Girls become “boys,” not in reality, but in the way we talk about reality. Elective mastectomies on girls become “reconstructive chest surgery” on “boys.” Hysterectomies become “gender-affirming care.
This is exactly it. I feel as if I have gone mad. I am a nurse. I work in maternal health. It is my passion. The only reason I became a nurse is to work with mothers.
Today, in a meeting about maternal mortality, I was the only one using the words mother and woman. Everyone else kept saying birthing people, birthing bodies (so dehumanizing).
How can you talk about this without discussing sex, patriarchy, sexism and misogyny? The fact that labor and delivery units close down because we don’t value women? That black WOMEN die more because they deal with racism AND sexism?
How can we address this if we don’t say the word woman?
My colleagues are caring people. I like all of them. In the last 2-3 years, everything has quickly turned to birthing people and chest feeding. I have not spoken out against this at work. I spoke up. I said that it’s so great that we are finally starting to talk about how racism impacts our clients and healthcare in general. Another thing that is important is to consider how sexism and misogyny has impacted our clients’ lives too. I said there’s no such thing as paternal mortality as it relates to pregnancy and birth and we need to consider how sex affects this. I saw some nods. Another colleague said “100% and it affects women in all healthcare, like menopause and not doing research.”
She said woman. I think people are just parroting things. When confronted, they state the obvious—this is about women’s rights.
I was shaky and stumbling, afraid I’d blurt out my true, raging feelings. That is very unlike me. I’m a confident speaker. But it’s a start. And it is my duty as a nurse who serves women.
It is indeed horrifying. Especially when there are whole age groups that don't know the actual truth, and think this is indeed the way it is. They truly believe we are 'assigned' at birth.. it's deeply disturbing and I'll go down screaming blue murder before I'll ever submit.
Deb Cameron also does a good job at talking about the importance of language:
"The proliferation of inclusive alternatives to ‘women’ has the cumulative effect of making it difficult to see the wood for the trees. If I can’t get an abortion I’m being oppressed as a ‘pregnant person’; if I don’t get a job because the employer knows I have young children I’m being discriminated against as a ‘parent’; if I’m paying tax on tampons the state is profiting from my status as a ‘menstruator’. Maybe we’ll soon be urged to refer to women who earn less than men with the same qualifications as ‘underpaid people’. Lots of people are underpaid, after all: why would we only care about some of them? Let’s not be so vulgar, so unreconstructedly essentialist, as to point out that certain forms of unjust treatment don’t randomly happen to ‘people’, and they certainly don’t happen to men: they happen to women, because they are women."
Individual of the "be kind" variety are easily swayed by anything the tribe promotes. It's the institutions we thought we could trust, that should know better, that I find so jarring. This today:
I'm not sure psychological institutions or the DSM deserve our trust. There's many questionable diagnoses and plenty of clinicians who take the whole idea of diagnoses with a big grain of salt. Many clinicians want to help people within a framework that they recognize as problematic, others see it differently.
This is exactly it. I feel as if I have gone mad. I am a nurse. I work in maternal health. It is my passion. The only reason I became a nurse is to work with mothers.
Today, in a meeting about maternal mortality, I was the only one using the words mother and woman. Everyone else kept saying birthing people, birthing bodies (so dehumanizing).
How can you talk about this without discussing sex, patriarchy, sexism and misogyny? The fact that labor and delivery units close down because we don’t value women? That black WOMEN die more because they deal with racism AND sexism?
How can we address this if we don’t say the word woman?
My colleagues are caring people. I like all of them. In the last 2-3 years, everything has quickly turned to birthing people and chest feeding. I have not spoken out against this at work. I spoke up. I said that it’s so great that we are finally starting to talk about how racism impacts our clients and healthcare in general. Another thing that is important is to consider how sexism and misogyny has impacted our clients’ lives too. I said there’s no such thing as paternal mortality as it relates to pregnancy and birth and we need to consider how sex affects this. I saw some nods. Another colleague said “100% and it affects women in all healthcare, like menopause and not doing research.”
She said woman. I think people are just parroting things. When confronted, they state the obvious—this is about women’s rights.
I was shaky and stumbling, afraid I’d blurt out my true, raging feelings. That is very unlike me. I’m a confident speaker. But it’s a start. And it is my duty as a nurse who serves women.
It is indeed horrifying. Especially when there are whole age groups that don't know the actual truth, and think this is indeed the way it is. They truly believe we are 'assigned' at birth.. it's deeply disturbing and I'll go down screaming blue murder before I'll ever submit.
Deb Cameron also does a good job at talking about the importance of language:
"The proliferation of inclusive alternatives to ‘women’ has the cumulative effect of making it difficult to see the wood for the trees. If I can’t get an abortion I’m being oppressed as a ‘pregnant person’; if I don’t get a job because the employer knows I have young children I’m being discriminated against as a ‘parent’; if I’m paying tax on tampons the state is profiting from my status as a ‘menstruator’. Maybe we’ll soon be urged to refer to women who earn less than men with the same qualifications as ‘underpaid people’. Lots of people are underpaid, after all: why would we only care about some of them? Let’s not be so vulgar, so unreconstructedly essentialist, as to point out that certain forms of unjust treatment don’t randomly happen to ‘people’, and they certainly don’t happen to men: they happen to women, because they are women."
https://debuk.wordpress.com/2016/09/12/the-amazing-disappearing-women/
Individual of the "be kind" variety are easily swayed by anything the tribe promotes. It's the institutions we thought we could trust, that should know better, that I find so jarring. This today:
@BlanchardPhD
Capture of DSM5: “The term ‘desired gender’ is now ‘experienced gender,’ the term ‘cross-sex medical procedure’ is now ‘gender-affirming medical procedure,’ and the term ‘natal male’/’natal female’ is now ‘individual assigned male/female at birth.’” https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.pn.2022.1.20#.YdWxbmgXNRQ.twitter
I assume it's too much to expect blow-back from clinicians who see this as a serious problem. Heaven (or whatever) help us.
I'm not sure psychological institutions or the DSM deserve our trust. There's many questionable diagnoses and plenty of clinicians who take the whole idea of diagnoses with a big grain of salt. Many clinicians want to help people within a framework that they recognize as problematic, others see it differently.