’s a much smaller proportion than those who don’t know what cervixes are and don’t know that only women have them.

The question I have is why are we avoiding sex class descriptors in a health article in the first place? “Woman” and “man” are now landmines, I get it. I don’t agree that they should be landmines, but I get it. But why must “female” and “male” be landmines too? Why should the concerns of 1% of the population (these “outliers” I’m being told we’re freaking out over uneccessarily) be catered to so much that now clinical discussions using economy of language are no longer possible? Is a transwoman’s happiness at not being reminded she doesn’t have a cervix worth a ciswoman not being properly educated about her health risks and suffering as a result? What are we gaining by swapping “Individuals with cervixes” for “Females”? Woke points? This doesn’t feel like a victory for civil rights. It feels like something that MIGHT make a teeny tiny number of people happy, while potentially causing harm to a significant number of people, but offering no benefits to society as a whole.

The other day while I was being prepped for surgery, I saw a sticker on the wall that listed the 5 risk factors for some medical syndrome that was referred to be an acronym that meant nothing to me, so I can’t remember what it was. At the bottom of the list was “MALE GENDER”. So obviously there is a need for “male” to mean more than “people who say they are males”. If medical professionals need to understand this, so do patients. People really do need to be taught about the aspects of their biology that put them into certain risk categories. And that means people really do need to recognize their biological realities and not dismiss them as social constructs.

2074

I’m sorry if that comes across as elitist. It’s just a bit of surprise to me that this article should inspire doctor appointments, when an article about other body parts apparently aren’t spurring these same people to visit the doctor.

I hate doctors, I truly do. I spent many years avoiding doctors. I wasn’t inspired by articles to anything but stress and then put it out of my mind- I was inspired to take charge of my health by the illnesses around me and symptoms of my own.

But hey, my own experience is far from universal.

2075

You seriously don’t know what I meant by saying women are losing access to clear information? After reading an article about cervical cancer, it’s impossible for you to understand what point I’m making here about “whom” should be specified? Really?

I wouldn’t be criticizing this article if “women” or “trans men” had been used. “Female” would’ve also been fine. Instead, there was no specificity whatsoever. Any reference to our sex class was deliberately omitted from that piece.

And yet CNN has no problems whatsoever referring to men as men.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/07/health/coronavirus-semen-china-health/index.html

You’d have to be taking blindness pills not to see it at this point.

2076

Wait, this article on coronavirus in breastmilk has no problem mentioning women, either!

2077

I’m relieved, truly.

2078

My point is that not everyone goes to a doctor and not everyone’s doctor tells them they need to have pap smears. Not everyone remembers the shit they were supposed to learn from high school sex education class. CNN is not responsible for all the educational and resource gaps people might have, true. But I would expect a health article to not skimp on key details. A key detail like “Females have cervixes.” That’s just bad reporting.

Super educated people already know about cervical cancer and the importance of getting checked out regularly. So they aren’t the intended audience of that article. It’s the people who don’t know about cervical cancer who are the ones who need to read that article. And it is reasonable to surmise that the people who don’t know about cervical cancer and the importance of getting screened might not know some basic things. It wouldn’t have taken anything away from the article if a few electrons had been devoted to describing those basic things.

I don’t feel erased by the article. But I do feel like the article is stupid the way it is written, and I’m worried that the style will continue to be promulgated until we get to a point where “female” in scientific context is seen as offensive. I would feel the same way if we were talking about an article about testicular cancer. I’m a biologist. I want to keep using biological terminology.

2079

Well, ISTM that the problem is that for centuries we have been using “female” and “male” to reference not only biological sex categories but also social gender categories and socially constructed gender norms.

We don’t just speak of “the female reproductive system”, for example: we also speak of “female fashions in clothing” and “female prudishness” and “the female addiction to chocolate” and “female frivolity” (according to Google Search, at least).

As a result, if we want to make sure that “female” is understood in the specific sense of typical human female biology rather than in terms of gender or gender norms, we have to add an explicit qualifier, as in “biologically female”.

I get that it’s somewhat inconvenient to have to cope with that ambiguity in meaning, but it’s not the fault of transgender people.

Increased factual accuracy, for one thing. Remember, not only transgender women but also women who’ve had total or radical hysterectomies do not have cervixes. And one-third of US women have had a hysterectomy by age 60, and AFAICT the vast majority of those include removal of the cervix.

ISTM that we shouldn’t be lamenting the fact that many people are now trying to use more precise language about sex, gender, and medical issues associated with them. Yes, that should definitely include explaining basic medical facts, like the statement that most women have cervixes. But no, it’s not a bad thing that medical language is now less likely to employ a broad category such as “women” or “females” as a sloppy approximation when what is really meant is “individuals with cervixes”.

2080

I believe I know what you meant by it, but—as I said—I’m not sure exactly whom you’re blaming for it.

My guess is that you believe that transgender-rights advocates in general would be opposed to including in that article explanatory statements like the ones I suggested, along the lines of "Most women have a cervix. A woman who is transgender or who has had a total hysterectomy does not have a cervix. Transgender men also have cervixes.”

If that’s what you believe, then I think you’re wrong. I don’t think transgender-rights advocates in general are opposed to providing clear, accurate and specific information about sex, gender and associated medical issues in health care guidelines.

2081

? Are you suggesting that CNN is deliberately avoiding use of the word “women” in its articles in general? Because AFAICT there are plenty of CNN articles that do include that word.

Also, I think you’re kind of comparing apples with oranges when you contrast the use of the word “men”, in reporting on a specific study on 38 patients who were in fact all men, with the use of the term “individuals with cervixes”, in describing general health care guidelines that are intended to apply to every individual with a cervix.

If the Chinese coronavirus-in-semen study had included subjects who were transgender women with testicles as well as subjects who were men with testicles, then yes, I would definitely have expected the wording to be instead “Coronavirus found in semen of individuals with testicles”.

But since the semen-producing subjects were in fact all men, I don’t see anything inaccurate about reporting the results as “Coronavirus found in men’s semen”.

Nor do I think that the difference in wording in these two articles is prima facie evidence for some nefarious plot of female erasure.

2082

I’m curious if you really think women who have had hysterectomies are the ones pushing for this kind of language. Do you really think these women feel erased when “women” is used in the same sentence as "cervical cancer’?

If factual accuracy is important, then it should always be important. Calling biological sex a social construct isn’t factually accurate. It’s an ideological position that robs us of the ability to describe a specific kind of anatomy and physiology, since the position makes it so that “female” and “male” are subjective terms that mean whatever a person wants them to mean, with no objective reference. There is something wrong when we can’t say something as noncontroversial and simple as something like “Females should be screened regularly for cervical cancer”. The language police have have now deemed this “factually inaccurate” even though it is 100% true. But strangely the language police have no problems with the illogic of “a woman is someone who says they are a woman” (I must remind the reader that you and everyone else refers to people as “women” all the time without waiting for them to say they are women). The illogicalness of this slogan is OK. But “Folks with female anatomy need to watch out for cervical cancer!” is incorrect and must be fixed lest there’s any confusion.

(Seriously, at this point I’ll take “Folks with female anatomy.” It is awkward, but at least it communicates effectively.)

Having a cervix doesn’t put you at risk for cervical cancer. Having a female anatomy and physiology puts you at risk for cervical cancer. Just like having a penis doesn’t put you at risk for having low vitamin D levels in old age or having autism spectrum disorder or extra complications from COVID. It’s the constellation of traits that matter, not the individual organs. We need to preserve our ability to talk about this constellation without worrying about the tiny number of people who MIGHT be upset by it.

2083

No, I don’t, although I have no way of knowing for sure. But if we end up with language that is clear, accurate and specific, then I don’t think it matters who’s “pushing for” it. In fact, I think we should all be pushing for language that is clear, accurate and specific. (And as I’ve already said, I do agree that the language in the CNN article as written isn’t clear enough, if one of the goals is to help less-informed readers understand who has a cervix and who doesn’t. In that case, it needs additional clear, accurate and specific statements along the lines of the ones I suggested.)

I completely agree, and I don’t advocate calling biological sex a social construct. The genetic, endocrinological, and anatomical aspects of biological sex are physical facts, and should be acknowledged as such.

(Mind you, that doesn’t contradict my position that the view of biological sex as a rigidly and universally binary classification system is heavily influenced by social construction. The reality of human biological sex is that it’s a spectrum of various physical characteristics, all of which can take on various intermediate forms as well as the overwhelmingly most common typically female forms and typically male forms. So it’s accurate to say that a strictly binary view of biological sex is applicable to most human beings, but not to all.)

But now you’re not using the term “biological sex”: you’re using the term “females” and insisting that it ought to be automatically interpreted as solely referring to its biological-sex meaning. Sorry, but that horse left the stable a long, long time ago.

The term “females” as a noun for women is now so overlaid with connotations of stereotypical gender expression that it’s no use expecting it to be automatically read in a biological sense. I’ve even seen cisgender-male drag queens casually referred to as “a bunch of females”, FFS. Can’t get much less biological than that.

I don’t agree; I think the term “female anatomy” is sufficiently bound to its biological sense to unambiguously convey that meaning, and I would have no problem with its being used in this context. (Although it still grinds my gears that this term inaccurately omits the quite large percentage of individuals with female anatomy who no longer possess a cervix, which makes it a sub-optimal choice of wording if the group you’re really talking about is individuals with cervixes.)

Agreed, I think that “folks with female anatomy” accurately conveys the sense of humans with a female reproductive system. (Still needs to be more specific about the cervix thing, tho.)

Huh? That comes across to me as nonsense. Sure, nobody who doesn’t have female anatomy and physiology has a cervix. But some people who do have (most of their original) female anatomy and physiology don’t have a cervix (any more). And AFAICT nobody who doesn’t have a cervix—whether they never had one in the first place, or had one and got rid of it—is at risk for cervical cancer.

Therefore, the term “individuals with cervixes” includes all those and only those who are at risk for cervical cancer, but the term “individuals with female anatomy and physiology” does not. Therefore, the former term is a more accurate descriptor in this situation than the latter. QED.