What is the purpose of this? It looks to me like an attempt to create a new guideline, and I don't think that's a good idea in userspace, unless the goal is simply drafting a proposal that will later be put to the community in a WP:PROPOSAL process, e.g. at WP:VPPRO. If that's not the purpose, then what is it? If it IS the purpose, what exactly is wrong with extant guidelines like MOS:GNL, etc.? This is feeling like a solution in search of a problem (or at least a specific enough problem to be actionable).
Even the "worked example" above is confusing in its intent and reasoning. The potential problem with the "A man's hairline ..." example, in certain broad contexts, isn't that it contains gendered words, but that it contains a misleading half-truth (again, in certain broad contexts), and ignores the fact that women can sometimes experience a receding hairline. That is, missing information is the possible problem; it isn't a "failure" to use gender-neutral language. It would almost certainly be better to continue using sex-specific wording but be more detailed, e.g. noting that men (or males, or whatever wording is preferred) commonly experience a receding hairline among other hair loss as they age, while women/females more often experience general hair thinning, but can also sometimes experience a receding hairline. Provide more information rather than get into yet another socio-politically motivated "my word is better than your word" pissing match.
That said, wording along the lines "Men commonly experience a receding hairline as they age" would be entirely appropriate in the article
Man, with a
receding hairline link to an article where the fact that it can also affect women is covered. It simply is not relevant in
Man that women can also have receding hair. What's relevant is that receding hair in aging men is common. We're having a lot of disputation at
Talk:Sex differences in medicine and elsewhere, specifically because people keep trying to inject essentially irrelevant and distracting and even confusing "But what about ..." exceptionalism into every other occurrence of generalized sex-specific information, as if our readers had brain damage. We just don't need to do that. It is not helpful to readers and is proving disruptive internally.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
02:28, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
"Should our advice be based primarily on reliable sources or on editors' opinions" is ambiguous. Are these the reliable sources used for the sentence in dispute, reliable sources used elsewhere in the article, reliable sources found when googling the article topic + desired/opposed language choice, or reliable sources of expert opinion on the matter. Or all or some of those. And how do we weight opinions of experts who have achieved a consensus for an organisation that is neutrally in the health-information business, or experts who are associated with a minority group affected by the language choices. Ultimately editor opinion plays a necessary role in shaping any guidance or essay or paragraph, and aspects of such will be Wikipedian in nature for which no external body can help. So an answer to the question may depend on what definition we are using and splitting hairs over what "based primarily" means. Probably all of these things are important to various degrees.
Perhaps you should set out some goals of what you'd like to achieve. It seems like choices may involve prioritising some goals ahead of others, and priorities may vary depending on context. The example "idea" further up is "Articles should be written to use as few gendered words as possible". That's not really a goal but a proposed strategy that is probably too easy to shoot down since "as few as possible" is zero if one is determined to strawman it to death. Less extreme might be to consider the effect of a small and targeted change and viewed from our readers. Who benefits and who is disadvantaged or excluded by a change. Perhaps instead of offering advice about how editors should write, for some things, we just explain the approaches taken by various professional, considerate writers, and note their documented pros and cons. This may be particularly appropriate for issues for which there is no settled best approach with consensus, but for which saying absolutely nothing at all leaves a vacuum to be filled by soapboaxing by editors on both sides. -- Colin° Talk 21:19, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
As outlined below, the terminology in articles, especially medical articles, is dependent upon the support of reliable sources and it is expected that editors would use the same terminology presented in said sources.Of course, that fits perfectly with WP:STICKTOSOURCE and WP:V. WP:NPOV is also based on what sources say, not editor opinion. If anything is to be added to MEDMOS, it should be a short statement to use the terminology found in the reliable sources being cited. Crossroads -talk- 06:13, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
With so many of English scientific papers written by people who don't have English as a first language, it seems odd to place them on a pedestal of how we should write. With tuberous sclerosis complex I've read modern dermatology papers written by I suspect non-native English writers, who used terms so old, so scientifically illiterate and inappropriate that they predate colour television and the double helix. Another example could be NHS Measles which talks directly to the reader as 'you': "You can easily catch measles by..." We just don't write like that. Pah, you say, we wouldn't use such a lay tertiary site as source. Ok, how about The Lancet. We'd likely replace their "morbidity and mortality" with easier terms in our lead. We wouldn't talk about "The management of patients with measles". It seems to me replacing "patients with measles" with "people who are ill with measles", say, is not fundamentally any different to the choices we consider with gender and trans issues. We avoid writing about patients partly because our audience is not just healthcare professionals, but also it does reflect a movement to avoid medicalization. By referring to "patients", our sources are not using terms we want to use. The Lancet goes on wrt vaccination "However, urgent efforts are needed to increase stagnating global coverage ..." Again it doesn't talk how we'd talk. We could still include that opinion if we felt it appropriate, but we wouldn't write it that way. -- Colin° Talk 14:25, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
Wrt "Anything that stops editors from fighting about this for the next several years would be a win in my books"
I think a good start would be to collect references to discussions, articles and guidelines written by other people. While what we end up writing and where is a matter for Wikipedians, I don't think it has been productive for editors to simply argue from their own opinions, politics and experience about the ideal terms to generally use for X, Y or Z. The project is about building an encyclopaedia, not fighting culture wars. I don't think the average Wikipedian is any more qualified to settle these disputes than they are to settle arguments about wearing face masks or funding healthcare. I'm puzzled why we continue to engage in original research and soapboxing. I'm puzzled at the focus about what editor X thinks or editor Y understands vs what the readers will think and understand from what we've written.
Related, it might be useful to consider which aspects of this issue are specifically Wikipedian. As the current first 'problem to be solved' indicates, we can have original-research problems if we want to use inclusive language but have a source (with statistics or opinions or findings) that doesn't define their group in that language. Another aspect could be considering the context of the words, such as a general medical article, or an article specifically about sex/gender, or about social or political matters. Can we separate what issues we, as Wikipedians, are uniquely good at, from the issues that I think we should humbly admit that other brighter more informed people have already or are already debating and writing about.
The notes suggest that 'male' (and presumably 'female') may be harder words then 'men' or 'women' for those who are struggling with English. That includes both native and non-native speakers, and the latter in particular could be fluent in another language. Do we have a source for this or is it just speculation? I'm conscious that in another discussion about rewording for making things easier to read for non-English-natives, that the 'simple' word chosen was uniquely English, whereas the original word had common European variants. Perhaps although male/female are not quite as common as men/women, they are common enough, and for many medical topics, worrying if the reader can't understand 'male' would be the least of the problems. -- Colin° Talk 10:47, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
Adults are persons 18 years or older and should be referred to as men or women...Whenever possible, a patient should be referred to as a man, woman, boy, girl, or infant. Occasionally, however, a study group may comprise children and adults of both sexes. Then, the use of male and female as nouns is appropriate. Male and female are also appropriate adjectives.Neither that nor 11.12 Inclusive Language says anything about e.g. not using "women" to refer to the female sex. And the quote from 11.7 implicitly supports use of "men" and "women" to refer to sex.
can only report that which is verifiable from reliable and secondary sources...Let reliable sources make the...statements. What we do is find neutral ways of presenting them.Activist wording is not neutral, nor is it verifiable to the MEDRS we are citing. Restricting wording in a way sources do not is not justified and is instead an attempt at language reform.
The rationale explains "the new guidance broadens the language we use and aims to support people who identify in a different way to feel the service includes and represents them"
. Their approach is to add rather than replace. For example "The vast majority of midwifery service users are women and we already have language in place they are comfortable with. This is not changing and we will continue to call them pregnant women and talk about breast feeding"
. They explain that "a gender-additive approach means using gender-neutral language alongside the language of womanhood, in order to ensure that everyone is represented and included."
and "If we only use gender neutral language, we risk marginalising or erasing the experience of some of the women and people who use our services."
.
While trans people form a very small minority of their users, they acknowledge that minority groups can be marginalised and discriminated against for various reasons, including language used. Rather than dismiss that group as irrelevantly tiny, their aim "is perinatal services that are available, accessible and acceptable to the trans and non-binary community, fulfilling our professional, statutory and ethical responsibility to address health inequalities in marginalised populations."
.
Wrt context: "these language changes do not apply when discussing or caring for individuals in a one-on-one capacity where language and documentation should reflect the gender identity of the individual. When caring for cis women it is good practice to use terminology that is meaningful and appropriate to the individual; this may include terms such as woman, mother or breastfeeding"
.
Table 1 on page 16 gives a number of examples. The authors do acknowledge they are "leading the way" in the UK. On they other hand, they are an organisation whose primary mission is not gender politics but healthcare services. -- Colin° Talk 12:23, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
This editorial takes a broadly critical view of gender inclusive language change and appears to be a response to the above guideline. The author is concerned with "balancing various concerns around language choice in healthcare communication"
. For example, they argue that treating some subjects as a "women's issue"
excludes those affected by it but who not identify as women. On the other hand, "excising the word ‘woman’ in order to include transgender persons in our reproductive justice analysis can have the effect of effacing the particular lived experiences of women"
. Essentially, that it may be difficult to please everyone in both groups. They go on to explain that alternative ways of describing a patient group can be "dehumanising" and "demeaning", with a focus on biological functions and anatomy. Another problem is where "jargon-free communication" is highly desirable to reach people who have limited ability with English or limited knowledge of anatomy.
The author is concerned that "gender inclusive linguistic changes could have the unintended consequence of making biological sex conceptually less visible and much more difficult to clearly explain in healthcare and medical education"
. There is a lack of easily understood, unambiguous and simple terms for "individuals with a cervix" or "prostate-possessors". The editorial gives an example of reducing people to biological function ("menstruators and ejaculators"
) though most these examples of alternative word choices are not sourced to guidelines recommending them or articles using them.
The author notes that "gender inclusive phrases ought not be viewed as one-size-fits-all for transgender people"
and that there are a very wide variety of people who come under the trans umbrella. They conclude "Clinical terminology needs to be cognisant of diverse audiences, flexible to different purposes and allow dialogue on local and global levels. Language in healthcare should aim for clear and respectful communication."
. --
Colin°
Talk
14:39, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
Some more articles. May or may not be important enough to expand on.
"It’s the language that every adult alive today grew up using", is an explanation for resistance to or slow progression of change, but not really an acceptable argument against change. And their claim
"Nonbinary is itself a very recent coinage; the usage examples given in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary date back only to 2015."seems to be based on a misunderstanding of Webster's usage examples (they are randomly chosen from current online news sources). One argument given is that when the subject is the 'gendered experience' then we can't just neutralise the words:
'The famous slogan commonly attributed to the second-wave activist Florynce Kennedy—“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”—would be totally defanged if it were made gender-neutral. And if we cannot talk about, say, the Texas abortion law in the context of patriarchal control of women’s bodies, then framing the feminist case against such laws becomes harder. No more “men making laws about women.” Instead we get: “Some people who are in charge of policy want to restrict the rights of some other people. We oppose that because people’s rights are human rights!”'
"My feeling about nonsexist English is that it is like a foreign language that I am learning. I find that even after years of practice, I still have to translate sometimes from my native language, which is sexist English.". A caution that what perhaps comes "naturally" isn't a reliable guide to what one should write.
'woman, women are nouns, not adjectives, so say female president, female MPs etc rather than “woman president”, “women MPs”. An easy way to check is to try using man instead of woman eg “man president”, “men MPs” – if it doesn’t work for men, it doesn’t work for women.'
gender issues Our use of language reflects our values, as well as changes in society.There are several points made in the guide. I think the opening statement is important because how we write and the word choices we take reflect our values. Hiding behind the language usage of our sources seems to me a cop-out that would not fool a single reader. -- Colin° Talk 14:38, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
'Because of the illness she described herself as "not the happiest of pregnant people", adding: "Lots of people have it far, far worse, but it was definitely a challenge."'. There we go, "pregnant people" has Royal Approval. End of discussion :-). -- Colin° Talk 10:44, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
;-)
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
16:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
"We are not here to pass legislation that does not make sense to the public whom we represent. If we were to go out into the streets of our country and try to explain to the electorate—to our citizens—that we have got ourselves into a position where we are not permitted to use the word “woman” in a Bill that deals with maternity, they would not know where we were coming from.- The whole discussion can be found here and later ammendments to the Bill with Lord Lucas rationale as to why the phrase "pregnant person" was unacceptable and therefore substituted can be found here. CV9933 ( talk) 15:54, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
There is a suggestion above that rather than matching the language of sources, we could match the language of similar publications. There was an edit war at Pregnancy recently, over whether the first sentence should describe pregnancy as something experienced by "a woman" or by "a person with a uterus". For comparison, here's what other encyclopedias are saying:
EB is for teenagers/high schoolers. Funk and Wagnalls usually caters to a slightly younger crowd (~12 year olds). Magill's Medical Guide probably assumes adults. I don't know enough about the other two to make a guess there. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 21:47, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
This is a deeply thought-out statement that covers both the psychosocial aspects of language and issues of scientific accuracy. Some highlights:
To be inclusive of all people in our written materials, use of desexed or genderinclusive language (e.g., using ‘‘lactating person’’ instead of ‘‘mother’’) is appropriate in many settings. In some situations, however, use of sex-specific language may be preferable, for reasons we state hereunder. Reasons to use sex-specific language include "Translation concerns, literacy, and clarity" and "Desexed language may also alienate some readers."
Substituting ‘‘parents’’ for ‘‘mothers’’ may be factually inaccuratebecause breastfeeding research has presumably always been done with cisgender women. Breastfeeding is known to confer certain health benefits to cisgender mothers, but data are lacking as to whether these benefits can be expected in transgender men who chestfeed.
When describing the words or recommendations of any other author or organization, it would be incorrect and unethical to use desexed or gender-inclusive language if the original author or organization did not use such language.This is a big issue for us and I'm curious if it's something the community could come to consensus on relatively quickly. (Happy New Year by the way everyone! I'm typing while waiting for my kid to fall asleep and then I'll go celebrate.) Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 06:48, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
One study in Kenya, for example, found that the presence of the father significantly reduced the likelihood that young females would engage in sex and have an unwanted pregnancy. However, other research indicates that the quality of the father-adolescent relationship is much more significant than the amount of time. Further research is needed to understand how physical availability affects parents’ abilities to establish and maintain the bond between parents and adolescents.
"Mothers and fathers were tallest in Norway and the United States and shortest in Oman"It might at first seem that one could substitute "parents" here. But the article often separately deals with mothers and fathers and with "mid-parental" height, and here they are very much dealing with the biological parents split along by gave the egg and who gave the sperm, not gender roles. Another document said
"The exposure of future mothers and fathers to certain risks at the workplace can have a serious impact on the health of their unborn child."It seems to me one could substitute parents here, though I can see why the author wrote it that way as perhaps it forms a better image in the mind. -- Colin° Talk 12:01, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
I wonder though, would we be ok if where was a WHO recommendation: "mothers and fathers should..." that we substituted with "parents should..." I think that is fine, and I thought you meant that substituting "parent" for "mother" or "father" would be fine in at least some circumstances. Did I understand you correctly? Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 02:44, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
so I wonder if "mother or trans father" could sometimes be an acceptable expansion of "mother"- can you provide an example of when such an expansion would be appropriate? Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 03:45, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
WHO recommends mothers worldwide to exclusively breastfeed infants for the child's first six months[1], here are some possible statements that I would consider problematic:
It may sound like points 2 and 3 are not much different to the argument we must follow our sources wrt social language choices. But point 2 is just about being careful when rewording the name of a population, of accidentally redefining the scope of a fact or claim or opinion. Even "patients" and "people with X" are not always equivalent as the former are those receiving medical treatment or care, and the latter is everyone with X. In a condition where many are undiagnosed or choose not to get treatment, the difference could be large. Some may wrongly assume that the lockdown rules set by the UK parliament apply to all of the UK but this is a devolved matter and only applies to England. [2] Accidentally altering the scope when rewriting and paraphrasing is a general problem. And point 3 is just "don't put words into other people's mouths". If we are slave to source authors' language choices, then it matters which sources, and WAID and I have already seen a dispute where a concern was raised that sources could be cherry picked in order to support a language choice. But if the problem with the language choice is one of WP:OR or WP:V, say, then substituting or adding another source may entirely resolve the problem. -- Colin° Talk 12:15, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
Almost all sources use "woman" and "female" interchangeably...for the vast majority of sex-specific topicssounds to me like a manifesto commitment in search of a problem, and also tends to be circular (what is a sex-specific topic? If defined narrowly enough, the statement almost becomes tautological). There are certain topics, such as the reproductive health of trans and nonbinary people, where this is not at all true. While it may seem too obvious to need saying, from the actual edit history of these topics it clearly needs to be said - where Wikipedia addresses these topics, it needs to use the clear, up-to-date language actually employed in the RS specific to them, and not revert to "Almost all sources use "woman" and "female" interchangeably" on topics to which this is demonstrably false as a justification for inserting language in article space that violates current RS practices (an argument that at least one, now topic-banned, editor took great joy in making). Newimpartial ( talk) 03:14, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
This is yet another inaccurate analogy. There is no necessary connection between being a midwife and being female. However, every "pregnant person" is female. English has a word for female humans, and we should not misleadingly forgo it just because a tiny minority of them have a condition (gender dysphoria) whereby they identify otherwise. Same as the other exceptions I've mentioned about people who are missing digits or whatever. Centering rarities is misleading. It is not "people" for whom unprotected sex can result in pregnancy. It is not all "people" for whom a major aspect of their health needs involve obstetrics and gynecology. I submit that "pregnant people" is always misleading because it takes away reference to sex for something that is inherently sexed, as though it were sex-neutral.
Colin, the first and foremost reason that I point to RGW and not-advocacy is because the sources by and large haven't started using these terms - unlike not assuming midwives or other professions are a certain gender.
Clayoquot noting that "the phrase got lots of criticism from readers in the comments section" should be a warning to all of us. This is my impression too of what happens when the phrase is used. I touch a bit on this below in the following subsection. Crossroads -talk- 05:40, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
Female humanhas multiple senses because "female" has multiple senses. Trans women are "female humans" in terms of gender identity - and in many cases, often legally - although they will not have a functioning "female" reproductive system. The reason some of the sources on pregnancy (including the general guidance in Canada on covid vaccination and pregnancy) uses "pregnant person" is because of this ambiguity about when "female" is a social category and when it is a "biological" category, what it means in a particular context, and what various audiences will understand it to mean. When you argue that
Centering rarities is misleadingyou seem to be arguing against including the language of more careful sources in WP articles even when it predominates among relevant, recent, RS and essentially to be offering a rationale for the disruptive arguments recently put forward by a now topic-banned editor (who argued that "female" always means the same, biologically determined category, regardless of context or specific sourcing). I hope this is not the case. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:12, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
When medical sources talk about "female", and the context is not specifying gender identity, sex is meant. This is not true of psychiatry, for example, where "female" is much more likely to be used to invoke social than biological factors (crudely, "gender" rather than "sex"), quite aside from gender identity in particular. It is also not true of studies that explicitly identify gender, in addition to or as opposed to sex, as a factor in health outcomes. But once again you are appealing to what may be true of MEDRS as a whole to run roughshod over more specific literatures, which have their own typical features and dynamics. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:17, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
reference to differences between males and females - without further elaboration - usually has to do with sex differences. In some instances the MEDRS are explicit that they are examining gender, and in some instances they are explicitly looking at sex. But many sources in psychiatry in particular do not specify, and in such an instance I don't think stating that it
usually has to do with sex differencesis a helpful generalization. For example, feelings of physical helplessness may have to do with a combination of physiological factors and socialization, and therefore both sex and gender may come into play. I don't know why it would be helpful in this and similar cases to assume that "female=sex" - and it is steel-manning rather than ASPERSIONS on my part, I feel, when I attribute your reasoning on this to "this is what sources in the rest of MEDRS tend to do" rather than "this is my arbitrary a priori assumption", which is the obvious alternative that comes to mind.
The summary of this guideline is a bit unfair at present I think. It previously said "Audience-dependent choices", which perhaps is a little lacking in specifics.
Clayoquot
edited it to include a quote that covers one choice: "Circumstances where traditional gendered terms are more appropriate include documents written for a worldwide audience, and documents written for the general lay public."
. A quote for the other choice might be "Appropriate circumstances where desexed or gender-inclusive terms can replace sex-specific terms may include a document with an audience of health care professionals in a country where openly transgender or nonbinary persons give birth and breastfeed or chestfeed, such as a hospital policy in the United Kingdom or United States.
On the face of it, it might appear that the first audience is exactly "Wikipedia" and that would be the clear favourite. But we have to remember that the ABM's primary goal is "broader global support for breastfeeding" and while the intro to their guideline recognises their role in "ending violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people... to respect, promote, and fulfill the human rights of all LGBTI people", this is clearly something that can be sacrificed if it impedes their primary goal. They have some important differences to Wikipedia:
In the
Guardian style guide on 'Gender' it says "Our use of language reflects our values, as well as changes in society"
(my bold). I strongly believe this applies to Wikipedia too, which you might guess is one reason I'm opposed to those values being tied too strongly to the values of of our sources. But ABM is concerned about the values of their various global audiences and their government health departments. In order to achieve their primary goal, they seem willing to go along with those values (not even take the tiniest of baby steps). They are picking their fights, and trans issues isn't one they want to fight at a global level. That's their choice, and it may well save lives if their mission achieves its goal.
Much of the world remains virulently homophobic and transphobic. According to Wikipedia Nigeria, 98% of the population do not accept homosexuality. That's a country of >200 million people, with English as the official language. The UK population is only 67 million. Nobody is suggesting Wikipedia self censors or moderates its articles on homosexuality in order to accommodate better acceptance in African countries. As an encyclopaedia, our goal is all round education, which means that perhaps when reading about breast feeding, you learn a little about trans parents, and discover, even, that they exist, contrary to the "traditional values" government education you got. -- Colin° Talk 09:38, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
trans issues, but to inform people based on reliable sources, even people in Nigeria, and not to unnecessarily
distractreaders. And like ABM, we should be concerned if the former is allowed to get in the way of the latter (e.g. by allowing unnecessary insertion of "chestfeeding people" or whatever anywhere in breastfeeding articles even though trans people are not the topic). We should cover what reliable sources say about LGBT people, and this will no doubt decrease homophobia or transphobia, but the way to do that is to cover sources about them, rather than contorting random bits of text to try to insert certain phrases. Crossroads -talk- 05:02, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
"We affirm that language has power. This is demonstrated in linguistic relativity and determinism, both theories explaining how the structure of a language impacts thought and behavior. Implicit biases affect the language we use, and thereby contribute to gender inequality and health inequities, which contribute, in turn, to rising morbidity and mortality of vulnerable populations"Just as they accept their word choices have an effect, so we must also accept our word choices have an effect that we take responsibility for. Wrt your final sentence, are you unaware of Heteronormativity? Dealing with trans people in their own section or articles is an option, and might be one of the more likely options to be accepted, but it shouldn't be considered an great choice if we are able to find agreeable language to include them within the body. It perpetuates the idea that a non-binary person is wrong and not normal. Crossroads, have a look at the lead of Marriage. It does not lead with "a union between man and woman" despite this presumably being the only acceptable definition for 98% of Nigeria. The lead doesn't even suggest man+woman is the norm, and uses language like "people called spouses", "them", and "individuals". A gay couple can read our lead of marriage and feel that "this applies to me too". Yet the numbers of gay people globally who are legally married must be tiny and especially when compared to heterosexual marriage. I guess the gender critical writers of the paper at the bottom of this page would say Wikipedia was being culturally imperialistic by imposing its views of marriage on the world. Crossroads, would you please think that when you make an argument, does this really apply generally and does this really apply to some of the other social issues like gay marriage or sexual equality. -- Colin° Talk 10:05, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
our words reflect our values...we must also accept our word choices have an effect that we take responsibility forhas no basis in policies or guidelines whatsoever. Same goes for the idea that we should write in a certain style different from the vast majority of sources to combat ideas like
heteronormativityor anything about who is
normal. The only time WP:PAG do touch on such ideas is at, again, NOTADVOCACY. That simply is not our purpose, and such goals necessarily interfere with our actual purpose. That purpose includes representation of sources about LGBT people, so there is no reason to consider using these rare phrases.
Numerous studies have found evidence of LoT [language-on-thought] effects, and numerous other studies have failed to find such evidence...While there is strong evidence in support of weak forms of linguistic relativity, a strong version not only lacks empirical support, but arguably requires a pre-cognitivist view of thought as necessarily involving silent verbal encoding....weak versions of the LRH also do not require language to be the sole or even the dominant influence on any aspect of nonverbal cognition.
heteronormativity". People don't write this way to "combat" hereronomativity, just as people aren't "combatting" sexism and racism when they manage (or make an effort) to avoid being sexist or racist. They are writing how they want to write, and yet you are advocating (insisting) they must write in a way that is unnatural and possibly even offensive to them, just because their source did. You make the same mistake about midwifery as you have about marriage below. It is most convenient that our accessible sources on the topic align with published views (but very much not practice) in the US and UK. This is happenstance of our culture and our language aligning with a huge body of sources. There's nothing fundamentally Wikipedian about that, and I'm sure many other Wikipedias have to cite sources that are not in their language and do not represent their cultural views. I think they would look at you oddly if you went all culturally imperialistic on them and suggested they have to accept Western cultural ideas and our English language terms if they use Western, English sources. And I don't think there is any doubt that the paper and its writers fall into the "gender critical" category, Crossroads. Perhaps you view that term as so derogatory that nobody would claim it for themselves, but in the UK it is very mainstream. -- Colin° Talk 08:36, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
valuesis definitely not activism. Hmm. Crossroads -talk- 04:11, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
majorityof sources write, in order not to represent the diversity of language on sex and gender actually used in recent, reliable sources on these topics - and that this would be preferable to using the language most relevant to medical communication in each case. Yup, I'd call that "conservative activism": when an editor creates a (largely imaginary) status quo and then conjures up (not previously existent) rules to back it up, that is effectively
being a "conservative activist"for the purposes of the discussions in question. Newimpartial ( talk) 12:55, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
heteronormativity". The idea here (I believe) is that the only reason someone might do that is because they are an activist seeking to right great wrongs, which immediately has Crossroads reaching for WP:UPPERCASE links that he thinks ban such behaviour. What I'm trying to say, with my Scottish accent analogy, is that just because people talk or write differently to oneself, doesn't mean they are doing it to make some point or correct something (like the "faulty" accent of others or "bad" writing in our sources). And if one always perceives they are doing that in order to be disruptive, then perhaps one is carrying around some unhelpful baggage and bad faith assumptions.
I get that you don't claim great familiarity with the topic, but the specific issue around "pregnant people" arises because trans men and nonbinary people (assigned female at birth) who are pregnant do not in general consider themselves "pregnant women", and therefore (i) are not, in at least one important sense of the word and (ii) are unlikely to be reached by health information targeted at "pregnant women".
On the other hand, most pregnant women do consider themselves people, so "pregnant people" is a more inclusive category (a category that does not include "expectant fathers" who may have contributed small gametes - just people who are physically pregnant).
Your assumption that people must carry the gender identity "woman" to become pregnant is one I have heard elsewhere, but it is empirically false and, as a framing assumption, is increasingly divergent from the reliable sources on pregnancy. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:00, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
assumption that people must carry the gender identity “woman” to become pregnant. I don’t know how you got that idea from my post. My assumption is only that, by definition, you have to be physically of the female sex in order to get pregnant.
If you are not including begetters when you talk about ‘pregnant people’, you should make this clear by calling the individuals in question ‘pregnant women’. That only makes sense if either (1) you assume that "women" refers to a sex, rather than a gender identity or (2) you assume that only (a subset of) those whose gender identity is "woman" become pregnant. I was AGF by assuming the latter interpretation, because other editors have previously pointed out (on this page, and in other discussions when you have participated) that the former is not a valid assumption.
pregnantdoes not refer to people who produce small gametes, I leave that as an exercise to the reader. I am of course aware of "pregnant couples", but have never encountered any ambiguity about when a member of a couple is actually pregnant and when another member of a couple is only "pregnant" by proxy - and the latter status isn't limited by gamete production, by the way, although the former status is. Similarly, I have never seen any ambiguity about "pregnant people" as a phrase - the partners of pregnant people seemingly don't apply to themselves the restrictions on health interventions for "pregnant people", for instance. Newimpartial ( talk) 22:42, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
I do not believe that the distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ is well established with the general public- I agree. This distinction is not front of mind for most people, most of the time,
In common usage, the word ‘women’ does refer to a sex- I disagree. Even in the UK where the issue is more actively contested than elsewhere, the number of people insisting that
womenrefers to a biological sex - rather than a gender - seems to be a relatively small minority without significant support e.g. in the political, legal, medical and cultural spheres. Newimpartial ( talk) 23:42, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
Other Guardian articles only use "pregnant women" and "mother"...So, even the left-leaning press routinely writes about this topic without any desexed language(links in the comment). As for what words mean in typical usage, I find that dictionaries are helpful in elucidating that. Lastly, the example of a Scottish accent leads me to a good comparison - accents are undetectable in writing after all, but English dialects do vary in their vocabulary and grammar. We have rules at WP:ENGVAR, and nearly any editor would rewrite text written in AAVE, using the word womxn, or mixing in Maori words as in New Zealand English. Some varieties of English are indeed too divergent or distracting, or are not widespread enough, to be endorsed for usage on English Wikipedia. Crossroads -talk- 05:22, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
Once again, I disagree, Colin. "Pregnant people" is indeed a standard usage in Canadian English, appearing everywhere from the Canadian Medical Association Journal to the CBC and broadsheet newspapers. I am not saying that it has surpassed "pregnant women" in ghits, or anything, but it is a common and uncontroversial phrase that predominates in certain contexts, e.g., Covid-19 vaccines and pregnancy. Newimpartial ( talk) 18:54, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
new expression(nor does it mean anything different now than it did in the 18th or 18th century). Newimpartial ( talk) 20:00, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
To answer Colin's question above, However, I'm curious what "values around gender" such a wording makes, and why you think WHO might not hold them.
, it doesn't surprise me in the least that the WHO wants transgender and nonbinary people to get better health care AND that the WHO regularly uses terms like "breastfeeding" and "mothers" by themselves. Using gender-exclusive language some of the time doesn't signify you're don't care about including all genders; it can signify that including all genders isn't the only thing that matters when it comes to choosing words.
As several of the style guidelines have pointed out, unfortunately choosing words is something of a zero-sum game. When you change wording in a way that makes some people feel more included, that wording change might also make the content less accessible to others, such as people who are reading the content in their second language. It's not fair to imply that the WHO believes that the needs of the people who benefit from gender-inclusive wording take priority over the needs of the people who lose something from it, when the wording of the guideline suggests otherwise.
And of course, when it comes to topics like these, our wording choices send signals to others about where we sit on the political spectrum. If a health organization writes guidelines about breastfeeding and deliberately avoids terms like "mother", I'm more likely to perceive them as being on the left than on the center or the right. The WHO might not want to be perceived that way. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 07:05, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
"Use women instead of mothers, patients, or clients wherever possible, including for women who are pregnant, postpartum, and/or breastfeeding.". Also a warning about study populations:
"Gender-neutral language should not be used for gender-specific study populations. For example, a study that only included women as participants should be described as such, rather than described as a study of people."
The first editorial above describes the arguments of "simplistically" two positions. One is that "a broader understanding of gender identity is becoming apparent"
and "midwives are currently providing a variety of types of care for individuals who do not identify as women"
. Opposing that is the fact that "the vast majority of individuals midwives care for consider themselves to be women"
. They recall "advocating for women to stop being referred to as patients because many women seeking health care are not ill"
and "efforts to make women, rather than their body parts or clinical conditions, the subject of sentences."
. In addition to the "rationales" the editor considers the "ramifications" of change. "moving to gender-neutral language will seem more inclusive to some individuals, it may make other individuals uncomfortable"
finding gender-neutral terms "awkward and even alienating"
. Our challenge, like theirs, is that all these arguments are true and can't simply be dismissed. Some of the problems with gender-neutral replacement explains why that author has moved towards using the term gender-inclusive to describe their approach.
The second editorial above states that "Language is powerful, and its influence on perceptions and behaviors can have negative or positive effects. Communicating without consciousness of inclusive language can marginalize and misrepresent individuals and communities, perpetuate stereotypes, and be offensive. Inclusive language conveys respect and promotes equity."
. They warn this "also needs to be respectful, accurate, unbiased, and consistent with the preferences of the individuals and communities who are being discussed"
. Practically, "It is not always a matter of simply replacing words with a more inclusive alternative. Careful attention must be paid to the context in which the word is being used to determine if an alternative is more appropriate. For example, when discussing a health topic for which it makes a difference whether someone has a vagina or penis, one cannot simply change every gendered word to a gender-inclusive alternative"
. They conclude "It is important to bring a sense of humility to the process of using inclusive language, setting aside ego, and welcoming correction and improvement."
. --
Colin°
Talk
11:26, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
"The WHO defines respectful maternity care (hereafter referred to as respectful perinatal care) as that which is “organized for and provided to all women in a manner that ..."which maintains WHO's language but explicitly points out their alternative.
"The WHO guidelines for COVID-19 clinical management state that all pregnant people, including those with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 infection, should have access to high-quality perinatal care that is respectful, person-centered, and skilled". Here the WHO source says
"Pregnant women with suspected, probable, or confirmed COVID-19, including women who may need to spend time in isolation, should have access to woman-centred, respectful skilled care". I wonder how we feel about changing "pregnant women" to "pregnant people" and "woman-centred" to "person-centered"? On Googling "woman centered care" I find this which a quick skim does not seem to me to indicate anything female/woman-specific or about the term, but instead is a rebranding of "patient-centred care" by midwifes towards their patients.
"This study highlights the need for further research in many areas related to health equity in maternal health. Further qualitative research is needed to understand what women need to feel they are respected and in control of their own health care needs, especially during the important life transition of pregnancy and childbirth."Could "maternal" or "women" be handled differently?
I should note that not all articles in this journal are written this way, and I only looked at a few recent free-access ones. For example this and this both use "women" countless times. -- Colin° Talk 17:19, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
Everything is advocacyis simply not supported by Wikipedia policy. If that were so, then we would delete the WP:NOTADVOCACY section of WP:NOT. I address this more under #WP:OR.
So, a few more 19th century uses. Here in the 21st century, until very recently, this term was non-existent. Then it appeared and increased somewhat. It's almost as if it would be new to most people hearing it nowadays. Crossroads -talk- 06:37, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
I have no idea why you are bringing up "gender-critical"; it has a totally different meaning and has nothing to do with this. The proper comparator here is the term it is meant to substitute for, which is "pregnant women".
Also, sometimes words are identical but have different meanings. For example, "right" can be the opposite of left or of wrong. Nowaday, the term "pregnant person" is meant as a form of "inclusion" of trans and non-binary people. That is behind the recent use of the term. That is not what it meant when Kant or a few 19th century writers used it - it seems to be a stylistic quirk. None of them would have said 'I am using this term because men and women can get pregnant'. Before the rise of the new term, the term for these contexts was "pregnant women". It still is, mostly, but that is the recent history that applies most directly. Crossroads -talk- 06:37, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
The
American Medical Association Manual of Style, 11th edition, from 2020 (so, very recent and well after transgender matters began receiving heavy attention in the early-to-mid-10s), discusses "Correct and Preferred Usage" for "Age and Sex Referents"
(11.7). It states, Adults are persons 18 years or older and should be referred to as men or women.
(It had also stated that children may also be referred to as boys or girls.
) It further states that Whenever possible, a patient should be referred to as a man, woman, boy, girl,
or infant.
It then says, Occasionally, however, a study group may comprise children and adults of both sexes. Then, the use of male and female as nouns is appropriate. Male and female are also appropriate adjectives.
I emphasize that this is under a heading about how to refer to the sexes. It clearly permits, and even seems to prefer in some cases, use of "men" and "women" to refer to the sexes. The idea that these terms should be avoided or include caveats about gender identity is entirely unsupported here.
There's also
11.12, "Inclusive Language", especially 11.12.1, "Sex/Gender". While that certainly sounds like the sort of place directives of the sort being entertained here would reside, nothing of the sort is there. For example, there is no directive to avoid use of "pregnant women" as a general term, none to add statements about transgender persons to such phrases, none to favor "females" over "women", and so on. It in fact says, Use man or men when referring to a specific man or group of men and woman or women when referring to a specific woman or a group of women.
This came after a list of terms to avoid, largely ones like "chairman" and "fireman". But this seems to be a very good principle and would seem to apply to describing the findings of studies or review articles on sex-specific matters. They, after all, usually use these terms to refer to the specific groups of people they studied. 11.12.2, "Personal Pronouns", says, Avoid sex-specific pronouns in cases in which sex specificity is irrelevant.
This of course implies that when sex-specificity is relevant, than "sex-specific" pronouns would normally be used. This is of course contrary to the occasional drive-by editor who rewords a sentence talking about pregnancy to use "they" instead of "she".
If the approach being taken is to look at what sources specifically about what language to use have to say, then surely the AMA MOS carries far more WP:WEIGHT than does individual papers in the literature, or even what a couple of individual journals (out of many others) have to say. It is their job to synthesize that literature, not ours. Crossroads -talk- 06:17, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
"Transgender means of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity differs from the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth. Cisgender means of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth. Avoid using any trans term as a noun; the adjectival form is preferred (not transman or transwoman but transgender man and transgender woman)"
"the AMA Manual of Style now permits the use of they as a singular pronoun when rewriting the sentence as plural would be awkward or unclear. In addition, this construction can be useful in medical articles in which patient identifiability is a concern (eg, removal of gender-specific pronouns)". The preface describes the changes in this addition (the previous was in 2007) and the acceptance of "singular they" is the only gender/sex issue they note. They don't however mention the use of "they" to refer to a non-binary person (btw, this usage was chosen by the American Dialect Society as their "Word of the Year" for 2015) as non-binary people are not mentioned in the AMA guide.
cases in which sex specificity is irrelevant.It also says
Do not use common-gender “pronouns” (eg, “s/he,” “shem,” “shim”).That is when one would reword the sentence that way. Sex-specific topics are not included in this.
specify sex when it is relevant. Sex-specific anatomy and physiology, or sex differences in other aspects, are obviously cases when it is relevant. There is no basis here for sex-neutral terms on those matters.
Specify sex when it is relevant, it says. "Pregnant people" is not specifying sex, even though only one sex gets pregnant. Crossroads -talk- 16:22, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
specify sex when it is relevantas meaning
specify sex only when it is relevant. Do you understand it as meaning something closer to
always specify sex unless it is completely irrelevant?
Are there any examples of Wikipedia articles on health and medicine that include trans or non-binary people, apart from those directly concerning trans and gender issues. For example, the NHS includes these groups when talking about susceptible populations or those entitled to screening for some cancers. I haven't been able to find any. -- Colin° Talk 20:54, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
To achieve the goal of acknowledging that not everyone is cisgender, I think having a section on LBGTQ+ issues is often going to be a better solution than using gender-inclusive language throughout the article (a section like this could also achieve the goal of including the LGBQ people, who are more numerous than the Ts). In a section, we can explicitly describe how the needs of this community differ from the general population. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 15:52, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
We seem to be finding two different kinds of style guides (or other types of advice for writing about specialized subjects). They are:
In related areas such as suicide and gay BLPs, editors generally seem to prefer subject-specific advice (e.g., GLAAD's media reference guide). Generalist advice tends to provide less detail (so it may not answer the specific question that editors have). The trend is for generalist advice to follow reputable specialist advice, perhaps with a delay of a couple of years, so the difference in the end is not very stark.
In this subject area, I wonder whether we might have more than one type of specialist to consider: the "medical" specialist and the "people" specialist. Imagine that you are writing about pregnancy, and you have style advice from a midwives' group, a LGBT group, and a women's group. Would you prefer one type over the other? Take the best two out of three, for any point on which the three disagree? Something else? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 03:22, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
In the discussion above about ABM guidelines, some examples were considered that might fail WP:OR. It seems to me this issue could be considered separately from whether one thinks that rewording the language to be gender-neutral or adding groups to be gender-inclusive was or was not a good idea or appropriate on Wikipedia. Are we able to consider this on its own? If it is too hard to separate the feelings about it being inappropriate or essential or whatever, then is it possible to find analogous language changes that could be considered more neutrally?
An example given was "Mothers and trans fathers can experience postpartum depression in the weeks or months after giving birth"
sourced to an article that only mentioned "mothers" or "women". At what point is it safe to assume "trans fathers" experience will largely mirror those of women? Some may be entirely biologically identical to "women", some may have taken or continue to take hormones, some may have had top-surgery, some may have had other surgeries? We know frcom the guidelines above that we should be careful with study findings and statistics as 80% of women might not be 80% of trans men. But I wonder if there are issues where
The sentence only indicates a possibility, not an inevitability or a percentage chance. It would seem to me rather extraordinary that a person assigned female at birth could invoke complete immunity from postpartum depression by identifying as a man, or by growing a beard. But I can quite believe the occurrence could be affected by hormones taken or by other challenges they face.
The above sentence could be written "Postpartum depression may occur in the weeks or months after a person has given birth"
. Again, leaving aside whether gender-neutral language is a desirable thing, are there policy problems with that? The "may occur" logically implies it may not occur in some people.
What about the opposite? I know that journal articles writing "pregnant people" are a minority but lets imagine there's a new drug that treats postpartum depression and we have just one good literature review of its efficacy. And that review in the JMWH happens to say "Pregnant people who take Wonderpam are less likely to develop postpartum depression". Would it be OR to rewrite that as "Mothers who take Wonderpam..."? Would that fail in some other way?
Would we cry "OR" if someone replaced "mankind" with "humanity"? The author might have only been thinking about great men of history? How do we know they were considering women at all? Or if a source used "he" when referring to the steps a doctor might take when diagnosing something? Would we insist the article said "Male doctors must first take a history" unless a different non-sexist source was found? In the same way that we may overlook their use of a gendered pronoun rather than singlar-they, would it be non-OR to ever overlook the choice of a gendered word when referring to "people who gave birth"? -- Colin° Talk 15:07, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
"Mothers and trans fathers can experience postpartum depression in the weeks or months after giving birth"is one we can all be confident is true, because postpartum depression is known to also affect cis men and because "can experience" is a low bar. The question is whether this is the kind of statement that falls into the category of "true but original research". To see the OR in this statement, it might be helpful to see it reformulated as "Giving birth carries a risk of postpartum depression for mothers and trans fathers". This is the same type of statement as "Breastfeeding decreases the risk of breast cancer for mothers and trans fathers." How do we distinguish that the former statement is true but the latter statement may not be true, when in both cases the sources say "mothers"? We know it by bringing in our medical knowledge that's not in the source - that's OR.
, a conflation of the terms ‘‘mothers’’ and ‘‘lactating parents’’ will mask the need for future and specific research by assuming that scientific knowledge about the former applies uniformly to the latter" [11] (P.S. I'm hoping to reply to other points in this discussion in the next week; things are busy for me right now due to COVID-induced school closures.) Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 15:36, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
To demonstrate that you are not adding original research, you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented."You", the person adding it, per WP:BURDEN. If someone makes an edit adding a bunch of claims about trans fathers to an article - either explicitly or by changing "women" to "people" - and adds no sources, they will be reverted. The BURDEN is on them. I thus challenge it as seeming to be OR. Do you deny that editors routinely revert material per NOR? Your position seems to be that we can never point to NOR to remove text unless we ourselves first somehow prove no sources exist. Per my quote from NOR and BURDEN, that is not the case. Crossroads -talk- 06:44, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
This is why any advice to expand terminology beyond that used in the given sources is inappropriate, and WhatamIdoing claiming that this
is not evidence of OR. Is anyone denying that it would be contrary to existing policy and MEDRS to add advice to MEDMOS advising people to add ideas/claims to articles without also saying that they should cite sources for those ideas/claims? Crossroads -talk- 04:39, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
Should MEDMOS encourage people to add unsourced ideas? Hmm, no.Okay, glad we agree. Now: Do you agree that an endorsement or encouragement in MEDMOS to replace "pregnant women" with "pregnant people" constitutes encouragement to add unsourced ideas? The latter term, after all, includes pregnant non-women. Crossroads -talk- 05:31, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
"Rewriting source material in your own words while retaining the substance is not considered original research". Determining whether a reword "retains the substance" is an editorial judgement, not an algorithm. Editors always face the problem of working out whether putting something into your own words is equivalent enough. We do that when we use lay terms that might not 100% correspond with the technical term. We do that when a source says "patients" and we want to write "people". Those are not always equivalent. Right at the top of this section, I offered a/b/c scenarios for when rewording can be safe or might never be safe. WAID's example is definitely an (a) and an editor might face some kind of tendentious block for persistently arguing otherwise. Just as we don't require sources for things it would be ridiculous to challenge, we wouldn't require editors to find sources to say pregnant trans men were at the same risk in a theme park ride. Wrt how often this might affect medical article... Crossroads, I mentioned elsewhere that some statements we make include the word "women" but aren't actually asserting anything about the person at all, never mind asserting something about their sex or gender. A baby would be pre-term regardless of the mother's gender identity. The embryo's development from fallopian tubes through to passing through a cervix of x centimetres dilation is the same regardless of whether the mother is called John or June. -- Colin° Talk 10:14, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
I wonder if "mother or trans father" could sometimes be an acceptable expansion of "mother", 2) I asked for an example of when a Wikipedia editor might write "mothers and trans fathers" when the source says only "mothers", 3) You replied with this example, and 4) I said,
IMHO that sentence would pass WP:NOR only if there is a source saying that it is true for trans fathers.
Most...trans fathers feel guilty for passing Haemophilia A to their sons? It sounds like you are okay with adding synthesized claims to Wikipedia. However, it does not matter how certain you or I are that the sources apply to trans fathers too, since anyone who adds unsourced material is certain that their conclusions follow from sourced facts. NOR is clear, though, that sources must directly support the claims being made. Crossroads -talk- 05:38, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
feminine person engaged in parental care
- so a butch mother is not a woman? Women are defined by being "feminine"? That is not what "mother" means in the dictionary or in common use. Are we going to add weird caveats to every term that some small minority (transgender, ethnic, religious, political, etc.) defines in an unusual way?
This seems to be a rather WP:BATTLEGROUND scenario. Inserting claims about what trans fathers feel when passing on something, claims that do not exist in any source, is bad because it is OR, plain and simple. Removing OR is not wikilawyering, even if it purports to benefit some minority group.
We don't need to worry about what readers will think when reading "mothers feel guilty" if that is all the source says. It is not our job or place to write what we imagine they must have meant.
Nobody said you can't cite sources about trans people. If none of the sources cover trans people, but one of them says "pregnant people" anyway because of sloppy "inclusive" writing, we should not follow that one source over the rest. That is my point. Sources about trans people can be covered according to existing MEDRS guidelines; but that does not justify UNDUE caveats or erasure of normal language sloppily scattered all over an article. Crossroads -talk- 04:27, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Re WhatamIdoing - Ah, I had gotten a sense that the rationale for adding "and trans fathers" was ethical; e.g., to make trans readers feel more seen and included. Now that I understand the rationale is more about factual clarity, I'll address that rationale.
Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 06:33, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
it sounds like your general view is that we should first find sources that use a particular language, and then we should stick to the language style that we artificially selected for, no, that is the opposite of what I am saying, and I don't know how you drew that conclusion. It is people saying that we should say "pregnant people" and "uterus havers" that are doing that. As I said above, we should use the language that is most common in the MEDRS on the topic.
pregnant peopleexample, I don't think the point is so minor. If the source was from a study that included pregnant non-women in the research design, or that was explicitly offering treatment modalities for non-women as well as women, then it would be misleading to cite that article in a way that (through omission or substitution) pretended that it was referring to "women". Newimpartial ( talk) 20:03, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
So on topics like Canadian public health guidance about pregnancy and covid-19 vaccination, "pregnant people" would be the correct term. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:43, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
Let's say the text in question were about that - what the Canadian public health people say about COVID and vaccination. In that case, then sure, we can use "pregnant [individuals]" if that is the term they are using.I emphasize, however, that it really would require most sources doing that, and that this in no way implies that we should permit editors to do this when most of the underlying sources on a particular matter do not - as is the case the vast majority of the time. Crossroads -talk- 22:00, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
clear majoritythreshold doesn't exist in policy and simply reflects your personal opinion. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:41, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
The article notes that the push to [give gay marriage equivalence to traditional marriage] comes from organizations based in the USA and the Western world. It could thus be considered culturally imperialistic. And Wikipedia is supposed to be an international, culturally neutral encyclopedia.Crossroads, if Wikipedia was globally neutral on this matter, gay marriage would be relegated to a section at the end of the body, much like is being proposed for trans pregnancy. After all, why should we offend the vast majority of our global readers just to appease some western liberal activists? (Just in case anyone is confused: this is very much not my POV, I'm just being devils's advocate). -- Colin° Talk 08:21, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
LMAO, Crossroads. When it suited you the made-up standard you invoked was the language used in "the majority of the sources". Presented with an example where the majority may not say the thing you want them to say, you now compare apples to grapes and say, essentially, "it is DUE to use X language because the proportion of X in its universe of discourse is higher than the proportion of Y in its domain". Bollocks. I call moving goalposts. The fact is, you earnestly make up wherever "standard" seems plausible to you to win an argument within a specific terrain, and the fact that these "standards" blatantly conflict with each other when you move from one topic to another is a problem for other people. To paraphrase Emerson, consistency is a bugaboo for small minds, amirite?
Newimpartial (
talk) 12:44, 30 March 2022 (UTC) explanation added by
Newimpartial (
talk)
16:27, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
It is just an invented rationale that happens to align with Crossroads POV on the subject of gendered language. For example, I doubt very very much if more than a tiny minority of all the reliable sources on marriage consider even the remotest possibility that two gay men might marry each other. Now Colin may be wrong about the substance of his example, given that we are only to consider recent reliable sources and also considering that, as a wealthy and litigious society, 'Murica has probably produced a disproportionate literature on marriage in the last 10 years or so.
Hi everyone. Due to time constraints I’m unlikely to be able to contribute much further on the social aspects of this issue, but I’d like to say some things on the scientific aspects. I’m grateful to everyone here for the thoughtfulness you’re continuing to bring to this discussion.
W.r.t. WP:Original Research, I think it will be useful to look at more examples. The examples we’ve looked at so far (the possibility of guilt over genetic diseases and the recommendation that pregnant people not ride roller coasters) have two important things in common. One thing that they have in common is that the mechanism of the biomedical phenomenon is understood and straightforward, i.e. X-linked disease and mechanical injury to the placenta. Another thing they have in common is that we say these issues apply to trans men, we are acting in line with the precautionary principle – even if get it wrong, it’s not going to hurt anyone.
In the range of biomedical statements that we make about women and girls, there are many types of statements for which adding “and trans men” or “and people of other genders who were assigned female at birth” would be neither supportable by available evidence, nor harmless. Consider statements such as:
The mechanisms behind observed biomedical differences between sexes/genders are not always well-understood. In the cases when we do have an inkling of the mechanisms, a wide variety of explanations of sex/gender differences exist, including body fat composition, body size, various hormones, predisposing conditions such as gestational diabetes, and social and cultural factors. Any of these mechanisms could make a statement that is true for “women” not true for “trans men”.
The evidence that supports the above statements is not simple genetics, simple anatomy, or WP:NONAZIS. These statements are empirical observations, and that the evidence that supports these statements is statistics. It’s a common statistical fallacy to assume that something that is true for a population is also true for all subgroups in the population. If our guidelines give editors too much license to add genders and not enough caution about OR, I think we’re going to see a lot of this fallacy. Some cases of the fallacy will be true (because often what's true for a population is also true for a given subgroup), but all cases of the fallacy will be OR. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 05:46, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
messin such studies. But in cases where, e.g., only cisgender responses are actually included in a study population, then we would be required to follow the study's authors either in restricting their findings to the actual population studied *or* in extending their findings to a larger population through inference (if they had explicitly done so). We could also extend the findings of a primary study *if* a secondary/review article had explicitly done so with reference to that same study. What we could not do, as WP editors, is sort out that
messourselves. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:04, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
I have a feeling my main points are not getting across. I don't know how to fix that in one elegant post, so let me try responding to some parts of the above comments bit by bit.
Typically developing 46,XX humans have a higher risk of breast cancer than typically developing 46,XY humans, it isn't simply a matter of free choice whether to use "man/woman", "male/female" or other, more precise terms for these populations.
is the dominant wording in such sources. Especially when looking at the underlying published reviews or studies. But even if it was, it would not at all prove that those terms have the same substance or that "pregnant people" should be used in any other context. Crossroads -talk- 21:51, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
I don't know whether you remember, Crossroads, but you were previously publicly supportive of paraphrases by a subsequently topic-banned editor who was altering the language and conclusions of sources in exactly the way you are now saying is not ok. Does that mean you no longer support "standardizing" language to what you think the majority of sources use, in cases where the particular sources used are making specific statements using more precise language that is incompatible with your (or the banned editor)'s perception of the "standard"/majority? Are you on some kind of redemption arc, or something? Newimpartial ( talk) 04:57, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
unsourced. You can start flogging yourself now.
pregnant peopleand
pregnant womenactually reflect a difference in
substance. So far, this falls in the (very large) category of "things you assert and then never support with evidence in any way".. Newimpartial ( talk) 05:49, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
There does seem to be an observation that the more precise our claim is, the less leeway we have to reword the definition of groups studied, unfortunately I can think of lots of highly imprecise claims in category B, and any number of highly precise claims in category A. Consider, for example, the statements "Breastfeeding reduces the risk of postpartum depression for the mother" and "Immune factors and immune-modulating components in breast milk include cytokines, growth factors, proteins, microbes, and human milk oligosaccharides". The former statement is less precise and in category B, and the latter statement is more precise but is in category A. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 05:58, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
Comment Re:Should we maintain the sex–gender distinction?
: I think what this question is actually asking is, "should we impose specific terminology reflecting the sex and gender distinction" and I think the answer to that is pretty clearly "no". The term "women", for example, is usually a term for gender but sometimes a term for sex (or that doesn't distinguish the two). The term "female", in the context of humans, refers to gender less often than "women" does but cannot be presumed to refer to "biological sex" - this depends on (explicit and implicit) context. And the attempt to distinguish ==Signs and symptoms== as biology from ==Society and culture== as gender is simply not (yet?) supported by the reliable sources on these topics, who typically don't establish a clear distinction and can't be a priorized into doing so (as anyone familiar, e.g., with the literature on sex- and gender-based violence can attest).
It would be running ahead of the disciplinary literature, and misleading to readers, to insist as a matter of WP (medical?) style on "female" (especially on "females") for biology and "women" for gender - a great deal of WP:OR would be required, and we we would be imposing a specious distinction on language that, in reality, is much more fluid and nuanced. So I'm not saying we need to follow the terms used in the article cited in a particular sentence and change sentence for sentence (what if our sentence references sources that use differing terminology for what is demonstrably the same concept?), but at the same time this is not a problem that can be solved "globally", by fiat, but only "locally" for particular topics.
For example, the "pregnant women"/"pregnant people" issue is much more one of public health communication than of medical taxonomy: the two terms do not actually refer to distinct referents except in extreme edge cases (like a study that actually compares pregnant women to pregnant trans and nonbinary people). But in other instances (like sex- and gender-based violence), there isn't any simple distinction (or simple equivalency) that can be justified within the literature as a whole. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:43, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
...difference between gender and sex is a cultural idea, and some readers will find that strange. The idea that gender identity (vs, e.g., gender role) is the definitive understanding of gender for any person is also a cultural idea, and some readers will find that strange. But this is the culture that Western medical sources representRight, I think this is a very important point to make. Wikipedia respects the differences among various cultures, but it ultimately relies upon the scholarly establishment to set standards for what it says and how it says it. Especially in controversial areas like this! And the established organizations (AMA, CDC, WPATH) agree that gender identity and sex are distinct but related concepts is pretty well-established in the AMA style guide, CDC literature, etc. I don't think it qualifies as WP:OR to rely on professional organizations to tell us how to use the terms provided in the medical literature. Especially when there is such a heavy diversity of terminology in that literature. We are in a weird period of time, when multiple generations of researchers are reading, writing, editing, and reviewing these studies. As such, we often encounter scenarios when there are conflicting terms used within a single study, let alone between multiple ones and reviews thereof. I think it is entirely acceptable (and within the bounds of the WP:PAGs) for the project to adhere to one particular style even when the sources do not. As long as we can determine, with confidence, that we are not misinterpreting the results based on those terms. (E.g. using a study of all biological at-birth females and calling them "cis and trans women." — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 16:37, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
got in troublefor their behaviour post filing. Sideswipe9th ( talk) 04:03, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
Perhaps it would help if we removed the whole gender identity issue from the OR discussion, because this is very ordinary editing practice supported by the bit of OR quoted above: Rewriting source material in your own words while retaining the substance is not considered original research
Let's consider another example. Our
source says "one fifth of patients who present to specialist [epilepsy] clinics with seizures do not have epilepsy"
They either have seizures due to a psychological disorder or sometimes the heart or fainting is the cause - these are classified as Non Epileptic Seizures or NES.
Around 1 in 5 people (20%) diagnosed with epilepsy who are then assessed at specialist epilepsy centres are found to have NES."This is how Epilepsy Society word it. I think this rewording "retains the substance" and replacing "patient" with "people" here seems very similar to the replacement of "pregnant women" with "pregnant people". The Epilepsy society is writing for a lay audience so "people" reflects that point-of-view, whereas the BMJ is writing to doctors so "patient" reflects their point-of-view. Wikipedia is for a lay audience, and this is quite a typical way in which we do not write like our sources do. This is category A.
"A fifth of people diagnosed with epilepsy do not in fact have epileptic seizures."We've expanded the scope to all "people diagnosed with epilepsy" (most do not get referred to specialist centres) and this is incorrect. Those going to specialist epilepsy centres often have intractable epilepsy and a significant reason for that is that the seizures aren't epileptic in nature so don't respond to those drugs. This is category B. While it is possible that the rates of NES among specialist clinic patients are no different to the general epilepsy population, it seems highly unlikely. In fact the figure is more like 5% for the epilepsy population as a whole, though studies vary and the BMJ article does on to say "It has been widely supposed that this high prevalence reflects referral bias but a recent community based study found a similar proportion among patients with recent onset seizures". Again "recent onset" isn't the same as the whole epilepsy population.
"Some people diagnosed with epilepsy do not in fact have epileptic seizures."We've expanded the scope like above, but we've weakened the claim by making it much less precise. I think this is fine. We're just making a "there exists" claim, and the subset of those going to a specialist centre still fits within that claim for the larger group. I think this demonstrates that it is sometimes ok to alter the scope of the group being discussed as long as the claim is weak enough. This is category A.
"A minority of people diagnosed with epilepsy do not in fact have epileptic seizures."This is a bit stronger than above but still a lot weaker than "a fifth". The question then is whether expanding the scope might increase the number with NES or decrease it, and by how much. I think this is a judgement call. It would take a lot for 20% to go above 49% and the claim to be false. Whereas if the original number was 45% then it wouldn't take much for it to become wrong. A little bit of knowledge about epilepsy would make one pretty confident that in fact the percentage can only fall and so the rewording is safe, but whether we regard that "little bit of knowledge about epilepsy" as acceptable for Wikipedians is not certain. If the topic were cars or football then I suspect we'd accept that editors likely did know enough about the topic to be safe using their topic knowledge. What do you think? Is this a safe claim? I think this could be category C but perhaps in another subject domain could be A.
"A lot of people diagnosed with intractable epilepsy turn out to not have epilepsy at all."While this is correct, our source (from what is quoted at least) doesn't let us make "diagnosed with intractable epilepsy" equivalent enough to "patients who present to specialist clinics". So even though the claim is weak ("a lot of people"), it would be reasonable to challenge this claim per OR. (As WAID would no doubt point out, it doesn't fail OR because there are sources that would back up this claim; we just haven't quoted them [yet] -- if you read the body of the BMJ article, it rewords this sentence, "one in five patients with apparently intractable epilepsy referred to specialist centres"). This is category C (based on the source abstract). -- Colin° Talk 10:48, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
substancebetween "pregnant women" and "pregnant people"? In what kind of study or other publication do they refer to different populations? Do such studies exist? Newimpartial ( talk) 05:42, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
It is recommended for mothers to initiate breastfeeding within the first hour after birth... Breastfeeding appears to protect against breast cancer.
If you make certain statements gender-inclusive you can give the impression that the non-gendered statements appear to apply to all genders. For instance, if you change things to It is recommended for parents to initiate breastfeeding within the first hour after birth... Breastfeeding appears to protect against breast cancer.
The person who changes "mothers" to "parents" in the first sentence may not have even given a second of thought about the second sentence, but it's the watchers of the article who have to evaluate whether the second sentence is now OR. Lucky us!Like anyone would think the dad is protected because his wife breastfeeds?, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if we use trans-inclusive language early in an article, the reader will think that that all subsequent sentences are also trans-inclusive.
Breastfeeding has many benefits for the mother. These benefits include protection against breast cancer.
Say I change this to Breastfeeding has many benefits for the breastfeeding or chestfeeding parent. These benefits include protection against breast cancer.
By changing the first sentence, I have changed the scope of the second sentence.I have a hard time imagining the experienced editors at MOS agreeing to not do something because they aren't bright enough to do it well., that's why Wikipedia:No original research has served the community so well for the past 20+ years. I believe "Pregnant people shouldn't ride roller coasters" is original research done well, but it's still original research.
I don't know that anyone is saying that, Clayquot, but this example does bear on the concept of WP:OR. I'm not saying you are doing this, but some editors certainly do extend the concept of OR to mean "assertions that cannot be supported by reliable sources". That isn't actually what OR strictly refers to, in the WP policy framework - if someone somewhere has asserted a thing, even on an amusement park sign, that means it isn't WP:OR. It may not be MEDRS supported, but it most certainly isn't OR on the part of an editor. I have had tedious prior discussions with editors who have made this mistake about what OR is, so I feel it keenly (which, again, doesn't mean I am attributing this mistake to you). Newimpartial ( talk) 16:53, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
ORas a label in Talk page discussions where it does not strictly apply (through other would apply if the same claim were proposes in Article space). I myself tend not to so this, mostly because editors offering unsourced claims are, in my experience, typically repeating something the saw on an amusement park sign, on YouTube or on a self-published web source. In such instances, neither "original" nor "research" typically applies, so OR just seems malaprop. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:24, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
"A and B, therefore, C" is acceptable only if a reliable source has published the same argument concerning the topic of the article.And it uses "reliable" many times thereafter.
"A and B, therefore, C" is acceptable only if a reliable source has published the same argument concerning the topic of the article.(emphasis mine) Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 04:24, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any source- is more restrictive ("any source"). Since the place I most often see SYNTH arguments is as a rhetorical objection to Talk comments - rather than its intended function in relation to article text - I would rather see the use of this generally unhelpful rhetoric restricted as much as possible. Newimpartial ( talk) 12:13, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Clayoquot, perhaps you and WAID don't agree on the roller coaster example, but I think we have found examples where there really was no original research. Statements like:
Both avoid saying women/mothers and also avoid explicitly claiming they apply to trans men or "all people who breastfeed". That last claim is relatively weak since we aren't saying it offers 100% protection nor claiming it has a 50% risk reduction or whatever. There will be breastfeeding cis mothers who get breast cancer after breastfeeding. Not all claims are specified to the n'th degree and not all scope is specified precisely or even at all. I noticed that the non-talk page now says (wrt possible advice): "Redefining the scope of a claim beyond what is directly supported by the sources is a form of original research". I think the above examples about epilepsy shows that isn't true if one takes the "directly supported = uses exactly the same words" view. One can expand or redefine the scope, but only when the claim is weak enough that it still applies. I don't think it is helpful to have rationale for a rule that isn't in fact true. Better perhaps to say "Redefining the scope when substituting words can lead to claims that are not supported by the source (original research)". Or something like that. And I think some of these examples of rewriting causing problems could be much better done if removed from any culture war issue, just as I've seen some discussions about MEDRS are utterly ruined by people's political views on Covid origins etc. It is really hard to dispassionately consider "is this OR" when one really really would like for it to be OR so one can ban it.
Btw, if you think about the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine's comment about research not supporting a claim for a wider population, our sources do that all the time when they study young white men and pronounce the effect applies to all the world's population. Or think of all the drugs we describe but neglect to point out nearly all are only studied on and licenced for adults. Of course, we can say our sources authors are allowed to engage in original research. Still doesn't make it right. I think this alteration of population scope is really common, and yet here we are worrying specifically about whether trans men might vary from cis women, and not about whether elderly black women or overweight Asian children vary from young white American men with no underlying health conditions. -- Colin° Talk 17:12, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
everydayphrase? (We both already know "everyday" is not literally every single day.) Crossroads -talk- 05:35, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
sociallyis concerned, of course it applies in general. However, where I live geographically, there wouldn't be especially relevant social limits to where "pregnant people" is used - I took that to be part of what is meant by "everyday language". Newimpartial ( talk) 13:25, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
;-)
Here are two edits that I've made.
This one conforms strictly to the exact wording used in the cited sources, and was reverted.
This one, which I linked earlier today, uses a word that is not in the cited source, and was not reverted. Neither of these examples have anything to do with gender.Re WhatamIdoing's question above,
In terms of point #3, I wonder whether you disagree with the example given in that point. Do you actually believe that NOR requires you to include the exact word mothers?
. There are many issues with point #3 in
its current form, among them the fact that it talks about "mothers who are pregnant" which is really weird because the phrase wouldn't include anyone who is pregnant for the first time. If I try to answer your question about NOR while referring to point #3 I think I will confuse everyone including myself, so I will just try to answer the question as clearly as I can.
Say we have a topic such as Low milk supply, which I wrote. For this topic, the population the sources discuss is birth mothers who are trying to nurse their own babies. (That was the case when I wrote it. Let's assume for the sake of discussion that it's still the case; if people are incapable of assuming this for the sake of discussion I am honestly going to have to quit.)
When I am writing about this topic and paraphrasing from a source that uses the word "mothers", I do not necessarily use the word "mothers". NOR does not require me to use the term "mothers". I might use terms such as "maternal" or "women who have just given birth" or just "women". I might, and did, also use lots of sentences that do not indicate a gender, such as "Low milk supply is usually caused by allowing milk to remain in the breasts for long periods of time, or insufficiently draining the breasts during feeds." This sentence doesn't use gendered terms, but it is not OR because the context the sentence is in clearly identifies the population it applies to, and that population matches the population described in the sources.
I am not against all use of gender-neutral sentences. I am distinguishing between two ways that gender-neutral sentences are used: One way to use a gender-neutral sentence is in a context that makes it clear what gender the sentence is about, or at least doesn't challenge the reader's correct assumption about what gender is being referred to. The other way to use a gender-neutral sentence is to signal to the reader that the claim applies to any gender. The former is not an OR concern. The latter may be OR depending on what the sources say.
Both of us understand that NOR is about retaining the substantial meaning of the sources, not the exact words. We might disagree about when gender is substantive to the meaning of the sources. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 05:14, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
The latter may be OR depending on what the sources say" I don't think following WP:NOR means being forced to apply or imply gender with certain sentences. Nothing about that policy disallows being more vague. The issue is when context changes the meaning, such as a previous sentence which was about trans men and then using a source that is about biological men in a following sentence which is vague. That's a problem of NOR that has always applied, in any context, and I think is not a particular concern here. It's just bad wiki-writing, not a gender issue. — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 16:43, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
I'm creating this section and moving some comments here from the above section as
WP:OR and
WP:DUE are different policies. The comments below are in reply to What if a review said "Prostate problems are common in men and trans women who are over 50" and we reproduced that in an article, but the review's research study source was just a study of men. We have the same problem that the reader may think the issue has been studied in trans women, but actually hasn't (let's pretend it hasn't, as I fear WAID's SuperGoogle abilities will find just such a study). Are we ok with that? Could it be legitimately challenged?
from Colin.
Clayoquot (
talk |
contribs)
15:47, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Setting aside that it is still extremely rare for reviews to write that way, if one review does write that way, but most other reviews stick with "women", and they all are of basically the same scope (i.e. the one with "people" language never investigated trans people), then we should say "women" per WP:DUE. The one that said otherwise was an outlier and seemingly used the term carelessly because their review never actually examined non-women. Crossroads -talk- 04:46, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject.Non-women can breastfeed, but the fact that non-women can breastfeed is a very minor aspect of the subject of breastfeeding.
Language changes whether I or you think those changes are reasonable or sensible or strange or stupid.Do you think this change has already occurred? How would one reconcile this with the fact that "pregnant women" is still vastly more common in sources? Do you agree that Wikipedia's language should not change unless that of the sources (representing the language in general) has also changed? Crossroads -talk- 06:16, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
pregnancy and the like are inherently female, and hence connected to womanhood- quite a few trans men and nonbinary parents would disagree with you quite emphatically about your
inherently, there. (2) You also them made a clearly false claim:
even though such groups have always been socially visible, nobody ever thought that for them we should write as though womanhood is incidental to the ability to get pregnant. That can't possibly be true, as generations of feminists have precisely argued that womanhood ought to become incidental to the ability to get pregnant, and therefore that we should write that way, prefiguratively. Newimpartial ( talk) 00:00, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
I don't think the way we write about occupations is a fair comparison to the issues we're struggling with on this page. It's a well-established, uncontroversial convention in English to write about occupations in a gender-neutral way, both for female-dominated and for male-dominated occupations. There's a very simple explanation for this: For just about every occupation, English has a term for the person who does that occupation, and those terms are simple to use and understand. A person who does midwifery is a midwife, a person who does auto repair is an auto mechanic - totally uncontroversial. A person who can get pregnant is a... what? In a general-audience reference work, I would generally say "woman". What do you think we should call that person? Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 05:29, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Another comment on due weight: Using gender-additive language throughout an article is not the only way to give a lot of weight to the "Men can do this too!" aspect of a topic. Actually the most common way is adding gender-additive language to the very beginning of the lead, e.g. [13] and [14]. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 05:44, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
If we claim DUE prevents the use of gender neutral language wrt pregnant people/women then it prevents it also for midwives- that's a logical statement, but I am not claiming that DUE prevents the use of gender-neutral language. I am claiming that DUE prevents using language in a way that directs the user's attention inappropriately. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 17:32, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
From the European Association of Science Editors: "The SAGER Guidelines are a comprehensive procedure for reporting of sex and gender information in study design, data analysis, results and interpretations of findings."
Highlights:
My takeaways from this are:
Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 01:26, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
"Weaving together reclaimed traditions with personal accounts from menstruators around the world, Diamant shows just how much our stories matter."If you read the actual book, the book's author describes setting up "The Pad Project",
'grounded in the conviction that "a period should end a sentence, not a girl's education," our mission is "to create and cultivate local and global partnerships to end period stigma and to empower menstruators worldwide."'So the review writer is actually using the language of the book they are reviewing.
'according to its director, Florence Schechter. “One of the questions that we always get at the Vagina Museum is ‘what did people do in the past with their periods?'”, she told me.'This is a direct quote.
"Participants were given bunches of flowers to handle when on their period and Schick reported they wilted and died within 24 h.Here we have gender-neutral "participants" and I suspect we'd find such language in any modern study too. The vital attribute is they are talking about study-participants, rather than needing to remind anyone of their sex or gender.
"Historically, the anatomy and physiology of bodies with vaginas have been neglected...This exhibition and the Vagina Museum as a whole aim to redress this lack of attention. I'll come back to that.
"objects are also displayed that help create a rich experience and reveal how people who menstruate have dealt with their periods at different times"
"This exhibition is particularly special in its focus on gendered histories, the medical visibility of women's bodies, and the cultural movement against menstrual shame and period poverty."which uses "women".
“Bodies with vaginas” is an odd way to refer to half the human race. Yet it was the quote that the Lancet, a medical journal, chose to feature on the cover of its latest issue, telling readers that “historically, the anatomy and physiology” of such bodies had been neglected. After complaints about dehumanising language, the Lancet apologised....One reason is that many of the new terms come across as dehumanising. As the Lancet discovered, many people—trans men as much as anyone else—dislike being described as collections of ambulatory body-parts and secretions. More than a whiff of misogyny is in the air.
The Lancet medical journal has been accused of sexism after describing women as “bodies with vaginas” on the cover of its latest edition. A Tweet sharing the front page has provoked a wave of criticism, with academics cancelling their subscriptions and resigning as reviewers, doctors blasting the phrase as “dehumanising” and activists suggesting the term is “unhelpful” for broader debates about inclusivity....While the language is an attempt at inclusivity, it has prompted a furious backlash - with some academics suggesting they will never work with the journal again. “Just wrote the Lancet to tell them to take me off their list of statistical reviewers and cancel my subscription and never contact me about anything ever again,” Prof David Curtis, a retired psychiatrist and honorary professor of genetics at University College London, wrote on Twitter. “Absolutely inexcusable language to refer to women and girls,” he said. Dr Madeleine Ní Dhálaigh, a GP, added: “You can be inclusive without being insulting and abusive. How dare you dehumanise us with a statement like this?” Others suggested the journal has double standards, flagging a post on September 20 which referred to the 10 million "men" living with prostate cancer and suggesting they have never seen the term “bodies with penises” used. “Considering, as the replies highlight, that The Lancet has recently published work on prostates and refer to men, I don’t think the decision to use 'bodies with vaginas' is an attempt at inclusive language,” said Dr Katie Paddock, a lecturer in education psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University, on Twitter....The campaign group Women Make Glasgow added that is has logged a formal complaint “about the dehumanising and straight up sexist cover story”, while feminist Claire Heuchan called that the term is “utterly shameful and totally regressive”. “This framing makes it sound like a coincidence that 'bodies with vaginas' have been neglected by medicine, as if it were not the product of a discrimination and oppression specific to the female sex,” she said on Twitter. “Medical misogyny... exists - and refusing to acknowledge women perpetuates it. Until [the Lancet starts] writing about 'bodies with penises', dehumanising and neglecting research specific to men, I’m going to call this erasure out for what it is: sexism.” There are also concerns that the language will undermine, rather than champion, inclusivity amid increasingly toxic debates.
If the doctrine that leads to terms like "pregnant people" were followed when writing about the vagina, that leads to talking about "people with vaginas" rather than "women". It is this reduction to a body part that made people so mad.- That is an argument against using "people with vaginas". Using it as an argument against "terms like 'pregnant people'" - as you appear to be doing - is, in fact, a slippery slope argument. Newimpartial ( talk) 23:45, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
I'm wondering if we might have a consensus that writing "people with <name of sex-specific body part>" is unsuitable in Wikipedia articles (with the exception of direct quotes). This is not a hypothetical question. Does everyone agree that this way of referring to people is unsuitable, even if we don't agree on what the best alternative is? Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 05:58, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
An edit war occurs when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other's contributions...An editor who repeatedly restores their preferred version is edit warring, regardless of whether those edits are justifiable. Claiming "My edits were right, so it wasn't edit warring" is not a valid defense.There were two editors edit warring there.
"I changed this to reflect the fact that men who have a uterus can and have given birth, as well as non-binary folks who have given birth". This is a statement of fact. The editor felt the original text was wrong or incomplete, and in their mind, improved it. Their next edit summary is
I am changing this again to reflect the fact that men can and have given birth, as well as non-binary folks. Not just women. This is misleading to already oppressed and underrepresented peoples, it needs to be changed. Again they explain why the original text is wrong and incomplete in their view. Their comment about "already oppressed and and underrepresented peoples" is an emotive comment but nonetheless is factually true. Both in society and arguably on Wikipedia too. It isn't all that different from one of our medical editors reverting some incorrect covid statement with a little rant about misinformation. That they made this change to the lead sentence of pregnancy was their biggest error, but newbies over-rate the importance or balance of some fact or point for the lead sentence all the time.
"Pregnancy, also known as gestation, is the time during which one or more offspring develops inside a person with a uterus."did not violate any policy or guideline, was factually correct and was a valid summary of the sourced body text. None of us here think it was a good choice of words. But arguing whether "person with a uterus" or "woman" is better for our readers is content dispute that is supposed to be resolved through discussion leading to consensus, not warfare.
I am not Colin, but just for clarity, I think not accepting the village pump consensus proferred by Crossroads
is overly polysemic, as a characterization. The RfC asked whether medical articles should be written in some kind of GNL. The consensus was that no, they should not. The closing statement said more than that, but was probably over its skis - a discussion held by 16 editors at Village Pump should probably not be considered to have a very high
WP:CONLEVEL compared to other GENSEX discussions, anyway, and certainly the closing statement itself isn't especially authoritative in the detail of its wording. So one can accept the essential no
consensus of the RfC without accepting Crossroads' specific reading of the closing statement - in his view we should rely on head counts of RS and follow some kind of majoritarian principle but this doesn't follow even from the closing statement of that RfC much less the actual consensus of the discussion it contains.
I for one disagree with Crossroads' account of what the Village Pump consensus actually means, but I don't disagree with the actual consensus (of no, don't do what was proposed). But then again, I'm not Colin. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:12, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
(I wrote the text below and then went to get my dinner. When I went to post it, Newimpartial conflicted. It turns out that despite not being Colin, he was pretty close, and I had to look up what polysemic means).
Actually "righteous" isn't the word I was looking for and I've amended it to "in the right" which is closer to what I meant (and what
WP:EW says). Being confident-with-good-reason about being right isn't any better.
Wikipedia:Edit warring#Exemptions is extremely limited. Having MOS or WP:V or an RFC on your side is insufficient. Wrt the RFC, what I accept is that it was proposed "articles relating discussion of topics that are sex-specific need [entirely] gender-neutral language" and this was rejected. That is the current community consensus on that matter. The RFC didn't ask for anything less than or other than this approach, and so it is unfair to assume it settles the matter beyond the RFC proposal, and of course consensus can change. Among the closing admin's comments is the claim "the terminology in articles, especially medical articles, is dependent upon the support of reliable sources and it is expected that editors would use the same terminology presented in said sources"
. This isn't true, is in opposition to editing guidelines such as
WP:MEDMOS and
WP:TECHNICAL, and doesn't reflect actual editing practice on Wikipedia. That a handful of peopled claimed this in order to support their opinions about gender-neutral language doesn't make it so, and I wish the admin had thought a bit more before repeating it as though that settled the argument.
I'm sure anyone familiar with MOS language discussions will have come across the essays
Wikipedia:Specialized-style fallacy and
Wikipedia:Common-style fallacy. The latter's nutshell says "Facts on a subject are drawn from reliable sources, but no particular subset of them dictates how Wikipedia must write"
These essays are cited in word-choice disputes at MOS when our sources (and/or the style guides for them) don't align with an editor's personal opinions, but are conveniently ignored when they do. I find both essays tiresomely long and ranty and take much too extreme a position. A shorter summary might be
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/FAQ which says "While specialized publications in a field, such as academic journals, are excellent sources for facts, they are not always the best sources for or examples of how to present those facts to non-experts"
. This isn't news to any experienced editor who has wrestled with how best to express our source expert's knowledge into words for a general audience. I wish such essays took a less combative middle ground where we sought to learn from our sources and their style guides when appropriate, and learn from non-source publications aimed at lay readers, and learn from general-purpose style guides, and mix all that with our own peculiarities about audience, voice and avoiding original research, etc.
Wrt CV9933's example, I see that an IP editor changed the article to be entirely gender-neutral on the 5th Jan. Another IP has reverted some of this and a new editor has reverted some of that IPs changes. The RFC could be cited by an editor reverting the text back to the gender-specific version. I don't have a problem with that. The newbie might benefit from a message about edit warring (with the IP) and handling content disputes, but it seems from their contribs that they aren't a single-purpose account and are here to help, so that needs done with care and encouragement. I agree with you that "parent" in the second sentence is problematic. I'd hope that the discussion here could produce some guidance with examples of how such substitutions can introduce problems that go beyond a disagreement about which wording is best. -- Colin° Talk 20:41, 1 February 2022 (UTC) Actually, I think the new editor was responding to "recent changes" edits rather than having targeted the article for change. Most of their other edits correspond with recent-changes vandal fighting and random improvements. I've left them a message on their talk page. -- Colin° Talk 22:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Crossroads, I'm not happy about the text 'Your opinion that the "person with a uterus" edit was perfectly allowable and that I should have left it be is revealing, but noted. Your dismissals of the Village Pump discussion are also noted.'
I wonder if you could strike that. Both times you characterise my position in a negative and inaccurate way, and then state "noted", which sounds threatening to be honest. Like you've saved the diff and at some future noticeboard you'll claim "Colin has a history of not accepting consensus and siding with those whose edits are rejected by the community[diff][diff]". Perhaps that's not how you meant it, but it is how it makes me feel. Yes we disagree but I wish you were trying not always to see the worst possible interpretation of what I wrote. We can surely discuss our disagreement and attempt to understand each others positions without engaging in such adversarial tactics. No doubt some of my own comments are less than perfect too. I hope this is a friendly space where editors can disagree, be critical, make and accept mistakes, learn from each other, and change their minds without embarrassment. For example, I would love it if you felt safe enough to admit "Yes, I was edit warring then" (and not "Yes, technically I was edit warring" or similar). All of us here know that editing in conflicted topics is not easy at all, and we are all human. --
Colin°
Talk
08:57, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
This section is to look at information resources aimed at providing health information to the public. These could be considered similar to Wikipedia in some ways. -- Colin° Talk 16:53, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
I had a look at www.nhs.uk which is like a health encyclopaedia, though extra accessible and much is written in the second person, so avoiding having to consider the sex or gender of the reader/potential-patient. This is particularly notable in the www.nhs.uk/pregnancy chapter, which neatly side-steps ever talking about pregnant women. They seem to just mention trans/non-binary once: Having a baby if you are LGBT+. The article on Infections in pregnancy that may affect your baby is the only location that mentions chestfeeding.
Other NHS health topics that mention trans but aren't explicitly about gender identity issues:
"boys and girls aged 12 to 13 years ..."but later mentions two groups each with their own section. The first is "men who have sex with men" who they then refer to as MSM:
"MSM up to and including the age of 45 are eligible ... MSM aged 15 and over need 3 doses of the vaccine. Those under 15 need 2.. The second is "Transgender people" which refers to both trans men and trans women.
Prostate problems are common, particularly in men aged over 50. The prostate is a small gland found only in men and trans women". This is one of the more integrated of all pages, mentioning trans women in the second sentence rather than a section or paragraph tagged on the end.
"Sexual problems can affect any man, whether he is straight, gay, bisexual or transgender."
Anyone with a womb can get womb cancer, this includes trans men and non-binary people with a womb. It usually happens after menopause, in people over the age 40.As with the prostate cancer page, trans men and non-binary people are fully integrated and the gender-neutral term "people over the age of 40" is used.
Anyone with a cervix can get cervical cancer. This includes trans and non-binary people with a cervix.". It goes on to say
"All women and people with a cervix between the ages of 25 and 64 are invited for regular cervical screening.Here it is interesting that the first sentence says "anyone with a cervix" and notes that this includes "trans and non-binary people with a cervix" and doesn't explicitly mention women, which seems to be assumed knowledge. The second sentence is also a little odd as women who have had a total hysterectomy that removes the cervix will not be invited for screening, so it isn't really "all women".
"Anyone can get breast cancer. This includes women, men, trans and non-binary people."It goes on to say
"Most breast cancers are diagnosed in women over 50 years old.". However, the main 'breast cancer' page is titled " Breast cancer in women" and talks exclusively of "women". It notes
"In rare cases, men can also be diagnosed with breast cancer. Find out more about breast cancer in men."and the linked page talks exclusively about men. So trans and non-binary are not included in much of the material here. Most of the reason to use the words "men" and "women" are to refer to statistical risk groups or those eligible for screening.
"Anyone registered with a GP as female will be invited for NHS breast screening every 3 years between the ages of 50 and 71"It later says
"If you're a trans man, trans woman or are non-binary you may be invited automatically, or you may need to talk to your GP surgery or call the local breast screening service to ask for an appointment.". There is a section at the end explicitly about this, which indicates that whether you are registered as "male" or "female" with your GP determines whether you get invited automatically. This section goes on to link to two other sites:
Searching for a term of course doesn't find examples where it could have been used and wasn't. I searched for "women" and found
My feeling then is that some of the major public health pages that focus on screening and vaccination, particularly for cancers, have been written to be trans and non-binary inclusive. But the pages that just provide information on what are traditionally regarded as men's and women's health topics just ignore trans and non-binary. -- Colin° Talk 16:10, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
Anyone can get breast cancer. This includes women, men, trans and non-binary people.I wonder why they decided to say that anyone can get breast cancer regardless of gender identity (women, men, trans, non-binary) rather than regardless of sex (female, male, intersex). Cancer is a biological phenomenon. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 07:00, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
And dozens more... I searched for '"pregnant people" site: https://www.cdc.gov/', and '"pregnant person" site: https://www.cdc.gov/'. I'm thinking perhaps pages updated in the last two years are written for "pregnant people" not "pregnant women".
many many of them use "pregnant women" when referring to research studies, so they are using the language of the study.What an idea! Now that's a good example to follow. Especially since, uniquely, we write for a site that forbids OR and Synthesis. Crossroads -talk- 06:59, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
There are others, though not as many as CDC. Although the 2020 AMA Style Guide said nothing about the issue, we have a statement attributable to the president of the AMA clearly referring to "pregnant people". I think that settles any doubt about the AMA's position on whether such language is appropriate for public health messages. -- Colin° Talk 17:22, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
WEIGHT covers all types of MEDRS, not just public health messagingseems at best tangentially relevant when it comes to the terms we should use in an articles where public health messaging is relevant to the article's topic. Newimpartial ( talk) 18:03, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
what proportion even of AMA documents use "pregnant people" vs. "pregnant women?- the "proportion" here is irrelevant, since presumably any sourced document will include both terms (in reference list and main text) when dealing with sources where the relevant term is used in its title or in discussing its findings. It would take a higher level of reading than "it uses one in the title but the other more often in the body" to determine which term a source actually prefers, in terms of usage - this is a question calling more for qualitative than quantitative methodology, IMO. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:20, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
It is notable that Cancer Research UK did not test its “inclusive” approach with a male-specific cancer. Its campaign messages about prostate and testicular cancer address “men”, rather than “everyone with a prostate” or “everyone with testicles”. (Addressing “people with a cervix” is, of course, only inclusive of people who know they have a cervix. Many women do not have that detailed knowledge of their internal anatomy. And those who speak English as a second language may well not know the word.)...But the drift towards gender-neutral language (at least when discussing matters that affect women) makes it increasingly hard to articulate all this. How can you describe the maternity penalty as a factor in women’s disadvantage in the workplace, without committing the “essentialist” faux pas of associating women with pregnancy and motherhood?[17] And:
This linguistic shift is being driven by both compassion and fear. Compassion, because organisations are keen not to be seen to be excluding those whose sense of their gender does not match their sex, such as people who identify as trans or non-binary. And fear, because they are worried about attracting the wrath of online mobs should they be deemed to have violated a set of rapidly changing taboos about gender and sex that hardly existed five years ago—and which, outside a few rarefied circles, still don’t....Furthermore, understanding could suffer. Medical advice, for instance, has to be clear and intelligible by all. That is why Britain’s National Health Service often prefers words like “stomach ache” to “dyspepsia”, or “heart attack” to “myocardial infarction”. One survey conducted by a cervical-cancer charity suggested that around 40% of women are unsure about the details of what exactly a cervix is. This implies that asking “people with cervixes” to turn up for screening appointments may not be clear or intelligible, especially to women who have English as their second language.[18]
“Bodies with vaginas” is an odd way to refer to half the human race. Yet it was the quote that the Lancet, a medical journal, chose to feature on the cover of its latest issue, telling readers that “historically, the anatomy and physiology” of such bodies had been neglected. After complaints about dehumanising language, the Lancet apologised....On September 18th the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) republished a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Supreme Court judge, on the anniversary of her death. The quote was a defence of a woman’s right to have an abortion. But the ACLU’s version—for which it, too, later apologised—replaced every instance of “women” with “people”....One reason is that many of the new terms come across as dehumanising. As the Lancet discovered, many people—trans men as much as anyone else—dislike being described as collections of ambulatory body-parts and secretions. More than a whiff of misogyny is in the air.
Stonewall have been campaigning for trans rights since 2015 and it isn't possible to read their material published for organisations (I guess you have to pay to get it).
This webpage answers some questions such as "Does Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index require organisations to remove the word ‘mother’ from HR policies?". Their answer aligns with the "additive approach" we've seen mentioned in some guides. Workplace policies are more similar to the legal documents we noted elsewhere that are under pressure to be inclusive mainly from the point of view of not leaving people out of things they are entitled to or are prevented from. In the culture war over trans rights (particularly gender self identification in the UK, which Lewis opposes), Stonewall are a player but also a target. A google search "pregnant people" site:
https://www.stonewall.org.uk
returns no results. I did find
Family leave and pay which for example says "The person giving birth to the baby is entitled to the following maternity leave and pay". I think this kind of language is inevitable in legal explanations. I wouldn't expect an organisation that now addresses trans rights to state that any other way. At the bottom of the article, though, they use "pregnant women" twice. So I don't really get the feeling that Stonewall is policing language very strongly here. --
Colin°
Talk
10:35, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
But aren't those who are outspoken in opposition to the conspiracy "organizations who purport to represent minority groups" also activists? If not, what are they?
Newimpartial (
talk)
09:32, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Regarding the 'every wording is political' argument, no, not everything is political in the same way. Wikipedia is not for advocacy, and hence not for wording that is political in a way involving change from how the language is used in reliable sources. We are not part of the vanguard of self-proclaimed "progressive" change efforts, nor would we advocate older language now replaced in reliable sources by newer language. Otherwise you'd have to say that people saying that writers should use womxn and those who say they don't need to are both activists. Crossroads -talk- 06:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
("pregnant individual" OR "pregnant person" OR "pregnant patient") NOT ("pregnant woman")
You will have to add the usual five-year limit and specify reviews in the side bar). That looks like more than 10% of MEDRS-compliant sources are using gender-neutral language.("pregnant individual" OR "pregnant person") NOT ("pregnant woman")
, I get only 12 results.
Clayoquot (
talk |
contribs)
03:40, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
reasonable professional peopledecide to use one phrase over another? I mean, if it were, say, only 1% of them, should that not impact our decisions? They are the experts after all, the ones who can best evaluate the arguments. I also see no reason to think abstracts as a group are not representative of articles as a group, phrasing-wise.
the terminology in articles, especially medical articles, is dependent upon the support of reliable sources and it is expected that editors would use the same terminology presented in said sources.I also don't believe treating "women" like a dirty word we should avoid as much as possible is in any way "brilliant", natural, or WP:PLAINENGLISH.
politically active editorsreally needs no response from me. Your own arguments on this page even make political points, such as under #Effective communication about pregnancy, birth, lactation, breastfeeding and newborn care: the importance of sexed language, where you equate certain wording to using "he" to describe women, and this very section, where you describe certain wording as "conservative". Crossroads -talk- 05:50, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
reasonable professional peopledecide to use one phrase over another? I mean, if it were, say, only 1% of them, should that not impact our decisions? They are the experts after all, the ones who can best evaluate the arguments." I see little valid comparison between cutting out one-half of the population, an entire sex, by using "he", and using "men" or "women" without needing to account for a small minority of people with gender dysphoria. Additionally, the former is very rare in recent RS, and the latter remains extremely common. The common language operates similarly, per dictionaries. The two are not "identical" at all. I also don't appreciate the continued politically charged framing of this as "trans-exclusionary", when there are other ways to include trans people without removing mention of men and women from their own sexes, such as by specialized sections and articles (like transgender pregnancy). Crossroads -talk- 06:36, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
every wording is politicalargument is intended to address, but that isn't what I'm saying - but at least that's another square in fallacy bingo :p. Active opposition to linguistic change can be, and often is, activist in orientation, as is your insistence that "pregnant people" is a controversial neologism and that "assigned female at birth" is a euphemism. There is a difference between using terms and being an activist for specific terminology, and the difference is not based on whether one prefers old or new language - at least, not in most cases. Newimpartial ( talk) 23:52, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
"It is paid to: Pregnant people or People who have recently given birth". This is the "easy read" version. The standard version uses second-person.
These are just two of many examples I browsed and what struck me was how many concerned legislation. If you read the earlier-posted midwife article, you'll know "The 1902 Midwifery Act prohibited uncertified women from working in the role, but because it assumed the job was only ever carried out by women it took a 1926 law to close the loophole and exclude unqualified men too." So possibly those writing legal documents are adopting "pregnant people" in order that it covers all possibilities. -- Colin° Talk 15:59, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
Two articles this weekend.
"About 30% of eligible people are not adequately screened against second most common cancer in women under 35". The article mainly uses "women". The article quotes cisgender female drag queen Victoria Scone:
'Scone said, as a queer woman, she was initially uncertain whether cervical screening was imperative. “However, this new campaign has clarified that all women and people with a cervix, including those in the LGBTQ+ community like myself, are eligible for a screening, so I booked myself in,” she said.'The video repeats this "woman and people with a cervix" format. The NHS figures quoting in the sub-heading as "eligible people" are repeated in the body as "about 30% of women aged 25-64 who were eligible" but the source says "eligible individuals aged 25 to 64". The appendixes clarify who are eligible, which among other factors are "a woman or person with a cervix" and notes that the automatic letters are triggered if "registered [at their GP] as female or indeterminate", and those registered as male need to apply for themselves if they are otherwise still relevant.
-- Colin° Talk 14:03, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
an overwhelming majorityof sources don't use the new language, especially among academic article, which on Wikipedia carry far more "weight". Even if I were to grant the premise that this were merely a matter of stylistic choice, there are all sorts of stylistic matters in which sources differ but Wikipedia guidelines only permit one style, for consistency's sake. MOS:HEADINGS is just one example of this. Crossroads -talk- 05:19, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
I think your apparent concession that it happens that the first definition in the dictionary aligns with gender critical ideas about the only meaning of the word "woman"
is entirely mistaken. There is no lexicographical reason to believe that the reference to "female" in dictionary definitions refers to "female sex" or equivalent - the gender critical spin on "female human being" doesn't align with what woman, or female human being, actually mean in either specialist or nonspecialist usage.
Newimpartial (
talk)
15:01, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
biological female, XX, person with a uterus who can get pregnant, that isn't in fact what dictionaries actually say nor is it what they mean. If Crossroads actually means to say this, he is wrong, and if he doesn't mean to say this you shouldn't be strawmanning his argument by importing "gender critical" nonsense that he has not actually asserted.
"However, every "pregnant person" is female. English has a word for female humans, and we should not misleadingly forgo it just because a tiny minority of them have a condition (gender dysphoria) whereby they identify otherwise". If I've misunderstood Crossroad's point then they can do two things: explain what is wrong and fully explain what they do mean. Until then, I don't think I'm strawmanning. I also don't think it is helpful for you to describe positions as "nonsense". Let's leave the "You are not just wrong; you are stupid as well" style of debate for twitter and extremists. Doing that prevents someone saying "Yes, that is in fact my position". -- Colin° Talk 16:17, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
(m)any people will mean "adult XX biological female who can become pregnant" when they use the word "woman"- that simply isn't what a dictionary means if it places "adult human female" in that first definition space, and pretending that dictionaries actually are saying that is both a poor reading of what dictionaries actually say, and unhelpful argumentation regardless of one's actual POV.
rabbit holes, above.
"A female adult human being"(no other definitions) and defines "female" as
"1 Of or pertaining to the sex that in animals produces ova and brings forth young. 2 An individual of the female sex, as a woman.I downloaded Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary 32nd Edition (2012) only to find it didn't define "woman". It did define "female" as
"1 an individual organism of the sex that bears young or produces ova or eggs.Then I tried Mosby's Medical Dictionary 10th Edition (2017). It defines "woman" as
"An adult female human"and "female" as
"1 pertaining to the sex that has the ability to become pregnant and bear children; feminine. 2 a female person. I tried a couple of others and they didn't define "woman" but did define "female" as the egg/young-producing sex. So perhaps you could apologise for saying I was "
An individual of the sex that bears young or that produces ova or eggs, or a person who has a particular physical appearance, chromosome constitution, or gender identification(emphasis added); other sources similarly include elements in defining "female" or "woman" that contradict your statement that
Medical dictionaries have precisely one definition of "woman" and it is the "uterus having" meaning- this isn't any more true of medical dictionaries as a class than it is of other dictionaries, and to claim the contrary in the face of evidence would be a bit more than "misleading", IMO.
Crossroads argument is that because medical dictionaries define "woman" the way we are currently using it [which is also the way gender critical feminists define it]- emphasis added. As Tonto might have said to the Lone Ranger, "Who is 'we', white boy"? Whether or not a source (including a Wikipedia article) is defining "woman" in terms of gender presentation or expression, or in terms of reproductive anatomy, or in chromosomal terms or legal terms is determined by the specific source. We have MEDRS sources that use "female gender" when they mean anatomical sex, and ones that use "female sex" when they mean gender role. It is certainly inappropriate to read (and write) Wikipedia articles - including medical ones - as though each mention of "woman" meant "person with a cervix"; what "woman" means depends very precisely on the context given by the source, which may be incomplete but certainly cannot be overruled by a medical dictionary. I am not saying editors should always use the terms the sources use, but we certainly should not impose arbitrary assumptions about what sources ought to mean by the words they use. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:13, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
"Are medical dictionaries wrong when they define "woman" as they do?", is to challenge the premise. Many medical dictionaries, as you have noted, do not define "woman" at all. Those that do almost never provide a direct definition in terms of biological sex. Even the term "female" is not consistently defined by medical dictionaries in a narrow anatomical or chromosomal definition. The idea that medical dictionaries define woman anatomically, so Wikipedia must do so as well, is based on an demonstrably false premise - conceding that major premise seems absurd to me. What is more, even if there were a consistent and precise definition of woman to be found in medical dictionaries, it would be WP:SYNTH to impose that definition on the specific MEDRS themselves, particularly when some MEDRS documented that either they themselves or other studies use other, specific, definitions of "women" or other terms, and these often conflict with those offered in medical (and other) dictionaries. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:14, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
I am unaware of saying any things that aren't true
in this discussion. The only reference to medical dictionaries I could find in this section (which is what we had both been referring to), prior to my intervention, was
this recent one by Crossroads. For some reason you are now referring to comments made by Crossroads in other sections on this page, but that doesn't falsify anything I have said about this section (his comments were
this one on January 27,
this one on February 10 and
this one on February 16; in none of these diffs does Crossroads present evidence from medical dictionaries, and in none of these instances do you respond with evidence from medical dictionaries, either, incidentally).
Second, the way you refer to the many medical dictionaries
you consulted, in your last diff would lead me to believe that you consulted a number of medical dictionaries prior to my comment There is no lexicographical reason to believe that the reference to "female" in dictionary definitions refers to "female sex" or equivalent
- in fact, I only see one citation by you to a dictionary prior to
this recent comment, and the
earlier comment did not cite a medical dictionary. Now I have no way of knowing when you consulted medical dictionaries and what you did with what you found, but you certainly did not present any of your findings on this talk page until you responded to
my
well-intentioned
critique.
Now to be clear, when I say When a dictionary says "adult human female", it is not specifying what sense of "female" is meant and it is
- that is a comment on content and not on a contributor. You can absolutely continue to dispute what I said in my immediately preceding comment that dumbass misleading to pretend that it is"Female", like "woman", covers a range of meanings including gender and gender identity
, but your recent assertions based on medical dictionaries do not actually provide reason to support this, particularly when they conflict with the actual literature on sex and gender in medical research, which is quite clear on this point.
In my initial, rather mild comment,
above, I was reacting to your immediately prior comment that the first definition in the dictionary aligns with gender critical ideas about the only meaning of the word "woman"
. For that statement to be accurate would require "adult female human being" not only to be the only meaning of "woman", it would also require that "female" within that phase be defined exclusively in a biological sense favored by gender critical activists. Actual reliable sources, whether dictionaries or other sources, seldom take this step, and you conceded that logic to Crossroads without either of you presenting any evidence in its support. The fact that the very first medical dictionary I obtained full access to did not limit itself to a narrow definition of "female" confirmed my impression, formed through extensive prior consultation of nonspecialist dictionaries (among other sources), that RS do not generally provide a rationale to define "female" (or "woman") in the reductionist way you so readily concede. You seem to presuppose that if a dictionary includes something biological as the first definition of "female", that this definition is meant each time the word is used, but there is no reason to believe this to be the case.
Newimpartial (
talk) 00:11, 20 February 2022 (UTC) completed
Newimpartial (
talk)
00:56, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
then there's no need to change to accommodate a tiny number of people with a mental illness, as they keep putting it.I will clarify my viewpoint on dictionaries under #Dictionaries. Crossroads -talk- 05:39, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
"The word "dysphoria" appears 10 times on this page, 9 in your text. Our sources on this issue don't use that word, but neutrally refer to people who are trans or non-binary. Why emphasise a diagnosis of mental illness, when our sources don't?". You didn't answer my question, which was made was in response to your text
"English has a word for female humans, and we should not misleadingly forgo it just because a tiny minority of them have a condition (gender dysphoria) whereby they identify otherwise."and
""without needing to account for a small minority of people with gender dysphoria". You claim I misrepresent your argument. So why have you mentioned a mental illness 10 times on this page, and twice as a reason to dismiss people's views? As I noted earlier
"if those aren't your views, then you've expressed yourself badly and might want to strike some sentences."It isn't good enough to say you are misrepresented. You have to say what you mean instead, and if that contradicts what you wrote earlier then say that your earlier text was badly put or that you've changed your position or whatever. We can't just ignore that you have repeatedly brought mental illness into the discussion in sentences where you dismiss viewpoints. -- Colin° Talk 09:03, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.They later summarise the term
Gender dysphoria: A concept designated in the DSM-5 as clinically significant distress or impairment related to a strong desire to be of another gender, which may include desire to change primary and/or secondary sex characteristics. Not all transgender or gender diverse people experience dysphoria.I think "mental illness" is a fair description of an officially defined psychiatric condition causing "clinically significant distress or impairment" and for which one seeks specialist medical help. The final sentence of that quote is siginifcant, and one reason why our sources refer to "transgender or gender diverse people". Another reason is of course the stigma surrounding mental illness and idea that crazy people can be dismissed. Which is why I think it is very wrong for Crossroads to twice dismiss the concerns of readers and refer to them not by a neutral description but by focussing on this one term that is officially a mental illness. -- Colin° Talk 12:45, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
It was taken out from mental health disorders because we had a better understanding that this was not actually a mental health condition, and leaving it there was causing stigma.So you can forgive me for thinking that the position you had taken emphasising GD as mental illness was most likely incorrect. CV9933 ( talk) 15:14, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
What do you think?Well it all seems to be a bit of a political minefield. Maybe that is one reason whay the pageviews for this venue far exceeds the number of participants. CV9933 ( talk) 13:15, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Other Guardian articles only use "pregnant women" and "mother". This one from a month ago about the UK government doesn't use those terms at all. Same for this one. This one makes points about "pregnant women" only. This one from yesterday about a CDC study always uses "women" and "mothers" in its own voice, and only uses "people" or "person" when quoting a CDC official from a press conference, who herself only does so some of the time. There are many more like this. So, even the left-leaning press routinely writes about this topic without any desexed language. Crossroads -talk- 00:49, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
On the other side of this page, Clayoquot asked:
Something I noticed when looking at the professional examples was how inconsistent they often were. I think this may reflect that what we are talking about is not really "terminology" outside of a discussion of language used for gender and sex in medical articles. At pregnancy, the terminology is "gestation", "live birth", "last menstrual period", "spontaneous miscarriage", "induced abortion", and so on. There's even a section on "Terminology". These are the specialist terms for that topic which require accurate definition and consistent use. Per my earlier epilepsy example, the reader would be confused if some of an article said "focal seizure" and the next paragraph said "partial seizure" about the same thing. On the other hand, we might substitute difficult terminology with a lay-reader-friendly equivalent at times, such as the lead. But the words "woman", "person", "individual" are everyday words that don't meet a dictionary definition of terminology. They can sometimes be very import, such as we have seen with the writing of laws, but these components aren't what we are teaching the reader or words that only experts use. Typically, reader won't be paying any attention to them. I wonder they if that is why these articles get away with being inconsistent.
On a practical level, we have seen times where it may be necessary to write "women" because that is what the data is for, so any writer taking a "pregnant people" approach would have to compromise. And we haven't found a convenient alternative word for the person who can become pregnant. -- Colin° Talk 16:15, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Above, Clayoquot asked about the "people with body part" approach, and WAID and I thought there were situations where that language would be fine, even necessary. And continuing the thoughts about all the different values we are trying to weigh up and that each of us bring when editing/discussing, I thought it could be worth considering how much the context affects the values. For example, consider the following parts of an article
And then we also have different kinds of articles
For example, at Transgender pregnancy, it says "Non-binary people with a functioning vagina, ovaries and uterus can give birth." I would not expect that language in the lead sentence of Pregnancy any time soon. Although we have seen public announcements from the CDC about "pregnant people" and covid, the CDC's information pages about pregnancy tend to use "women". On the NHS pages, they write "Anyone with a womb can get womb cancer, this includes trans men and non-binary people with a womb. It usually happens after menopause, in people over the age 40." but the NHS currently mostly uses "women" when dealing with women's reproductive health issues. While some things we have discussed, such as OR and V, don't change contextually, the values we might emphasise likely change depending on where we are writing. I would fully expect articles and sections on transgender/nonbinary issues to use language more sympathetic to that population group. I would expect resistance to that approach in the lead of a topic women would identify with. In between, following the examples from CDC/NHS, it may be more acceptable to use e.g. gender neutral / people with an X / adding-trans/nonbinary approaches when dealing with the sex related aspects of topics such as cancers and infections. -- Colin° Talk 17:45, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Addressing “people with a cervix” is, of course, only inclusive of people who know they have a cervix. Many women do not have that detailed knowledge of their internal anatomy. And those who speak English as a second language may well not know the word.[26] And:
One survey conducted by a cervical-cancer charity suggested that around 40% of women are unsure about the details of what exactly a cervix is. This implies that asking “people with cervixes” to turn up for screening appointments may not be clear or intelligible, especially to women who have English as their second language.[27] The same applies to many parts of sex-specific anatomy. Crossroads -talk- 05:38, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
"Cervical cancer is when abnormal cells in the lining of the cervix grow in an uncontrolled way. The cervix is part of the female reproductive system. It is the opening to the vagina from the womb."This not only addresses the body-ignorance problem, but doesn't say "women". Most of their pages on cervical cancer occasionally mention "women" but their screening page does also say "Cervical screening is also for anyone within this age range who has a cervix, such as trans men and non-binary people" and links to I’m trans or non-binary, does this affect my cancer screening?. I'd really rather discuss health information pages that are in some way similar to Wikipedia's mission, and professionals thoughts on medical writing, rather than a tweet and a opinion piece in a conservative-right political magazine. -- Colin° Talk 12:08, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
I came across this academic paper, which I think has some value to our discussion. The author is Lal Zimman, who is trans and an academic on linguistics, specifically running a "Trans Research in Linguistics Lab". I guess if Zimman edited the lead of Pregnancy, it would be not be unfair to describe him as a language reform advocate! Here are some points I noticed.
"are high in frequency; it is unusual for a person not to be gendered if they are to play any kind of significant role in a speaker’s discourse. We have seen this in websites (NHS, CDC) that use second-person, or the midwifery articles that use "pregnant people", that eventually you come unstuck and have to say "women".
Words that can be used to refer to a person of any gender, such as person, human or individual, arguably carry their own gendered implications specifically because they refuse to specify their referent’s gender. In the Context section above, there are areas where this approach varies in the degree it is noticed and surprises or is expected by readers.
"At times, the gender neutral option may feel clunky or unnatural..., the perception of speech as sounding natural, articulate or aesthetically pleasing derives from a long history of socially informed norms of use."This kind of opposition to a language form is common, with its own long history of use wrt alternatives to sexist, racist, homophobic and words other minority groups find offensive. Typically it is employed by someone outside of those groups and is I think the weakest argument. As Hofstadter noted above, "sexist English" was his native language. Earlier the author notes
"when I speak about you I am not just representing my own point of view; I also bear some form of responsibility towards you when it comes to the way I represent you linguistically."and here they mean respecting how the subject or reader wishes to be represented linguistically, and not focused entirely one one's own views about language or how one was taught as a child.
"hedge all generalisations about gender"and I think that relates to our discussion about our several Mothers/guilty/Haemophilia phrases. Precision is not always necessary and being less precise gives one flexibility. The second approach, awkwardly for me, advocates using extremely precise language about the people-group you are discussing. So "women" in the three examples is replaced by "People assigned female at birth" or "people who are perceived as women" or "Everyone with a cervix" (wrt cervical cancer screening). Zimman says
"To the uninitiated, these phrases can seem wordy, complex or even amusing (particularly in the case of [the last example])", so I think Zimman does accept that this approach would be ridiculous if attempted generally without regard to context. But we can see from some of the academic guidelines that authors of papers and conductors of studies are being asked to be much more precise about their people groups, and to avoid just dividing everyone into "women" and "men" and thinking that assumption is good enough. I can see all three phrases being used on Wikipedia when precision is highly valued in that context. And we have seen such language used on public health websites, specifically in the sections or pages dealing with trans + medical issues (coincidentally also on cancer screening and risk). In the right context, it can be appropriate. In the wrong context, likely unacceptable.
-- Colin° Talk 18:28, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
an opinion piece by a bunch of like-minded friends) with your receptivity to the Lal Zimman article in the previous section, which was quite radical in some changes it advocated for, and certainly was not by some 'balanced committee'. As for
Is inclusivity "Here's a leaflet we wrote specially for trans people, because you guys are so odd and talk weirdly", I certainly don't think inclusivity is deprecating the language of the vast majority in favor of that of a small minority. Material specifically for trans people makes sense. Also, most academic work on cultural imperialism and privilege is by people from developed nations, so I don't see why that matters. I will read the final paper when it comes out and point out highlights here. Crossroads -talk- 05:20, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
The sources for this are now available. I checked the claim "They may not know, for example, that “a person with a cervix” is a woman and refers to them"
. This is sourced to a study about cervical cancer leaflets (18 in English and 4 in Spanish) and their accessibility to Mexian women living now in the Kansas, USA. The 20 study participants were Spanish speakers and they were interviewed in Spanish. The women had low health and educational literacy levels (some were illiterate). The study did not address whether the women knew that women had a cervix and its relevance was further compounded by the various ways to describe the cervix in simple Spanish. As I noted earlier about a magazine article making a similar point, you'd likely get similar results asking about what the liver did and what it was connected to, but few people would be ignorant that they had one. I'm sure we all agree that "woman" is far more accessible than "person with medical-term-for-body-part", but I can't really imagine any serious usage of this appearing outside of an article that contained a big diagram of a female form and labelled body parts. We have only ever seen naive usages of this approach except for very targetted material (i.e. a web page on trans people reminding the reader that "anyone with an X may get Y"). It is one thing to see these kind of baseless claims in an opinion piece in a magazine well known for conservative views, but disappointing that an academic journal didn't fact-check. I wonder if this opinion piece was actually fact checked at all? --
Colin°
Talk
15:16, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Edited by: Jennifer L. Payne, University of Virginia, United Statesand
Reviewed by: Lauren M. Osborne, Johns Hopkins University, United States, neither of whom are authors (of which there are already ten). More on this article coming soon. Crossroads -talk- 05:21, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
'Why is this always about women's health? Where's the equivalent article complaining about "people with a prostate"? Well, now at least we have a source that says it's not happening for men's health.'. Is the "source" this article? It says
"Notably, desexing language in relation to males occurs less frequently"but their evidence for that is Do we need the word ‘woman’ in healthcare? which we've already discussed. That article says
"Arguably, discussions around gender neutral terminology appear to focus mainly on alteration of female-specific language, rather than amending male-associated words.Now that sentence doesn't claim male-associated words are altered less often, but that the female-specific language generates the most discussions. The article does go on to offer two anecdotes (comparing Irish health service cervical cancer screening information with prostate cancer, and noting Prostate Cancer UK refers to men on their information page). The first is unconvincing as we've seen variation of approach within the NHS pages on women, so seeing variation overall, with a sample size of two, doesn't tell me anything statistically meaningful. The second is absurd as there's no counter example for women, and seems basically "I found a web page on the internet where adult males were referred to as 'men'".
"However, every "pregnant person" is female. English has a word for female humans, and we should not misleadingly forgo it just because a tiny minority of them have a condition (gender dysphoria) whereby they identify otherwise.". The word you refer to here is presumably "woman". I cannot find an intepretation of this that does not define woman as solely applying to "female humans" (and by 'female' you mean those who can become pregnant). Which also corresponds to the primary dictionary definition (adult female) that you repeatedly advocate for in this discussion. I also interpret this as saying those who think of themselves otherwise are mentally ill and can therefore be dismissed. You repeated this dismiss-those-with-mental-illness line when you wrote
"without needing to account for a small minority of people with gender dysphoria". Crossroads, I'm not about to call you names over this. But if those aren't your views, then you've expressed yourself badly and might want to strike some sentences. The word "dysphoria" appears 10 times on this page, 9 in your text. Our sources on this issue don't use that word, but neutrally refer to people who are trans or non-binary. Why emphasise a diagnosis of mental illness, when our sources don't? -- Colin° Talk 08:59, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
identifies aslanguage should be understood as equivalent to
has an ... identitylanguage or other variations thereof. It seems obvious that fine differences of wording carry quite large differences of meaning in this domain, which mitigates against the straw poll methodology you so often favour. Newimpartial ( talk) 03:11, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
I highly recommend reading the above-named paper for anyone considering this issue. It details numerous issues that can come up with the use of language that removes all reference to a person's sex. And it 'brings the receipts' with many documented cases where writers (who should know better) use it and create major errors and use terminology that itself marginalizes. These examples are in the paper itself and especially in the supplementary material, in which they both list examples and explain the problem with them. In no way are these isolated issues when people try to use this sort of language. And if people who should know better commit such major mistakes, editors who attempt to add such wording to Wikipedia will all the more commit those mistakes, and they already do when they do try.
The authors are not transphobes or 'gender critical'. They say that sensitivity to, and acknowledgment of
trans people's needs is a good and important intention
. They later say that In some circumstances, application of gendered rather than sexed meanings of words is appropriate and we fully endorse the importance of being inclusive and respectful (12).
They mention on an individual basis as well as Targeted public health campaigns should address the needs of this group, not just to ensure that the language used is suitable (152) but because they may have additional social needs or medical needs associated with treatments such as testosterone use or surgery to remove breast tissue (153, 154). Similarly, targeted health support materials are of value and have already been produced by some organizations [e.g. (155–157)]. Development of separate desexed materials (much as might occur for people from different language backgrounds) may be a useful strategy [e.g. (158, 159)].
In a Wikipedia context, we can follow this on articles like
transgender pregnancy; if there is not enough material for a dedicated article, dedicated sections for trans people, as done for other groups with particular needs and as suggested above under
#Existing Wikipedia examples, can be done. One article doing something like this is
Menstruation#Who menstruates and
Menstruation#Terminology.
The authors go on to note that uses of this language in general contexts are often not deliberated regarding their impact on accuracy or potential for other unintended consequences.
This also applies to edits.
They note that Crucially, words such as “woman,” and “mother” can have both sexed and gendered meanings. The long-established sexed meanings are that “woman” means an adult of the female sex, and “mother” means a female parent (36).
And can anyone truly deny this? As with very many words, it can have different meanings in different contexts. That is simply how the language works in practice. All the medical dictionaries, even now, define 'woman' the same way. If one were to take a dogmatic 'no, now "woman" always means a gender identity', then our language lacks a word for "adult people of the female sex" - quite an oversight! And earlier, use of alternative desexed terms had been justified on the grounds that readers will supposedly know who is meant by 'people with a cervix' or 'pregnant people' - but if that is so, they definitely understand what is meant by 'cervical cancer happens in X% of women'.
Here are each of the types of issues they discuss and my highlights from each:
works against the plain language principle of health communication and risks reducing inclusivity for vulnerable groups by making communications more difficult to understand (57). Those who are young, with low literacy or education, with an intellectual disability, from conservative religious backgrounds, or being communicated to in their non-native language are at increased risk of misunderstanding desexed language (58–62). However, even women with high levels of education may not be familiar with female reproductive processes and terms of female anatomy and physiology and so may not understand some desexed terms (63–65). They may not know, for example, that “a person with a cervix” is a woman and refers to them (59).Note the numerous studies cited for the points made here and below.
Referring to individuals in this reduced, mechanistic way is commonly perceived as “othering” and dehumanizing (67). For example, the term “pregnant woman” identifies the subject as a person experiencing a physiological state, whereas “gestational carrier” or “birther” marginalizes their humanity. Efforts to eliminate dehumanizing language in medical care are longstanding (68), including in relation to women during pregnancy, birth, and new motherhood (67, 69–71). Using language that respects childbearing women is imperative given the prevalence of obstetric violence (18, 72, 73). Considering women in relation to males as “non-men” or “non-males”, treats the male body as standard (8) and hearkens back to the sexist Aristotelian conceptualization of women as failed men (74).
Terms such as “parents” and “families” as replacements for “mothers” can inappropriately include fathers and other family members, thus diminishing and invisibilising women (75). Use of “people” and “families” as replacements for “women” can similarly inappropriately include males and other family members. Women have unique experiences, needs and rights in relation to pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding that are not shared with others (18, 76–79). It cannot be assumed that a woman’s interests will align with those of her husband or partner. This is most clearly illustrated by the issue of domestic violence...However, text referring to “birthing families” can suggest other family members have rights regarding a woman’s decision making during birth. Similarly, text referring to supporting “parents” or “families” to make infant feeding decisions (82) suggests people other than the mother should make decisions regarding breastfeeding (75). This overlooks that partners and family members may directly or indirectly undermine breastfeeding (75, 83). It also obscures the positionality of women as rights-holders and family members as duty-bearers in relation to breastfeeding (76).They also offer criticisms of "additive language", stating that it creates confusion as to whether sex or gender identity is meant, and that terms like "birthing people" can still be considered objectifying.
Replacing a word with another of different meaning as if they are synonyms makes communications inaccurate or confusing. For example, in a growing number of papers, the severity of COVID-19 disease in pregnant women is being misrepresented by comparing “pregnant people” to “non-pregnant people” (40, 85–92) when the comparator in the research in question is “non-pregnant females.” Given the greater severity of COVID-19 disease in males (93), this misrepresentation means readers may under-estimate disease severity in pregnant women.This is all the more an issue for us, as Wikipedia policy strictly requires editors to represent reliable sources accurately and avoid original research. Nothing we write in the MEDMOS guideline can override this and permit editors to misrepresent the sources by using terms that differ in meaning from that found in the sources. And anything to be written in MEDMOS permitting different terms than that in the sources would not somehow limit editors to rare cases where both statements are correct and verifiable; it would open the floodgates to numerous bad edits and time-wasting disputes resulting therefrom.The authors give further examples:
it has been incorrectly stated that “1 in 8 people” develop breast cancer (94), that “8 in 10 people” will get pregnant after having unprotected sex (95), and that “1 in 10 people” have endometriosis (96)....correctly stating that 1 in 20 people have endometriosis reduces the cognitive impact of the statistic because of the higher denominator and obfuscates a key feature of the condition: that sufferers are almost exclusively female, and males have virtually zero risk.Regarding "breast/chest", they note that "chestfeeding" can be confused with a method of tube feeding using formula. They also state,
The word “breast” is a sex-neutral term which refers to the mammary glands of males and females. Referring to “chests” rather than “breasts” is medically inaccurate. The “chest” in medical terminology refers to the ribcage and everything within it and does not include mammary tissue (97). Chest pain may signify a serious heart or lung condition, whereas breast pain may signify a breast condition such as mastitis.A further issue:
Desexed language can make it unclear who is being referred to. Does “breastfeeding people” mean mothers, infants or both? Are “postnatal people” those who have just given birth or those who are providing postnatal care?And while normally I would not consider it our place to worry about how language reflects social power relationships, the arguments in favor of desexed language indulge in such, so it's a two-way street:
Using the phrase “breastfeeding parents” rather than “breastfeeding mothers” or “women,” both suggests the partner is participating in the act of breastfeeding and makes invisible the sex of the person breastfeeding the child. In this way, desexed language obscures the practical and power imbalances in relationships, decision making, and economics that breastfeeding mothers may face because they are female (98–102). Similarly, avoiding references to “girls” means that their very specific vulnerabilities as pregnant minors or minor mothers may be overlooked (103, 104).
Replacing “breastfeeding” with “human milk feeding” even when the mother is feeding directly from the breast, disembodies it and places emphasis on the milk as separate from the mother. The role of the breastfeeding mother becomes inconsequential and other individuals can be seen as equivalent caregivers even of very young infants. “Human milk feeding” places expressed milk feeding on an equal footing with breastfeeding thus supporting the trend toward predominantly, or exclusively, eschewing direct breastfeeding in favor of bottle feeding expressed milk that has been noted in some countries (110–112). Expressed milk feeding has significant drawbacks from a public health perspective...It also works against efforts to recognize the unique relational aspects of breastfeeding that support maternal caregiving capacity and infant mental health (50, 117).
language changes have the potential, through linguistic processes, to undermine recognition of what mothers mean to all infants.They note:
Women used to be invisible when “he” or “men” were used as the default contributing to the disregard of women in research, policy, and public life (138). In the midst of the current move to desex language, we argue that if women and mothers are not named, it makes it more difficult to effectively advocate for them; “women” disappear into “people” and “mothers” disappear into “parents.” This inevitably changes the focus.There are real costs to certain interpretations of "inclusivity". And:
New “parents” do not have the same health needs or experiences as new “mothers” although language in publications or research design that does not distinguish between these groups can suggest that they do [e.g. (136)].
The article notes that the push to de-sex language in these topics comes from organizations based in the USA and the Western world. It could thus be considered culturally imperialistic. And Wikipedia is supposed to be an international, culturally neutral encyclopedia. The article notes some ways forward, some of which I covered above, summarizes by recommending things to think about, and concludes. It states, there are significant implications to desexing language when referring to inherently sexed processes and states.
I very much agree. These are serious concerns that ignoring would be to the encyclopedia's detriment. Crossroads -talk- 06:39, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
Clayoquot, pinging you because I want to be sure you are aware of this paper. More replies soon. Crossroads -talk- 06:48, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
The "culturally imperialistic" comments in the text are the weakest aspect of many weak arguments. One of their sources is a blog by
Graham Linehan. That source contains some correspondence to La Leche League International from an international group of "Leaders" and the response they got. It is worth reading both, though I have no way of verifying the accuracy of the quoted material within such a dodgy source. The response lists a number of bodies who are using "gender-inclusive language", though it seems the numbered references have been lost from the blog. LLLI go on to argue "Using a variety of terms for gender inclusion is not a hallmark of colonial oppression, rather the opposite. Western colonialism is responsible for suppressing the expression of gender diversity in many cultures around the world, and introducing concepts of homophobia and gender “norms” that were not a part of the indigenous cultures"
.
The claim in the article "the impetus to desex language in relation to female reproduction flows from a philosophy developed in the USA and within which American understandings and priorities predominate"
is sourced to
Queering Moominland: The Problems of Translating Queer Theory Into a Non-American Context (you can click on the "PDF" link to read it). The only times "trans" appears in that source is at the start of "translating" or "transposing". The article is mainly about sexuality and whether gay culture concepts and concerns translate from American and UK media (more TV programmes than academic writing) into Finnish culture. They spend some time literally wondering how to translate the word "queer" into Finish. That's not relevant to us. They quote one interviewee who argued that antagonism between genders is less strong in Finland. Our article writers completely fail to appreciate that the world into which "queer theory" or "gender identity" ideas were explored is one that is also American and Western culturally. It isn't like we were internationally neutral before all these people came along with their funny ideas about gay and lesbians being normal. It is weird that they only think the "change" is culturally problematic and don't think that the status quote they want to keep was also culturally idiosyncratic too.
Feminism in all its varied forms could be argued to originate from US/Western cultures and contain a huge dollop of those cultures mixed within its language and assumptions. The argument made in our article here is akin to saying that since Feminism originated in Western thought, and attitudes to male/female roles vary world wide, those arguing against sexist language and ideas should stop imposing their imperialistic ideas on the rest of the world. The same argument can be made for heternormative or homophobic material... that because being gay is viewed negatively and even is illegal in some countries, anyone arguing Wikipedia should not be homophobic in its language is imposing their Western imperial concepts onto an international project. It just is rather silly.
Crossroads, the dictionaries you so love are products of a Western culture: the Oxford English dictionary does not go around asking Finish or Nigerian people what "woman" means to them, nor do English dictionaries examine the literature of non-English-speaking cultures, for quite obvious reasons. I would expect a British English dictionary to conform British concepts and language usage, though it helps when they explain when and why Americans talk and write wrongly. I don't think there is even the slightest evidence that Wikipedia is a "culturally neutral encyclopedia" but if it were, would you advocate we ditch our imperialistic dictionaries? -- Colin° Talk 11:15, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
Crossroads, wrt dictionary definitions, Man is defined as "An adult male human" which I'm sure you are happy with and would use in your own writing. But the second definition is "A human regardless of sex or age; a person." Oh dear. While that's a definition we have to accept in order to understand hundreds of years of English literature, and a fair amount of contemporary writing and speech, it is unlikely to be an acceptable use of the word in Wikipedia's voice. The fourth definition "The human race; mankind" is not just anyone but everyone. Even worse! It seems we have "erased women" entirely. Typically only one dictionary meaning is valid at any one time, and in writing there may be confusion or even deliberate ambiguity between two definitions (the basis of all puns). The existence of a definition tells us little more than that is how some people use (have used) the word in some context. It is still up to us if we want to use it that way for ourselves. -- Colin° Talk 18:02, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
As for whether the authors are "gender critical", I'm reluctant to put labels on people but their writing certainly falls into that category. One of the authors also wrote Sex, gender and gender identity: a re-evaluation of the evidence. In both articles the authors clearly distance themselves from an ideology or belief that they do not share. Both "queer theory" and "gender identity" get put into scare quotes. They are concepts dreamt up by other people, and are attacked for being quite obviously ridiculous (in their view). It is one thing to briefly make a sympathetic remark about a people-group, but that doesn't mean they accept them or their ideas. -- Colin° Talk 11:15, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
One of the more useful parts of the paper is the list of where people have made mistakes or introduced inaccuracies or confusion. The authors and Crossroads both view this list as evidence the whole approach is misguided and should be abandoned. But I see it as information from which we can learn. The biggest problem with the former use is that the list was not created neutrally. It very much represents the output of a lot of work collecting examples and then selecting only those that have problems. The list does not include cases for which a "desexed" approach was technically just fine. To give an example close to home, this very encyclopaedia is full of mistakes made by unqualified amateurs (and by those qualified but foolish in other regards!) As they say, Wikipedia shouldn't work, but it does. All of us could easily list mistakes editors have made transcribing facts from source to article. That doesn't mean we must give up and go hire the authors of the sources instead. A similar example could be where the popular press make mistakes reporting on medical issues. Again, all of us can find many examples (there are whole blogs devoted to how newspapers like the Daily Mail distort medical stories) and while some of them just represent human ignorance and make one wonder what they teach in school, many of those examples are useful to learn from. The same kind of statistical misunderstandings, for example, are often made, and we need to both avoid making them ourselves and write in a way that our readers avoid making them. But I have no intention of giving up my Guardian subscription in favour of a Lancet one. -- Colin° Talk 16:17, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
The AMA Style guide above says "Adolescents are persons age 13 through 17 years. They may also be referred to as teenagers or as adolescent boys or adolescent girls, depending on context. Adults are persons 18 years or older and should be referred to as men or women"
.
According to
ONS Conception and Fertility Rates, there were nearly 15,000 conceptions in England and Wales to those under 18 in 2019. And according to
ONS Births by Parent's Characteristics, there were 3,600 births in 2020 in England and Wales to those under 18 (and 4,500 to those age 18, many of whom would be under 18 when they conceived).
WHO says "In some African countries 30–40% of all adolescent females experience motherhood before the age of 18"
and "25– 35% of adolescent girls in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Nepal begin childbearing as early as 17 years".
That's a lot of "people" who are by definition "girls" and are being excluded by the use of the word "woman" when considering aspects of pregnancy.
I don't know if this helps or hinders the case for including trans and nonbinary people. Teenage mothers are another disadvantaged and stigmatised group, and teenage pregnancy is regarded in our countries as a negative thing. I guess the teenager may prefer to be regarded as a grown up "woman", rather than a "girl". Is that the case? But this awkwardness where neither "girl" nor "woman" seem accurate may be enlightening if we look at Wikipedia articles and professional literature about teenage (or adolescent) pregnancy.
The lead of
teenage pregnancy says "Teenage pregnancy, also known as adolescent pregnancy, is
pregnancy in a
female under the age of 20, according to the
WHO"
. I looked up the source. It says "The term “adolescent” is often used synonymously with “teenager”. In this sense “adolescent pregnancy” means pregnancy in a woman aged 10–19 years. In most statistics the age of the woman is defined as her age at the time the baby is born. Because a considerable difference exists between a 12- or 13-year-old girl, and a young woman of say 19, authors sometimes distinguish between adolescents aged 15–19 years, and younger adolescents aged 10–14 years."
They sometimes use "woman" to cover an age range that includes children and adults but do use "girl" if the age range is entirely sub-18. I note our lead does not "STICKTOSOURCES" here, as the source says "woman", not "female". I'm probably not alone in finding the source wording uncomfortable. I suspect "pregnancy in a woman aged 10–19 years" would not last long on Wikipedia, with editors rightly feeling that a 10-year-old is a girl.
The article and literature is comfortable using the phrases "pregnant teenager" and "adolescent pregnancy". There is nobody jumping up and down about how ridiculous it is to use gender-neutral terms "teenager" or "adolescent", nobody complaining that these girls have been desexed. Of course, the articles do use the words "girl" and "women", so they aren't entirely gender-neutral and it would be impossible for them to be so. But it shows that one can write gender-neutral sentences about this topic. Perhaps here the vital attribute in those sentences is that the person is under 20 and pregnant, and not that they are female or identify as a woman. There is a connection with Zimman's comment above that at times, the fact that the subject is described with a gendered/sexed term isn't being asserted, it isn't important, and could then be described instead with gender-neutral language with no loss or change of meaning. -- Colin° Talk 10:44, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
There is nobody jumping up and down about how ridiculous it is to use gender-neutral terms "teenager" or "adolescent", nobody complaining that these girls have been desexed.Well, would you agree that these terms are much more common in sources about teenage pregnancy, proportionately speaking, than "pregnant people" is in sources about pregnancy in general? That right there is the reason - people can see that "pregnant teenager" is emphasizing the age, whereas "pregnant person" is removing sex where normally it would be mentioned. Crossroads -talk- 05:23, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
There are several comments above about what dictionaries say. So here's one, taken from The American Heritage Medical Dictionary (2007):
From here, we decode the other words, also from this dictionary:
They don't have an entry for "human", but fortunately that doesn't seem to be in dispute.
This set of definitions appears to encompass cis women, trans women, trans men, and female-bodied non-binary adults. One interpretation of this definition is that a woman is any "fully developed and mature human that produces ova". Another is that a woman is any "fully developed and mature human with characteristics of the sex that bears young". Since one of the examples is "female fashions", these characteristics could be social. But the unspecified characteristics could also be biological, with the result that anyone with a female body could also be included. In short, this medical dictionary does not let us say with certainty that woman excludes any adult except cis men.
I have looked at several medical dictionaries; few define woman, and this is the only one I've found that defines both woman and female. One edition of Segen's, for example, defines woman but not female; I believe that the most recent version defines neither. I was surprised to see one that defines female in terms of gender instead of sex(!): "In humans, the gender that produces oocytes and bears the young" (from Farlex 2012).
My initial conclusions: There are multiple definitions, they don't maintain the sex–gender distinction, and different dictionaries do not fully agree with each other. If you were to write "This article uses the term woman in compliance with Segen's", you've provided no clarity. Also, there is no medical dictionary that always excludes trans folks from being a woman or a female.
In the end, I don't think that "follow the dictionary" will be a productive approach. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:27, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
I'll clarify my viewpoint on dictionaries after some confusion under #Guardian and following from #Analysis (Crossroads). My point isn't that we start with definitions and then regulate all article text under those definitions. Rather, my point was in response to the idea that we should use terms like "pregnant people" and "people with cervixes" because "women" supposedly refers to a gender identity only nowadays. As can be seen in this section, those sections, and in pretty much all dictionaries (medical ones being especially relevant for our purposes), though, the definition about being the female sex (as seen by checking those same sources under "female") is still current and is either the most prominent or listed solely.
As I said: "As with very many words, it can have different meanings in different contexts....If one were to take a dogmatic 'no, now "woman" always means a gender identity', then our language lacks a word for "adult people of the female sex" - quite an oversight! And earlier, use of alternative desexed terms had been justified on the grounds that readers will supposedly know who is meant by 'people with a cervix' or 'pregnant people' - but if that is so, they definitely understand what is meant by 'cervical cancer happens in X% of women'."
My central position is that we should not encourage editors to write about these things in ways the sources being cited do not. Replacing "women" with "people with vaginas" or whatever when the source says no such thing is not warranted because the meaning of "women" can be in reference to the female sex. Unless one wants to claim all the dictionaries are wrong, that is simply true. And allowing random editors to enforce solely a gender identity definition regardless of context is permitting advocacy and is opening a Pandora's box of numerous, reoccurring, and unresolvable disputes. Crossroads -talk- 06:19, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
"because "women" supposedly refers to a gender identity only nowadays"or
'no, now "woman" always means a gender identity'. (my emphasis) Looks like you have been furiously fighting a strawman. -- Colin° Talk 08:53, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
I've been thinking about how we got into this mess where Crossroads thought we, as editors and participants in this discussion, were suggesting that "woman" only had a gendered meaning and not a sexed meaning. I'm reminded also of when Crossroads got upset when I suggested our articles are written in a way that was "trans-exclusionary" or "denied their existence". Because I think Crossroads is primarily focused on what editors (and our sources) meant when they wrote a sentence. And I have at times been describing what some of our readers understand when they read our sentences. They are two different points of view, and for communication to be successful we should try to match them if possible.
Consider for example the debate about
Master/slave (technology). I'm old enough to remember configuring one of the hard discs in my computer as "master" and the other as "slave". I'm sure this topic has been discussed on Wikipedia but I don't know where. Some readers will find that terminology offensive and an example of systemic unthinkingly racist colonial language, etc, etc. I can go to my dictionary and find definition of "slave" as #3 "a device (such as the printer of a computer) that is directly responsive to another"
or in another dictionary #7 "A machine or component controlled by another machine or component."
or another dictionary #5a "a device that is controlled by or that duplicates the action of another similar device (the master device)"
. None of those definitions cause offense. But there are other definitions: "a person held in forced servitude"
and "One who is owned as the property of someone else, especially in involuntary servitude"
and "a person legally owned by another and having no freedom of action or right to property"
. And those definitions remind many readers of historical and ongoing injustice of the most grievous kind. Now we can claim all we like that when we as editors write "master/slave" or when our sources write "master/slave" they are referring to a computer protocol and not entertaining racist thoughts or seeking to cause offense. We might even argue that those who are offended are deliberately using the wrong definition of the word. I don't think those arguments are strong. Indeed many issues arise when a privileged or majority group fail to see or appreciate the concerns of a disadvantaged or minority group.
Another example could be "man". One dictionary has "1 An adult male human. 2 A human regardless of sex or age; a person."
. Another has "1 an individual human // especially : an adult male human"
. A third has "1 A man is an adult male human being. 2 Man and men are sometimes used to refer to all human beings, including both males and females. Many people prefer to avoid this use.
Editors with those first two dictionaries could try hard to claim their sexist language was perfectly fine according to the dictionary, though the third dictionary makes things a little harder (but certainly not impossibly hard -- we have MOS discussions where dictionaries marking terms as problematic or offensive has not convinced some participants).
So when our sources write "pregnant women" and we write "pregnant women", we can argue that here they and we are using the sexed definition, where "women" is anyone with a uterus, carrying a baby. That definition does not exclude trans men. But for some readers, the gendered meaning will be prioritised in their mind. For them, we have excluded trans men (who are "men", not "women") and have been "trans-exclusionary" in our writing.
We can jump up and down and claim "I'm not be racist" / "I'm not being sexist" / "I'm not excluding trans men"... look look, "the dictionary agrees with me!" Too many MOS discussions take that position, where somehow the editor has to become convinced about the language change or language problem and agree that it is rational and correct for them. It's all "I" "I" "I". But language change isn't always rational or sensible, and it isn't up to us as writers to agree with it, only to recognise it and try our best. Once we press the [Publish changes] button, it is what our readers think that matters most. -- Colin° Talk 11:24, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
language change isn't always rational or sensible, and I certainly agree, but from that I conclude that this is precisely why Wikipedia should not permit change to its language to new styles unless and until such styles are the norm. The only alternatives are fad chasing and/or writing in ways that few sources do, which is likely to lead to us writing in ways that are not
rational or sensible. Good changes will win out in the end, and then we can change accordingly. Crossroads -talk- 05:57, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
"I see no other way to understand this other than a claim that the meaning of "women" is solely gender-identity-based now". This seems to be your impression and it is now clear you have been attacking that idea (that nobody else here has) with your attempts to bring dictionaries into the discussion. I don't know why you didn't just come out with this straight away, rather than keep asking us to read dictonaries.. don't you remember I kept asking you why?
The same progressives who push for pregnant people have no problem saying “Black Lives Matter”—and in fact decry the right-wing rejoinder that “all lives matter.” Yet, hopefully, all lives do matter—and about half of the people shot by U.S. police are white. So why insist on Black? Because the phrase is designed to highlight police racism, as well as the disproportionate killing of Black men in particular. Making the slogan more “inclusive” also makes it useless for political campaigning. Pregnant people does the same. The famous slogan commonly attributed to the second-wave activist Florynce Kennedy—“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”—would be totally defanged if it were made gender-neutral. And if we cannot talk about, say, the Texas abortion law in the context of patriarchal control of women’s bodies, then framing the feminist case against such laws becomes harder.I venture that there are far more readers who perceive this negatively far more than even know a pregnant non-binary person (remember that many such persons would find that pregnancy exacerbates dysphoria). And this is to say nothing of the fact that many, frankly, strongly disagree with the idea of defining womanhood as a gender identity and disconnected from sex. We may personally disagree with them, but that is a deeply held belief that, in this analysis where "offense" is being considered, does have to be accounted for. There are much better ways to cover transgender pregnancy.
Lastly, I'm a younger reader, and I very much notice it. This idea that Millennials or Gen Z are all talking like this now is blown way out of proportion by older activists who wish to present it as inevitable and 'the right side of history" This is a straw man argument. I have yet to see someone actually express this view in these terms. — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 16:46, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
we must also accept our word choices have an effect that we take responsibility for.Crossroads -talk- 04:16, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
One reason is that many of the new terms come across as dehumanising. As the Lancet discovered, many people—trans men as much as anyone else—dislike being described as collections of ambulatory body-parts and secretions.The Telegraph:
activists suggesting the term is “unhelpful” for broader debates about inclusivity.Crossroads -talk- 05:15, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Sadly, Colin, that was not even the most frustrating comment Crossroads made on gender identity issues within a one-hour period, as I noted here. See also the prior context for his comment, discussed here. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:47, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Values-based reasons to use "pregnant women" have been noted repeatedly elsewhere on this page: Great, @ Crossroads. Can you give me a bullet list of the reasons? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 02:14, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
The same progressives who push for pregnant people have no problem saying “Black Lives Matter”—and in fact decry the right-wing rejoinder that “all lives matter.” Yet, hopefully, all lives do matter—and about half of the people shot by U.S. police are white. So why insist on Black? Because the phrase is designed to highlight police racism, as well as the disproportionate killing of Black men in particular. Making the slogan more “inclusive” also makes it useless for political campaigning. Pregnant people does the same. The famous slogan commonly attributed to the second-wave activist Florynce Kennedy—“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”—would be totally defanged if it were made gender-neutral. And if we cannot talk about, say, the Texas abortion law in the context of patriarchal control of women’s bodies, then framing the feminist case against such laws becomes harder.
you'd have a hard time getting the community to agree values in ignorance of the end-effect of their choice wrt gender languageand
on a political hot topic culture war like this one, having a wide community discussion would be about as productive as a Twitter storm. If we can't even decided whether ships are gender neutral, this topic has no hope.On that note, I'd say that if the community can hardly decide not to gender ships, degendering the actual male or female body is extremely unlikely. Crossroads -talk- 06:04, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
wethat reads
"pregnant peopleand perceives
implicationswhile having
reactions. In some parts of Canada for example, the term is used, nobody seems confused and nobody seems to mind. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:48, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
Clayoquot's list of values are (at least in their single-word expression) things we might all agree are good to have., the same is true for WAID's list of values. I agree that tradition, which I didn't think of putting on my list, is valuable to many of us at least on a subconcious level. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 15:06, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
Nobody reads "Foster care youth are more likely than their peers to become pregnant as teenagers." and turns purple at this liberal woke nonsense suggesting 15-year-old boys in care might become pregnant.and
…(nobody is saying it is statistically flawed or dishonest to represent pregnancy study results on "girls" as "teens" or "adolescents"…Since you have raised the question, I do think it is statistically flawed and dishonest. (Though I don’t
go purple, as far as I am aware.) My guess is that the sentence would get less reaction than the expression ‘pregnant people’ solely because of the arrangement of the words – if it said ‘pregnant youth’ the reaction might be different. Sweet6970 ( talk) 11:40, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
an idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning.And, whether we like it or not, "pregnant people" has different connotations than "pregnant teenagers". The former invokes transgender identity and pregnant men and has increased in use for that purpose. The latter is designed to emphasize age and was never meant to invoke pregnant boys - and so it doesn't. And that connotation of "pregnant people" happens regardless of whether one likes that connotation. Someone can be a big fan of the phrase, but if they read that in an article, they will still think we are making a claim about trans men.
making a racial or gender inequality argument. If "pregnant people" can be argued for because of "including marginalized people", "pregnant women" can be argued for because of "not marginalizing women's health". But, again, I'd rather not be arguing about values and I don't think the community would either. Crossroads -talk- 07:13, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
AFAICS, WAID only linked to a long list of possible "values" that people may have, not to a subset of values they think are motivating the desire to retain language that some may call heternormative or cisnormative., I was referring to WAID's comment from 16:43, 5 April 2022 in which she mentioned "including marginalized people" and "precision" as values. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 15:45, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion, and the term "Guardian reader" is used to imply a stereotype of liberal, left-wing or "politically correct") uses ‘pregnant women’ in articles about the UK, then the usage ‘pregnant people’ is not established in the UK, even in ‘politically correct’ circles.
tyranny of the majority. That’s a strong expression to use to refer to saying ‘pregnant women’ rather than ‘pregnant people’. I am not intending to tyrannise anyone, and I don’t see how I could do such a thing on Wikipedia. Sweet6970 ( talk) 16:15, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
To Colin: Thank you for clarifying that you are not accusing me of tyranny. I didn’t think you were, and I’m sorry if my post came across as accusing you of accusing me of tyranny……… I’m acquainted with the meaning you linked to, and I assumed that meaning was what you meant. What I was trying to convey was that I think your comparison is way over the top, and inapplicable in the context of editing Wikipedia.
You refer to ‘a dislike of the unfamiliar’. My view, which I have tried to express before, is that unfamiliar language is a barrier to readers’ understanding, so it should be avoided if possible. Where it’s not possible to write articles in a way which is ideal for everyone, I think we have to give precedence to the understanding of the majority, over the preference of any minority. Sweet6970 ( talk) 20:32, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
W.r.t. Colin's question on why "pregnant people" is more controversial than "pregnant teenagers": I could speculate on why, but I don't think the reasons or even the quality of reasons matter to editorial decision-making at Wikipedia. What I care as a Wikipedia editor about is choosing language that a broad section of the political spectrum uses when they are speaking to a general audience. The paths by which subcultures adopt different ways of speaking are complex and not always rational. The path doesn't matter. What matters from our perspective is where the path has led.
It's occurred to me that there are two questions: 1) Do we prefer to use language that is used across the political spectrum, avoiding language that most readers would associate with a very narrow segment of the political spectrum?, and 2) Which specific language forms/phrases are used by a very narrow segment of the political spectrum?
For clarity, I'm referring to language that people use when they are speaking/writing to a general audience. For instance, doctors might say to a transgender nonbinary female-bodied patient, "These are the symptoms of a heart attack in people who are assigned female at birth." The same doctors might not want to have a poster in their waiting room whose headline is "Heart Attack Symptoms in People who were Assigned Female at Birth". When addressing a transgender individual, "assigned female at birth" is something centrists and probably even some conservatives would say and be proud of saying. But they wouldn't want to say it in the headline of a poster for their waiting room.
I have followed this page enough to know that people can argue forever about whether "pregnant person" is used by a wide or narrow segment of the political spectrum. Have we gotten around to discussing question #1? What do people think of the principle of avoiding language that's strongly associated with a narrow segment of the political spectrum? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Clayoquot ( talk • contribs) 23:56, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
language that is used across the political spectrum, avoiding language that most readers would associate with a very narrow segment of the political spectrum. The (non-Scottish) census succeeded in this, by referring to sex registered at birth. This is a factual, objective criterion which avoids the politically-charged term ‘sex assigned at birth’ which is, also, probably unknown to many people.
Labelling of editors and negatively viewing their motivesgoes on already, and I think having a principle that we should use language which is generally accepted would avoid much of this. Sweet6970 ( talk) 12:13, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
'Because of the illness she described herself as "not the happiest of pregnant people", adding: "Lots of people have it far, far worse, but it was definitely a challenge."'-- you can't really get more Establishment than the royal family, and Kate was upper-middle-class, private school, aristocratic family Establishment before her marriage. So Wikipedia is more conservative than the Royal Family? -- Colin° Talk 13:06, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
Backlash from "gender critical feminists" in the UK may show up on a "News" tab, but I don't think that makes it news nor does it really help to define "acceptability". It seems to me that terms used in MEDRS sources for public communication are generally a better indicator, in this domain, than "terms to which nobody takes offense" - the latter offering a vanishingly short list for these topics IMO. Newimpartial ( talk) 18:28, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.Should we listen to someone who appears to be themselves hurtling towards a twitter ban? -- Colin° Talk 07:43, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
Seventy-eight percent (78%) of respondents wanted to receive hormone therapy at some point in their life, but only 49% of respondents have ever received it....A large majority of transgender men and women (95%) have wanted hormone therapy, compared to 49% of non-binary respondents. Transgender men and women were about five times more likely to have ever had hormone therapy (71%) than non-binary respondents (13%).The following pages discuss rates of receiving and of desire for various surgeries. Crossroads -talk- 03:18, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
"Although the intention was to recruit a sample that was as representative as possible of transgender people in the U.S., it is important to note that respondents in this study were not randomly sampled and the actual population characteristics of transgender people in the U.S. are not known. Therefore, it is not appropriate to generalize the findings in this study to all transgender people.".
'that online and paper surveys may reach transgender respondents with “vastly different health and life experiences.”'Their new survey for 2022, also online, has extra effort on
"reaching trans people who are least likely to be reached by an internet-based survey, due to race or ethnicity, income, age, geographic location and other life circumstances, such as being an immigrant"
Colin, I think you are also making assumptions that could get you in trouble
. From personal and anecdotal evidence, I think you are understating the relevance of gender-affirming interventions and of related physiology. First, stating that trans/nonbinary is primarily something that involves the mind of the person
is partly true but also importantly false: it is true in reflecting the defining attribute (gender identity), but false in that, even for many of us who are nonbinary and are not dysphoric, medical interventions are a key part of our sense of self, in a sense without parallel when being gay or bisexual
- there aren't any medical treatments that members of queer communities pursue as part of their sexual identities, the way many, many of us see medical interventions as following from our gender identities.
Second, I think you may also be assuming, wrongly, that sex assigned at birth is inherently a valid criterion for biomedical categorization while gender identity is not. I know that isn't literally what you are saying in your comparison - some trans people go on to have surgery or take hormones is a variation just like some cis women go on to take the pill or to have lots of babies
- but your overall tone (e.g., does "top surgery" change your fibre requirements?
) would tend to lend credence to those who want to see the physical/biological characteristics of AFAB people as one statistical set and those of AMAB people as another, within a straightforwardly bifurcated universe, while interpreting the differences between cis and trans people as essentially "involving the mind" and not the body. I think this is at best, unproven and at worst, profoundly misleading about real world trans and nonbinary populations.
Newimpartial (
talk)
11:55, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
"People assigned female at birth shouldn’t eat fewer than 1,200 calories a day and those assigned male at birth should stay above 1,500 calories.
"Women shouldn’t eat fewer than 1,200 calories a day and men should stay above 1,500 calories.
"sloppily replaced a typical term with "assigned X at birth" to be "inclusive" without actually taking care to be sure that it applied to trans people, ironically being sort of transphobic in assuming that a trans man is the same as a woman physiologically". In what way does the first sentence apply to trans people, but the second doesn't. I think your mind has assumed "Ah, 'people assigned female at birth' is one of those trans advocacy phrases so they are including trans people". But trans men are men, are they not, and trans women are women, are they not? So the second sentence suggests that a trans woman should not eat fewer than 1,200 calories a day. And it permits a trans man to eat 300 calories more. Is there any evidence that those assigned female at birth but who have a gender identity of male can enjoy 300 more calories with no ill effects on the waistline than those who are cis gender? You see, if we take your nit picking approach to this, there are potential problems with either sentence. (I suspect the calorie figures are related to body height and build, which more probably correlates to sex assigned at birth than it does to gender identity). Both statements have serious limitations in that they don't factor in health situations like pregnancy or old age. The latter sentence is not inclusive of those who are nonbinary, which make up around a third of the trans respondents in that 2015 US trans survey.
Re: "Language that's strongly associated with a very narrow segment of the political spectrum" - I'm going to dispute the premise a bit, so I thought it was worth quoting the relevant phrase at length. I don't think any of the terms we are talking about are themselves strongly associated
with any part of the political spectrum - it seems to me that any political/cultural salience of these terms arises from the context in which they are used.
As a non-MEDRS example, most of the times I see WP editors trying to insert "born female" or "female sex" into articles is in the BLPs of nonbinary and trans people, and inserting those phrases in that context is at the very least a culture war dogwhistle, and in many cases a rather more straightforward expression of anti-trans sentiment. So in this context, that usage seems strongly associated with a particular stance.
On the other hand, in Canadian media (and I have previously produced a long list of links on this), "assigned male/female at birth" is the standard way in which nonbinary or trans people's pre-transition sex assignment is discussed. So in this context, and based also on how these sources are actually read, "AFAB" and "AMAB" do not seem to be strongly associated with any politics.
But I really do think this depends on context. I can read a cis biography on Wikipedia that uses terms like "female sex" without thinking that any POV editing or political intention went into composing or editing it. And if I saw "assigned female at birth" used universally in coverage of the news - outside of contexts where sex assignment is actually the relevant concept - I would wonder whether some kind of agenda was at work.
So in MEDRS issues as well, I don't see how we could identify "Language that's strongly associated with a very narrow segment of the political spectrum"
except in the context of much more specific domains of language use.
Newimpartial (
talk)
17:55, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
Aside from the difficulty of determining political language (and the potential abuse of that by those who hate something) I'm puzzled at the idea that replacing "woman" with "assigned female at birth" in an article on heart attacks, say, would need any kind of new rule. AFAICS, the "assigned XXX at birth" phrase is only used when discussion gender/trans issues. As with Crossroads below, can you find any example of any mainstream publications that have adopted this language as their method of communicating to a general audience about "women"? If not, then why bring politics into play as the means to prevent it. As Newimpartial notes, and we have seen in our publications, the use of "anyone with a prostate" or "assigned female at birth" is occasionally necessary when one is explicitly highlighting a trans issue. I don't think any publication uses it as a way of referring to women outside of that. Do they? -- Colin° Talk 11:47, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
can't find anyonedoing it, then you agree that we shouldn't either. Then it gets equated with bizarrely written stuff like
low dermal spectral emissivity. But if even one general-public-focused source does, then it becomes a matter of personal editorial style choice regardless of what the particular sources being cited say.
Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?[my emphasis] [28] Sweet6970 ( talk)
I am concerned that you don’t seem to be concerned that you know that the census asked for sex registered at birth, and yet you have still referred to it as asking about sex assigned at birth. These terms are completely different.
And I have already said [29] that sex registered at birth is an objective criterion – it has an undisputed factual meaning, whatever your views on gender. And I have already said [30] that you have referred to the joke made by Boris Johnson. The joke was political, and was aimed at Keir Starmer. The joke would not have worked if Mr Johnson had referred to sex ‘registered’ at birth. Sweet6970 ( talk) 22:27, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
This language was described earlier as being associated with a very narrow segment of the political spectrum, and therefore to be banned.By this I clearly meant when describing people in general. Sources on average talk about trans topics differently, by necessity, than general topics. Crossroads -talk- 05:49, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
there is no process by which sex is assigned. Like the Canadian sources, the UK government appears to recognize "assigned" as a synonym for "registered" in this context. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:19, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
That doesn't seem to be the case in the UK government source I just linked. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:28, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Is it still typical for parents to go to the registry office?I know in Northern Ireland, from the birth of my nephew, that the registry office paperwork is included in a "new mother/father/parent pack", alongside some other useful pieces of paperwork, nappies, and the like that a new parent will need. That form can then be posted or hand delivered to a registry office and a birth certificate can be ordered after. As far as I'm aware, only one hospital here has a registrar office on site ( Downe Hospital).
It makes it sound as if some bureaucrat…..I was not saying that bureaucrats assign sex to babies. Sweet6970 ( talk) 09:56, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Colin and WhatamIdoing:
-Suppose on an article on women in society, such as Women in the United States, someone replaced each instance of "women" with " womxn". Should this be reverted, and if so, why? If not, why not?
-Suppose that we added to the MOS text that editors may choose to write "women" or "womxn". Is this a bad idea? Why or why not?
Crossroads -talk- 05:24, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
I read through a bit of a proposed law recently. One section of the law affects "children". The written term in the law is "children"; the word used by all of the politicians (that I've seen) is "children". As you'd expect, the word "children" is defined in the law. As you might not expect, the definition is: any "person under the age of 18".
If you were writing about this law for some reason, would you write about:
The first option chooses STICKTOSOURCE over educational value (e.g., over readers discovering that it applies to 17 year olds). The second option chooses readers who understand technical/legal jargon over those who don't (e.g., over many of those teenagers discovering that it applies to them). The third option is clear enough – nobody will read that and believe that 17 year olds are exempt – but it says what the source (explicitly) means rather than using the language of the source itself, so it could be accused of not sticking closely enough to the sources. (I suspect that the politicians themselves don't really want any of the 17 year olds among their constituents to notice that the politicians have decided that they're all a bunch of children – children, by the way, that this particular country is very happy to have enlist in their military, but still "children" in the eyes of this law.) Under "something else", I suppose we could say children and add a note saying that "for the purpose of this article, the word children means all children plus some non-children".
Which would you choose? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:16, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
would you repeat "any person under the age of 18" in every sentence?It depends on the context.
I don't think that we can take your advice to say that the term is being used unusually, unless we have a source that says this (and I haven't seen any. The media seem focused on more fundamental flaws).That is why I said
If the definitions in the text of the law, or the supplementary explainers, or in politician statements in media made in support of or against it, state that "children" is being used very and possibly unusually broadly. If the sourcing isn't there, then we can't state as such.
Alice in Wonderland stunt. Their approach seems reasonable, and in fact, similar to
The top of pregnancy could say "in a biologically female human", and the rest of the article could proceed on with whatever language the editors thought best, because once you got past the first sentence, it should be entirely clear what those words referred to.in WhatamIdoing’s post of 01:19, 28 March 2022. Sweet6970 ( talk) 14:47, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'
Do you believe that the community would support a ban on using gender-neutral language when writing about sex-specific but not trans-specific content? Imagine that there was an RFC that proposed something like "Never use the term pregnant people or other gender-neutral or gender-eliding phrases when discussing matters of gynecology and obstetrics, except when unavoidable (e.g., direct quotations) or explicitly writing about trans-specific subjects. Always specify females, women, or girls; do not use phrases such as people with gynecological cancer, a person recovering from childbirth, or those who could become pregnant".
Would you personally support such a rule? Do you think such a proposal would be accepted? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 16:43, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
We haven't really discussed "gender-eliding phrases". One of the midwifery editorials warned against eliminating the person altogether, but that's not the same as having some sentences that don't refer to gender. Perhaps you mean something else, but here's what I took it to mean.... Look at the lead of pregnancy if I "fixed" all the "gender-eliding" in green ink.
the woman carryingmore than one offspring, such as with twins. Pregnancy usually occurs by
a woman havingsexual intercourse, but can also occur through
the woman undergoingassisted reproductive technology procedures. A pregnancy may end in
the woman having alive birth, a spontaneous miscarriage, an induced abortion, or a stillbirth. Childbirth typically occurs around 40 weeks from the start of the
woman'slast menstrual period (LMP). This is just over nine months ( gestational age). When using fertilization age, the length is about 38 weeks. An embryo is the term for the developing offspring during the first eight weeks following fertilization (i.e. ten weeks' gestational age), after which the term fetus is used until birth. Signs and symptoms of early pregnancy
in a womanmay include missed periods, tender breasts, morning sickness (nausea and vomiting), hunger, and frequent urination.
A woman may confirm her pregnancy
a woman becoming pregnant
Other than if someone actively removed the woman/person out of the entire topic, I don't think you could tell the difference between "gender-eliding" and merely good writing that avoids repeating the obvious. -- Colin° Talk 18:49, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
'“Being pregnant, giving birth and breastfeeding are the only time in my life that I felt a proper awareness that I am female,” another woman wrote recently. “I don’t mean in a gender identity sense, I mean in a ‘I have a female body and am doing something only a person with a female body can ever do’ kind of sense.”'That writer might have used "female body" but some do feel that creating and feeding that new life is very much an identifying feature of what it means to be a "woman". Perhaps it is a greater problem that our Wikipedia article neglects women not through word choices but because it really isn't talking about them at all. -- Colin° Talk 21:19, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
female(for humans) as though it referred to biology and not society/culture isn't particularly well-attested in sources, isn't notably applied in the corpus of reliable sources, and is for all practical purposes a neologism. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:59, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
comes out of scholarship. Outside of medical/biology sources, I doubt that these particular usages can be discerned at all - certainly sociological and historical literature continues to use the adjective "female" to refer to gender. As far as MEDRS are concerned, as well, while there is now an accumulation of literature warning researchers and writers to be attentive to the distinction between sex and gender, it would be radically premature IMO to conclude that scholars had settled on "female" as meaning only biological sex. If anything, I would say that the use of "female" (and especially the neologistic noun "females" for humans) has developed in certain pockets of non-scholarly writing rather than within scholarship. Newimpartial ( talk) 18:28, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
As a CC contributor to the Sex and gender distinction article, I support this content. Newimpartial ( talk) 21:25, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
Listing some major general-public facing websites that deal with health and medicine. I'm not judging the content of these websites, and don't claim they are reliable sources (or even reliable reads). I'm listing them because they are big, show up in google search results, and have health information as their business model rather than, say, trans rights, or racial equality.
Livestrong.com would appear to be our first example of a general-public facing health website that is widely adopting trans inclusive language. Their article Why We Use the Words We Use and What They Mean to Us explains their values and mission influence the choices they have made. They accept they will make mistakes. They also acknowledge the need to use the language of sources at times (and in quotes) which might not align with their preferred choice.
They appear to use a wide range of language choices available. The most obvious is saying "people assigned female at birth" rather than "women" for many topics. But they also include "pregnant people", "menstruating person", "people with endometriosis". -- Colin° Talk 12:50, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Healthline.com is another general-public facing health website that appears to have widely adopted trans inclusive language. Their website emphasises it provides "health and wellness advice that’s inclusive and rooted in medical expertise". They do this through the use of Conscious language, which is described as "the intentional use of words and terms to create empathetic, inclusive, and non-stigmatizing content". Their editorial process "prioritiz[es] accuracy, empathy, and inclusion". As a result, there is frequent use of "assigned female at birth", "pregnant people", "if you have a vulva", "if you have male genitals", etc. They also have a lot of articles on gender and trans issues, which AFAICS are entirely supportive. -- Colin° Talk 21:58, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
Verywell.com is another similar website, which I can't link to as it is on the blacklist. Their "2022 Diversity and Inclusion Pledge" commits them to inclusive content, citing examples covering ethnic diversity, sexuality diversity and gender diversity. They have an "Anti-Bias Review Board" which is helping to make "pregnancy and menstruation content gender-inclusive". A quick search shows their content currently uses less such language compared to Healthline. -- Colin° Talk 21:58, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
Webmd.com is yet another public health website. Its editorial policy does not mention inclusion or diversity. Although they have a few articles about trans gender and other genderqueer topics, which are positive about the topic, they don't have much. Searching for "trans" gets autocompleted to "trans fats" typing "nonbinary" has nothing though really wants me to read about "non-hodgkin lymphoma. -- Colin° Talk 21:58, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
The England/Wales census asked "What is your sex? Male/Female" and then asked "Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?" The Sex question asked respondents to use the value on their birth certificate or Gender Recognition Certificate. For the Scottish census, it said "If you are transgender the answer you give can be different from what is on your birth certificate. You do not need a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). If you are non-binary or you are not sure how to answer, you could use the sex registered on your official documents, such as your passport." This ability to "self identify" is controversial and legally challenged by a feminist group, which lost. The Scottish follow-on question is different, and asks "Do you consider yourself to be trans, or have a trans history". Both follow-on questions were optional, but the sex question was not.
We have seen studies defining groups as "assigned female at birth". In the UK, one can change one's sex with a GRC (and on the Scottish census, don't even need that). Much of our discussion has focused on gender, and perhaps assumed sex was fixed and related firmly with binary biology. But if that were so, we'd see "women" replaced by "females" perhaps, and that isn't what is going on. Instead the complicated "Assigned (or registered) female at birth" is used. -- Colin° Talk 13:12, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
This turned up on my watchlist today. The change had edit summary "pregnant people" -> "pregnant women", we're not yet at the point where grammatical gender is absent from English. The previous text existed since 2019, when Doc James made this edit replacing "obstetric patients" with "pregnant people" (no edit summary). As far as I can see, this is the first time that has been challenged. The source dates from 1961 and speaks of "500 cases", "a series of 500 unselected consecutive anaesthetics", "500 patients", and "500 unselected consecutive cases of vaginal deliveries". So the source is gender-neutral as was the longstanding text. I wonder what editors make of today's edit. -- Colin° Talk 19:52, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Methoxyflurane is no longer a drug of use in obstetric practice.So, outcomes from its use in obstetrics, gastrointestinal or otherwise, are not relevant and should not be presented as though this is something that still goes on. Crossroads -talk- 06:17, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
"Another misleading edit summary. "Pregnant people" is the stable version of this article, and has been syntactically and grammatically standard in English for hundreds of years. Wikipedia doesn't care about your personal opinions when they are not backed up by sources or policies.". You then reverted Newimpartial, taking the text back to the previous (but not longstanding) "pregnant women". Your edit summary
'Per consensus at the WP:Village Pump, "the terminology in articles, especially medical articles, is dependent upon the support of reliable sources and it is expected that editors would use the same terminology presented in said sources." The source does not use "pregnant people". Searching Google Scholar & PubMed shows that the actual standard terminology in sources is "pregnant women"'.Now, I don't understand this. It is interesting you keep quoting that sentence as though it is gospel when it is in fact nothing more than the personal opinion of one editor and their own interpretation of what some of the 16 or so participants at a 4-day brief discussion said. We have already discussed how it is not in fact true and never has been true, so it would be good perhaps to get that idea overturned more generally (i.e. not a discussion about trans issues, but to correct the idea by some conservative language advocates that we are slave to our sources when it comes to word choices). That aside, you then throw that in the bin. The source does not use "pregnant women" either. I quoted all the terms it uses. You decided in your second sentence to invent a rule that Wikipedia is constrained to use "standard terminology" to describe men or women, and that you personally have determined this through analysis of Google Scholar and PubMed that the Standard According to Crossroads is and will forever be "pregnant women". I am quite boggled.
"The best practice is to research the most reliable sources on the topic and summarize what they say in your own words". Do I need to take the "in your own words" bit and enlarge it to 24pt flashing red letters? Or the lead of WP:OR, which says
"Rewriting source material in your own words while retaining the substance is not considered original research."But mostly we have WP:STYLEVAR, which says
"When either of two styles are acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change."and that
"Edit-warring over style... is never acceptable". -- Colin° Talk 15:44, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
grammatical gender, which has nothing whatsoever to do with their edits on any construal of the prior or the proposed language. Kehoe's second doubles down on "grammatical gender" and then raises a non sequitur point about "
He gave birth", which has nothing to do either with grammatical gender or with the article text in question. Crossroads then based his rationale on using
the same terminology presented in said sourceswhile reverting to Kehoe's text that was not based in any way on the article's sources. Mendacious edit summaries like these are a direct violation of the first bullet of WP:SUMMARYNO and ought always to be reverted as disruptive when they are made. BOLD edits that offer bogus rationales should never be accepted on principle. Newimpartial ( talk) 03:46, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Re: they show that "pregnant people" carries the exact connotations of pregnant men that I said it did
- the summaries show no such thing. They simply show that Aidan has a prejudice preconception about the term "pregnant people" that you happen to share, so you think it proves something. Complete, illogical, illiterate nonsense.
Just to be clear, I wasn't "complaining" about language being or not being in the sources, I was calling you out on using "source-based language" as a rationale for an edit where you reverted to BOLD language that wasn't in the source given. You just can't accept that as what you actually did, can you? Newimpartial ( talk) 04:29, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
In a series of 500 consecutive obstetric patients, Boisvert and Hudon observed vomiting in 12 (4.8%) patients during or after administration of methoxyflurane anesthesia.
"In a series of 500 consecutive pregnant people, vomiting occurred in 12 (4.8%) during or after administration of methoxyflurane anesthesia."
four editorsthat
focused ... on the word that offended them, but if so you have made a false statement - my edits were based on the false and misleading edit summaries; I wasn't
offendedby any
words.
stronger signal ... that further reverts would not be allowedseems to me, ahem, unproven, and also an attempt to "legalize" a part of our WP:EW that relies on inductive rather than deductive reasoning. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:35, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
unexplained unsourced POV edit, or something. I do have an underlying objection to the POV/POINT nature of the edits I reverted, but e.g. if there had been a coherent rationale presented in the summary, I would have opened a discussion while possibly reverting per IMPLICITCONSENSUS. My actual reverts, however, in absence of honest and policy-relevant edit summaries, were motivated in the first instance by the summaries given; per WP:NOTSUICIDE, I am not in the habit of opening Talk discussions in such cases.
style(in the sense of STYLEVAR and the MOS) that would require or even encourage the use of "people" or "women" or pretty much anything else, except that per MEDMOS we don't use "patients" or "you" - and STYLEVAR doesn't apply to that, either, because those are defined as "unacceptable", rather than documenting multiple acceptable styles. Not all issues about article text are "style" issues in the sense of STYLEVAR, and this one ain't. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:24, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Do not confuse patient-group prevalence figures with those for the whole population that have a certain condition. For example: "One third of XYZ patients" is not always the same as "One third of people with XYZ", since many people with XYZ may not be seeking medical care.This case seems very similar. What this sorry saga shows is the importance of holding closely to our specific sources, and that substitutions that even experienced editors think are fine can actually have unnoticed problems. Crossroads -talk- 14:19, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
community supportfor interpolating phrases like "pregnant women", when those are absent in the specific sources used in an article, than there has been for interpolating phrases like
pregnant peoplewhen they do not reflect an article's sourcing. You keep invoking a "most sources" ghit shell-game that neither WP policy nor the community demonstrably support. And speaking of "behavioural issues", my successful filing against Maneesh - which I dare say has a higher WP:CONLEVEL than your VP discussion - was based in the first instance on Maneesh's edits to replace sourced and stable terms with unsourced
sex-specificlanguage in the same way that you just did. There is also an interesting parallel between your recent revert, which I linked above, and your edit-warring on Maneesh's behalf to remove sourced discussion of trans people's health conditions. I would even speculate that it was Manessh's POV crusade that
started this mess; the
evidence of community supportfor your WHATABOUTISM and your general defense of Maneesh's POV editing was, ahem, limited, while the eventual consensus was that such conduct was disruptive. Newimpartial ( talk) 14:30, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Style guides can advise and prohibit words too, and currently MOS does neither here- true, but that does not mean that every editorial choice not advised or prohibited by the MOS is therefore a matter of style, and subject to STYLEVAR. If an issue isn't discussed in the WP MOS or in a subject-specific MOS (as are, for example, the varieties of English), then I would expect at a minimum that an editor would be able to cite at least one recognized style authority before trying to invoke STYLEVAR - and in cases where some style authorities would mandate a specific approach and others would not, it would be wikilawyering to argue that "thou shalt not edit war over style" from the STYLEVAR guideline covers all cases where one editor chooses to invoke a style authority, as though by doing so they could impose a 1RR restriction. That simply isn't what STYLEVAR means, or what it's for. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:29, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Crossroads, a straw poll wants what it wants. That doesn't change the pattern of you doubling down on POV edits that I have reverted, without discussion or any policy-relevant justification. And of course you were there
for Maneesh - you were the first of a list of editors who shared the POV of the POV editor in question and who were unable to convince Admin that, in filing to have an editor removed who was disruptive in precisely the "sex-based" terminology issue we are now discussing, I was making an attempt to remove an opponent from the topic area
. The lengths to which you are willing to go not to recognize the community's failure to agree with you on a consistent basis (while repeatedly drawing attention to a few occasions where discussions were resolved to your satisfaction) is a truly impressive achievement in rationalization.
Newimpartial (
talk)
19:44, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
you can't base (your insertion of "pregnant women") on a VP discussion about the terminology used in the sources when "pregnant women" isn't used in the article's sources, which seems entirely germane to the current topic in detail. Later, you stated that
It is those seeking to enforce phrasings that are out of step with the rest of Wikipedia and the vast majority of MEDRS that have "behavioral" issues, but the Maneesh case is a direct example of the contrary (given your rather arbitrary declarations about what is or isn't "in step"). If you are under the impression that people making edits you like don't have behavioural issues but people making edits you don't like have them - which is what your comments communicate - well, that just isn't what the diffs show, as I have demonstrated. You can't just wander through the field of editor behaviour as though it were your personal flower garden, picking what you fancy, any more than you can perform any other exercise in Humpty-Dumpty terminological fiat, and expect for other editors simply to nod and go along with you.
two questions, I have stated (more clearly than usual, I think) why STYLEVAR does not apply to these cases. I have nothing to add on that score. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:09, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
an editor wrote a decent article. Wikipedia is by definition collaborative, and WP:OWNership is a bug, not a feature. The question is to what extent consistency is to be given weight against competing values, such as accuracy, accessibility, and felicity of prose. STYLEVAR can't be used to pre-judge the balance among those values, in any useful way - it is relevant mostly to aspects such as ENGVAR, DATEVAR and CITEVAR that, strongly as editors may care about them, are inherently somewhat arbitrary. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:46, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
affected people need to be described as women, patients, cases, or peopleis a simple "style" issue to which STYLEVAR might apply. We do have style guidance not to use "patients" or "cases" from MEDMOS, and the community gropes periodically towards norms on disability language, but questions about whether to describe people as people, by gender, by nationality or whatever else are in the first instance content issues, not style issues. (Although the current guidance about hyphenated nationality is found in the MOS, as is GENDERID, these both are clearly to resolve content issues as well, not only issues of style - and neither is left to STYLEVAR.) Pretending something is a style issue in order to deploy STYLEVAR strikes me as essentially disingenuous, and I would happily defend myself at 3RRN against anyone filing against me for a second revert against a clearly inappropriate language choice, regardless of the
first editor's preferences. Also, we don't have a general rule saying
"if you can't agree, then first editor wins"- this would only apply to one-versus-one disputes, even if it were true, and in WP:3RRNO cases it isn't any kind of a thing. Newimpartial ( talk) 21:06, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
manor
womanmust not be used, per GENDERID, I haven't noticed any MOS guidance about when we should use gendered vs. gender-neutral terms for individuals of known/specified gender (aside from GENDERID concerns). And while I have been around a great many of these discussions, I have literally never seen any participating editors make STYLEVAR/first-mover arguments of the kind discussed above.
larger groupsbeing more
arbitraryto describe, this is certainly the case. However, I would expect such questions to be decided (1) based on the sources and (2) according in the first instance to the salience of the descriptor - which is a content issue, not a style issue, IMO. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:41, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
I have to say, I'm not thrilled with the circularity of the internal anatomy of a female
. Human pregnancy is a concrete possibility for what is virtually a subset of those assigned female at birth, but it is not a clear, much less an overwhelming, majority of AFAB people. And I don't regard the question whether it is one in 15,000 pregnant people, one in 15,000 pregnant women, or one in 15,000 pregnant "females" as being any more a style question than it is a content question - since each of these formulations makes a slightly different claim and carries vastly different connotations. Likewise, whether the findings of a study are more accurately circumscribed by noting that the subjects were all American, all cisgender, or all college students is something for which I would rely much more on sources than on STYLEVAR.
Newimpartial (
talk)
05:17, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Human pregnancy is a concrete possibility for what is virtually a subset of those assigned female at birth, but it is not a clear, much less an overwhelming, majority of AFAB people- what I meant by
concretehere was, essentially, at a specific point in time. AFAB people who do not ovulate due to life stage or chemical inhibition have no
concrete possibilityof pregnancy, nor do (at least some) infertile people, nor celibate people, etc. The population for whom none of these things is true
is not a clear...majority of AFAB people, at least in Canada, which is my reference point.
concrete possibilitylanguage, not your
real possibilitylanguage. I don't think the statistical risks associated with pregnancy are best measured by
the percentage of humans that ever give birth during their lifetimes- but even if I did think that, that percentage was never what I was talking about in this discussion. I introduced the
concrete possibilitylanguage, you said you were
confusedby what I said, so I explained what I meant. Shouldn't that be the end of the digression?
between menarche and menopause(according to their age) barely scrapes by 50% at present, according to Statistics Canada, which validates my
not a clear...much less an overwhelming majoritylanguage, does it not? Even if you insist on counting people within that age range who do not ovulate for whatever reason, which I still believe to be the wrong methodology. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:41, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
"Human pregnancy only happens in humans that have the internal anatomy of a female."I don't see how that statement is at all influenced by how many AFAB are currently of fertile age in Canada. I still don't really know what the word "concrete" suggests. It seems that you are arguing about "could become pregnant today" and WAID's sentence was relevant to any point in their lives and wasn't claiming that it happens to many/most/nearly-all/very-few. -- Colin° Talk 13:06, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
WAID's "original sentence" was Human pregnancy only happens in humans that have the internal anatomy of a female.
I have two objections to that sentence - not to its truth-value, which is obvious, but to its appropriateness and relevance - but I'm sure I did not express these objections very clearly.
My first objection concerns the phrase humans that have the internal anatomy of a female
, which I regard as circular and not a helpful way to describe ovaries and a uterus (assuming this is what the phrase means). Even a female reproductive system
would be better, since that phrase has a non-circular referent.
My second objection is that, while pregnancy only happens to AFAB people (and maybe just maybe a miniscule proportion of non-AFAB intersex people? Maybe?) - at any point in time, roughly half of AFAB people do not experience ovulation and cannot possibly become pregnant (this is what I meant by "concrete possibility"). WAID seems inclined to break this into different subgroups, referring explicitly to people before menarche, post-menopausal people, and infertile people (the latter presumably including people who have had hysterectomies) but not wanting to count people whose ovulation is prevented by injection or other hormone treatment, for some reason.
Anyway, on the basic disagreement: to me, the point in time measure is more relevant than the lifetime measure, particularly since what we were talking about in the immediately preceding section was health risks among "pregnant females". It seems obvious to me that, in the first instance, the larger population relevant to those risks (but who are not actually pregnant) is "people who might become pregnant at a specified point in time", rather than "people who are fertile, might be fertile in the future or might have been fertile in the past". Maybe I am wrong about this, but I don't think I am obviously wrong in a way that would justify WAID's I am talking about...I am talking about
language - as though it were WAID's job to define what we had been talking about all along. I was objecting to WAID's sentence, and offering my reasons for that objection, however difficult these may have been to understand at a specified point in time. ;)
Newimpartial (
talk)
13:46, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
concrete possibilityfor someone who has had a hysterectomy, for example? Newimpartial ( talk) 15:04, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
humans that have the internal anatomy of a female, and I am saying (1) that this is not the best label for any population, and (2) that the population it does refer to is not the relevant population, precisely because it includes people
who had a hysterectomy before ever becoming pregnant, along with those who just plain don't want children, among many other categories of irrelevant people. This is precisely my point. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:08, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
anatomy of a female" constructions are unlikely to gain traction, since the sources don't use them.
a quick way of saying kind of "those with the anatomy we associate with the female sex"doesn't exist for some contexts, in any practical sense. Meanwhile, I gave the Olympic categories as an example of a place where any unsourced paraphrase for the category is probably counterproductive, because the actual categories themselves are complexly constructed.
Well, I'm not going to defend the label "neologism" except to say that, for me, it evokes one of the problems with using "females" for humans. But the underlying fact here is that "female", for humans, is not widely enough understood as a term for "sex, not gender" that it could be used that way in article space uncontroversially and without explanation, especially as a replacement for terms used in sources. Like anything else, of course, it can be used with sourced explanations when neutrality can be achieved in doing so. (The same is true for "women", "people" and other terms.) Newimpartial ( talk) 13:39, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
the attempt to use "females" for humans as an attempt to designate sex rather than gender is what I understand to be a neologism(emphasis not even added - it was there already). Newimpartial ( talk) 16:44, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
we speak here purely of biology. That isn't a consistent connotation in any ENGVAR of which I am aware, and - for reasons I believe I have already set out - I don't think editors or readers benefit from the pretense that this is the generally understood signification of these words, in the context of human beings. And some of the ways that have been proposed to give additional precision, such as your "
people with the internal anatomy of a female, do (I think) more harm than good through misplaced specification. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:55, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
that particular distinctionas a house style. For one thing, the boundaries between
medical and non-medical articlesare essentially non-existent (the boundaries are often within, not between articles), and adopting this "house style" for the discussion of non-medical, non-biological topics would be entirely inappropriate IMO.
basic meaningsand their relevance. At a minimum, there are some situations where a "basic meaning" would suffice and other situations where more precision is required, so a house style that was adequate only in situations where "basic meanings" suffice would not strike me as especially useful. What I take to be the best practice, on the issues we are talking about, is to describe more rather than less precisely which groups are at risk or are the targets of certain medical information. And when we are choosing among less precise alternative terms based on their "basic meanings", I think we need reasons better than the first-editor principle to choose between them. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:19, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
Almost, WAID. What is missing is something like "without explanation and support from references". I believe that if we start using females to refer specifically to biology
without explanation and support from references in any articles, then
something like what you describe will happen. I also disagree with your qualifier (probably small fraction of)
, and I wouldn't use the more passive be confused
but rather the more active be misled
. I believe we would be actively misleading these readers both in the medical passages themselves (remember, I do not hold the boundary between "medical" and "non-medical" topics to exist at the article level) and also when the same readers confront non-medical passages.
Also, as a piece of anecdata (anecdatum?), I have to date encountered more readers being misled by the assumption that "female" probably refers to biology, in passages where it does not, than readers erroneously concluding that "female" does not refer to biology in instances when it actually does. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:04, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
we should probably minimize the use of female to refer to non-biological content, strikes me as precisely the opposite of what core policy WP:NPOV calls for us to do. What we have in sources
for non-biological contentis a broad group of authors from varied perspectives using the term "female" to refer to biological or social or gender identity phenomena depending on the context, and then we have a much narrower constellation of POV, generally Culture war authors who insist that "female" in the context of human beings designates biology and nothing else. In this situation, we fail NPOV if we adopt the latter convention.
we should explain the terminology (in the article text, or in a footnotes reference bundle, as appropriate)is not clear to you? To paraphrase my position as,
Um, let the readers keep being confusedis a pretty ugly straw goat; I would have expected better of you WAID, TBH.
to impose a distinction between female biology and female genderin texts that do not specify
whether biological or social referents are meant, which is a prerequisite of the approach you had suggested above (to restrict "female" to biological content), as far as I can tell. Newimpartial ( talk) 03:48, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
female bodiesas a phrase seemed fairly unproblematic, and did not require those using it or hearing it to make decisions about sex vs. gender. Now, that phrase has been substantially weaponized, where (often, not always) people use it purposely *either* to mean sex *or* to mean gender (bodies of people with female gender identities). For Wikipedia to choose one or the other as a matter of house style would not offer actual clarity to readers or avoid the culture wars conflict, but would rather mean taking a side in it, in a way that would violate WP:NPOV. By contrast, contextual usage decisions based on sources can achieve both clarity for readers and NPOV, I believe.
Do you really believe ... It feels likecomments above.
non-hypothetical concernsabout the language to be used in a topic where both MEDRS and non-medical sources are cited is that of Intimate Partner Violence, where much of the literature does not (and arguably cannot without great difficulty) separate "biological" from social factors, and where the language used in the studies themselves certainly does not admit to the assumptions of the style that you, WAID, have recommended. To be clear, the issues arise not primarily in relation to gender identity but concern social gender and gender socialization - but I don't think that makes a difference to the issues at hand, because I can't see any rationale to force a formulation of the distinction between sex and gender identity onto sources that treat these issues in other ways, any more than it makes sense to impose a parallel OR distinction between sex and gender socialization where sources are not making *that* distinction (nor, for that matter, would it be appropriate either to equate or to impose an OR distinction between gender identity and gender socialization/gender roles, IMO - our job is to follow the sources, not to lead them). Newimpartial ( talk) 11:11, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
I'm a GP, a medical doctor who routinely deals with pregnant women and who has worked fairly intensively in obstetrics in an English-speaking country. I have good French and German and decent Spanish, I have a good understanding of grammatical gender vs sex. I strongly disagree with most of what Newimpartial has to say. I am lucky enough to have plenty of paid work and so have no good incentive to spend energy here arguing here with Newimpartial nor with anyone else. I don't intend to argue this further, though if there is some mechanism to demonstrate that relevantly-educated professionals find some internal-Wikimedia decision not congruent with general societal perspectives nor with those of the relevant professionals, I would be happy to engage with that. My CV, including my email address is here: https://www.parhasard.net/work/aidan-kehoe-cv-en-20220212.pdf . My Irish Medical Council registration number is 406484, this can be verified here: https://www.medicalcouncil.ie/ Every good wish, Aidan Kehoe ( talk) 20:02, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
This forthconing article and others by this same author might be interesting for you lot. Haven't finished reading it yet myself. Apologies if this has already been noticed - this page is rather large... Tewdar 18:56, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
The language of maternity is alive and well – so why not expand it to include trans parents? by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett. It seems The Guardian isn't entirely gender critical, after all. -- Colin° Talk 20:30, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
"For example, when “women” is replaced with “people with a cervix”, this aids misunderstanding, particularly for those with low literacy or learning difficulties, or who are non-English speakers."aside from the awkward "aids misunderstanding", I think "non-English speakers" would have problems with anything one wrote in English. I presume they meant those without English as a first language.
"Communicating statistics when language is desexed is fraught, as the NHS discovered when it wrote about how “ 8 in 10 people” will get pregnant after having unprotected sex"Except that's not what the NHS wrote. They wrote:
"8 in 10 people under 40 years old will get pregnant within 1 year of trying by having regular sexual intercourse without using contraception."which limits those "people" to those "trying" to "get pregnant". Their male partners are not trying to get pregnant. The current NHS site says
"If you are under 40 and have regular sex without using contraception, there is an 8 in 10 chance you will get pregnant within 1 year.", which on its own is actually worse, since a male reader could interpret this as applying to them. But then if you read it in context of the article title
"Trying to get pregnant"and the preceding sentence
"You’re more likely to get pregnant around the time you are ovulating. This is when an egg becomes ready and you are at your most fertile."And also remember the NHS is written second person, so it assumes the reader is reading something relevant to their own body (e.g. Cervical cancer symptoms).
“If you’re in bed one and you want to talk about breastfeeding, I will talk to you about breastfeeding,” says Hazard. “And if Charlie is in bed two and is a trans man and wants to talk about chestfeeding or body feeding, what skin off my nose, really, is it to talk to Charlie about chestfeeding? None whatsoever … But it just means that I continue to provide that individualised person-centred care that I’m actually duty bound by the regulator to provide.”
that some editors have difficulty imagining that the diverse readership of those Wikipedia's articles is as relevant to how they should be edited as is some normative category of reader they can more easily imagine reading a given article. I doubt I could have come up with a better illustration if I tried. You seem easily able to imagine ESL readers encountering articles on this topic, but you cannot as easily hold in mind the family, friends, and service providers of trans people doing so - or for that matter, people looking into these topics on Wikipedia who may be involved in policy decisions regarding health care for trans people. You have a specific sense of one group of readers, but don't seem able to imagine these others. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:42, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
I added this to the Sex and gender distinction article a while ago. To my surprise, it was never modified or removed, despite me mentioning it a few times. I can only conclude that the language used was acceptable to all, even though it contains several terms that would usually be given short shrift. Yay for me, I guess. 😁👍
In 2011, it was reported that an untypical Corded Ware burial, dated to between 2900 and 2500 B.C., had been discovered in Prague. The remains, believed to be anatomically male, were orientated in the same way as women's burials and were not accompanied by any gender-specific grave goods. Based on this the archaeologist Kamila Věšínová suggests that it was likely that this was an individual "with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual", while media reports heralded the discovery of the world's first "gay caveman". Archaeologists and biological anthropologists criticised media coverage as sensationalist, as well as criticising Věšínová's original statement, in which she conflates sex, gender, and sexuality, arguing that, although the burial might well represent a transgender individual, it does not necessarily mean that they had a different sexual orientation, or that their culture would have considered them 'homosexual'. Turek notes that there are several examples of Corded Ware graves containing older biological males with typically female grave goods and body orientation. He suggests that "aged men may have decided to 'retire' as women for symbolic and practical reasons."
Tewdar 09:10, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
Canada is the first country to provide census data on transgender and non-binary people. This indicates that about 0.33% of the 15+ age group identify as trans. Within this, 28% are trans men, 31% are trans women, and 41% nonbinary. However, the trans percentage shows a strong correlation with age, and is about 0.85% in the 20-24 age group. [35]. In the younger 15-19 age group, there are slightly more trans men than in the 20-24 group, but fewer trans women and nonbinary. I don't know if those differences are significant and if they are, what the reasons might be. I haven't found similar age breakdown for sexuality, though the overall LGBTQ2+ figure is 4%. -- Colin° Talk 11:00, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
New study by Pew Research Centre. Discussed more in the article The Experiences, Challenges and Hopes of Transgender and Nonbinary U.S. Adults. -- Colin° Talk 16:14, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
This opinion column by a linguist:
wonders how much value there is in using the Correct™ words. If society disapproves of a given subject (e.g., women, trans people, poor people), then changing the words we use to describe them doesn't significantly change society's view of those people. There's definitely a Euphemism treadmill effect, and there may be a Slacktivism factor (i.e., I don't have to do the hard work of solving difficult problems, because I used the current lingo on social media, and that's enough).
This suggests that language like people who are pregnant does not have a meaningful role in social change, and therefore it should neither be encouraged in the hope of promoting equality (because it doesn't really work) nor removed on grounds of Wikipedia:Righting Great Wrongs (because it doesn't really do that). WhatamIdoing ( talk) 03:31, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
I found two articles by this author on the singular they: The Atlantic in 1918 and New York Times in 2021 ( letters in response). Both are far more enthusiastic about language change as an expression of the acceptance that the gender binary is inadequate and acceptance of those who are non-binary. Perhaps the point of the previous articles isn't so much that using new terms will itself directly lead to a better society, but that as society changes (progresses hopefully) then the use of new terms signals acceptance of the new beliefs. That acceptance fuels acceptance in others via this viral thing called communication: the words we use. Beliefs that it is just fine to have two female parents, or for a man to have a husband, or that someone might not regard themselves as fully male or female. These signals work in both directions, as sticking to the old terms may indicate refusal to accept, just as some gender critical people insist on misgendering trans people.
What I liked about the NYT piece was the comment that language change is a spectator sport. I think that's the flaw with the RFCs we often have, where we think it is at all reasonable to ask random people on the internet whether language change should be permitted (or enforced) on Wikipedia. It satisfies some egos to think "You're asking me? Oh, well since you are asking, here's what I think..." I also like how in both articles he considers the change to be hard work but worthwhile, and gives examples of writers in history who made a fuss about change that we long ago accepted. "And most likely, some people at first didn't like it. They died, and here we are."
:-).
So perhaps this comes down to acceptance. Do you insist that there are only two sexes that cannot be changed simply by having "feelings". Or do you accept that trans men are men, trans women are women and non-binary people exist? If you accept that, then surely it follows that one would at least wish to be inclusive in one's writing. It seems to me that despite the efforts of some vocal journalists and lobby groups and some right wing politicians, that there is acceptance among health professionals and academics, and acceptance in law, with varying degrees of practicability. The television series Dr Who had their lead character, who has always been played by a male actor, regenerate into a female actor. If that's not trans, I don't know what is. They are an alien, though, so not entirely "normal". I read in the papers that for the next series (with a male lead actor again) their new companion is played by a young trans woman. Indications of a new normal?
McWhorter's acceptance of singular they comes from his acceptance of non-binary people. One of the letter writers says "Rather than dismissing their uneasiness, over language or gender, let’s admit that it’s hard to change how we talk. We should do it anyway. We’ve jumped through hoops for the gender police for millennia. We can jump through a few more when some pathbreaking soul asks us to see them simply as themselves."
. --
Colin°
Talk
14:48, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
The above articles (and others) refer to language police and frequently suggest it is those on the left/liberal or trans activists who are policing every word. But where is the evidence for this? We haven't uncovered any articles in the media or academia or letters to the editor moaning about cisnormative language and demanding that the publication refer to "people with uteruses" or whatever. We found one hospital that suggested that as well as referring to "women" in hospital publications they should include trans people who need their facilities, but not (as the right wing media suggested) advocating "women" are erased. But we have plenty examples of the other way around, where writers of all sorts of backgrounds take it upon themselves to get upset online and complain about people who are different to themselves and any efforts to include them. Similarly if you look at any twitter storm or Mumsnet posts about this topic, they always start with the gender critical or trans exclusionary person complaining.
The infamous Lancet front page (which I still think was sabotage) was drawn from a review of a political exhibition and itself was making political points. The author is trans friendly (may even be non-binary, I forget what their twitter said). So they chose to use certain language to refer to those who menstruate (the topic of the exhibition). This wasn't "language policed" on them. And that use of language for making political points or for protest is far from unusual. Plenty feminists moaning about those making abortion laws being people who have a penis or lack a uterus. What resulted from the Lancet front page was a torrent of language policing from the political right and from the gender critical.
Is this imbalance accurate, or have we just not discovered the articles? If it is accurate, why is it being perpetuated as a myth that "trans advocates" or the "trans lobby" are policing word use? If they are, they are a pretty rubbish police force. -- Colin° Talk 07:54, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
"At the time of writing, despite the media myth of a powerful trans lobby, in the UK there are no openly trans newspaper editors and no trans staff writers at any major newspapers, no trans television commissioners, no trans High Court judges, no trans MPs, no trans members of the devolved legislatures of Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, and no trans chief executives at major charities."
Do people refer to the de facto ban on the "N word" as "language policing? I am not under the impression that many do - those using the term "language policing" for something other people are doing are importing assumptions about whether the language concerns under discussion carry importance and whether those they criticize are expressing a legitimate or illegitimate reaction. Because few people think the use of the "N word" is an unimportant matter, and few believe people criticizing its use are doing so without legitimate reason, we don't often hear this called "language policing" even when a particular scenario is under debate. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:30, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
Yes, Jordan Peterson is from, and often lives in Canada. Meghan Murphy is also Canadian. But neither of these figures has much of a following in Canada - there is no "conservative movement" or populist groundswell following their opinions on gender identity, and insofar as Peterson has inspired Canadian incels it is the straightforward misogyny, not anti-trans statements, that has found an audience within Canada. As I say, we do have elements of a culture war here, but gender identity just doesn't have much of anything to do with it. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:16, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
use the pavement (sidewalk)is a highly ethnocentric generalization that applies only to a small minority of the world's pedestrians. So I would dispute both premises, and insist that except in situations that have really good sourcing for this language for some reason, we should follow other sources that are more precise.
WAID, you gave an example of misgendering but I don't think that's actually what this sandbox or any of the people arguing about "language police" are talking about. As Newimpartial suggests, language change that is actually accepted and transgressions of which are considered by all reasonable people to be hateful are not counted. So misgendering a trans woman is no longer "language police" but as you say is serious enough to get yourself a Twitter ban if it seems you make a habit of it. I'm not aware Twitter has banned anyone from using the word "women" wrt pregnancy. We don't even see trans people banning the word "women" wrt pregnancy. But it seems that when some people use other terms instead, certain groups think or claim the word is now banned by the language police. I think really the term "language police" has dropped into those words used by the right or aligned pressure groups, along with "social justice warrior", "politically correct", "woke", "cancel culture", etc, etc, that are more about labelling the opposition with a recognised slur (in their eyes) even if inaccurate or using terms nobody understands. We need to be careful about repeating these terms, outside of quotes, because they are so loaded and so carelessly applied. -- Colin° Talk 17:07, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
When I looked at the NHS in December, I found that Womb cancer causes, Prostate problems, Cervical cancer causes were all trans inclusive. But Ovarian cancer was not. Notably the page was formatted with sub-sections on the same page rather than in separate pages as the trans-inclusive pages were, so perhaps it was due an update. It was updated on February 15th to Ovarian cancer Overview and Ovarian cancer Causes, etc. These are now trans inclusive.
Today, there's a news report that includes a TV interview of the UK's health secretary (who has previously expressed strong trans exclusionary opinions) being asked by an anchor on Sky News to explain the change. He is not in favour.
Having listened to this interview with Sara Wilcox, NHS content designer I know that the language used on those pages is carefully considered and trialled to ensure that it works for everyone. It must be very frustrating for Wilcox's team to go through all that process and have a health secretary who admits in the interview that they haven't seen the page (and know nothing about the change they are asked about) but disapprove of it anyway. I don't know about your countries, but being appointed health secretary isn't an indication one knows anything about health. He could be defence secretary next month if Johnson reshuffles his cabinet. There's some response from NHS Digital reported in The Guardian.
There's also a new page Having a baby if you're LGBT+ that links to three new guides. These pages were added on 31st May but the sub-pages have rather odd dates for their "page last reviewed" and "next review due", which might be a mistake but also could be related to allegations that the pages had been "blocked" for a year. What is interesting is that they exclusively use the term "chestfeeding" rather than "breastfeeding" or a combination. -- Colin° Talk 16:10, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
This report released last week:
Parker, Kim; Menasce Horowitz, Juliana; Brown, Anna (2022-06-28). "Americans' Complex Views on Gender Identity and Transgender Issues". Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. Retrieved 2022-07-03.
seems similar to the More In Common report about the UK. (I haven't finished reading the UK report, and I haven't started this one.) WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:51, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Quite a detailed questionnaire about trans attitudes. A few parts of the analysis/interpretation are imo a bit dubious when they describe when the group as a whole are "generally against" or are "generally ok with" something, when the two numbers are quite similar and there's a huge "don't know" group that could easily shift the viewpoint one way or the other if those "don't knows" were able to know. Trying to argue that 41 vs 39 is meaningful with a 25 "don't know" is foolish I think. It gets better, I think, when they start looking at sub-groups such as men vs women, grouping by age or politics, or by whether you know someone who is trans.
The interesting and I guess for me expected result is that if you know someone who is trans you are much more likely to be supportive (though not completely supportive of all things). I find this interesting as there's no guarantee the person you know is likeable (while you can choose your friends, you can't choose your family or colleagues). It suggests perhaps that being able to empathise with people the question concerns may shift opinions towards being more supportive of additional or existing rights, and being ignorant makes it easier to dismiss them. It also correlates with the increase in support among young people, who are also much more likely to know someone.
The unexpected result for me was that women were more supportive of all trans rights than men. Perhaps I've read too many gender critical feminists! For example, overall there is negativity towards allowing trans women to use women's changing rooms (34 + / 43 - / 23 ?), though views on toilets were closer (38 + / 41 -, 25 ?). But when you ask women it is closer on changing rooms (40 + / 37 - / 23 ?) and strongly for toilets (45 + / 34 - / 21 ?). Similar result for using women's refuges. I would say that the opinion of women on using women's bathrooms and refuges is a tad more relevant than what men think about it.
There are also some results that seem to demonstrate that opinions are not based on the arguments normally put forward. For example, about 60% are against or don't know if trans men should be allowed to use men's toilets or changing rooms. I suppose some might be concerned for the safety of the trans man themselves, but do the rest think trans men are a danger to cis men, or just feel this is perverted/unnatural? Similarly about half of people think trans men should not be able to allowed to compete in men's sporting events, and the usual quarter don't know. Perhaps they think they need to be symmetrical with the trans women opinion in order to be neutral/fair/unbiased, but this isn't what the debate is about or what sporting bodies have decreed. This to me shows there's a huge dollop of ignorance in this whole debate and the answers here don't necessarily reflect what people might say if they thought about it some more.
Looking at the raw results, knowing someone who is trans generally halved the size of the "don't know". And early on the survey showed the vast majority did not pay any or much attention to the trans debate. This is the problem that we will also share for social debates at MOS, where most people have not researched the issue but feel compelled to give their opinion, which is more likely to reflect prejudice or politics or some recent news story they saw on social media, or even, whether they are well disposed towards the person raising the RFC. Could this be shifted perhaps by changing the questions to not just abstractly ask about "trans women" using bathrooms:
Could such personalised examples be used to examine how different readers might react to how our articles put things? -- Colin° Talk 14:27, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
-- Colin° Talk 15:08, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
"biologically female human of any gender identity, role, or expression"- rather, they use the word "woman" to address that large and relevant population who identify as women. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:18, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
I came across an article about the Associated Press Stylebook making recommendations about trans coverage: New From AP: Use ‘Accurate, Sensitive, Unbiased Language’ To Cover Trans People. The article is by a pro-trans author and includes links at the bottom to some other resources too. The full AP guide can be found: AP Style Diversity Communications Recommendations / AP Stylebook: Transgender Coverage. One recommendation is:
Avoid terms like biological male, which opponents of transgender rights sometimes use to oversimplify sex and gender, is often misleading shorthand for assigned male at birth, and is redundant because sex is inherently biological
Their guidance aligns with the view (which they ascribe to "experts") that, for example, a trans woman is a woman (not merely a person who identifies as a woman), should be referred to as "she" (unless they wish otherwise) and that this is who they are, not what they have become. The guidance makes no mention of " gender ideology", a term used by anti-trans writers as though they are fighting some cult. Instead, the various terms and word choices are regarded as being neutral, and deviance from that would indicate a biased or careless writer.
Among the links given in the newspaper article, the Trans Journalists Style Guide and TJA Best Practices for Trans-Inclusive Language in Abortion Coverage.
Earlier in our discussion, the AP guide was referred to as "generalist" in that this organisation doesn't exist to promote e.g., midwifery or LGBTQ rights, etc. So I think it is significant that it regards the neutral position as being supportive of trans terminology, and rejecting the kind of language used by the gender critical or right-wing journalists. -- Colin° Talk 09:32, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
'grounded in the conviction that "a period should end a sentence, not a girl's education," our mission is "to create and cultivate local and global partnerships to end period stigma and to empower menstruators worldwide."'. The authors are using "menstruators" much like we might use the word "teachers" or "writers". The Lancet writer reviewing an exhibition on periods at the Vagina Museum writes
"objects are also displayed that help create a rich experience and reveal how people who menstruate have dealt with their periods at different times". Again, the word here is used like one might say "people who cook" or "people who fish". You wrote that "people who menstruate" was bad because it was reductionistic. I read those sentences and think those are powerful women who are not ashamed of their bodies and its functions and find the word "menstruate" no more problematic than "walk" or "eat". Earlier you wrote
'I could imagine a Wikipedia article that said something like "Anyone with a prostate can develop prostate cancer; however, it is most common among older men". I don't think that is unsuitable, and IMO it doesn't have the demeaning feeling that some other uses of "people with anatomy" could. That would seem to agree with my position. Reductionistic language can be problematic, perhaps often so, but I think there is a place for it and it is likely more common that you think. "People with heart disease"; "Circumcised men"; "Obese people"; "People with lung cancer"; etc. We are grouping all these people and classifying them by their ownership of a health issue or body part of lack of. Of course, it can also be problematic: "Epileptics" or "The prolapse in bed three" are both unacceptable. -- Colin° Talk 08:55, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
Rare birth defects or other such conditions(emphasis added). Clearly you believe it is, and clearly (some) others disagree. For those who disagree, your argument that trans and nonbinary people should be written about they way we might write about amputees - well, it may seem somewhat offensive. Newimpartial ( talk) 03:59, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
necessitatesno such thing. The issue of
people withlanguage is entirely orthogonal to whether to use terms like "women" in reference to reproductive biology. Nor has any evidence of a
Trojan horseyet been produced... Newimpartial ( talk) 04:12, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
one can write some sentences without the W-word and still sound normal". Most of the sentences in a sex-related medical article like pregnancy do not contain that word. The gender of the person is irrelevant to most of the article and the reader does not need continual reminders of their sex. Doing so is mostly a quirk of English, where we might use a sex/gender specific word even if not required. Some quirks like this change over time. For example, we dropped the habit of writing "he" to refer to a singular person, when previously that was considered entirely normal practice. In the article 2020 United States presidential election we don't keep reminding readers that the voters and the candidates are American. It is vitally important that both of them are American but can be established early on and assumed afterwards. I wonder why, if you think pregnancy or menstruation are so obviously sex-linked, we need to keep reminding readers at all? -- Colin° Talk 07:34, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Ok, I made a mistake with the earlobes and should have written "free earlobes" or "attached earlobes", in order to refer to a sub-group by their anatomy. Crossroads, I'm sure you are aware that 'the English language already has a word for "people who menstruate"'
copies JK Rowling's infamous tweet. Think for a minute. That tweet didn't convince the world. Nobody woke up and said "You know what, you are right, this 'gender ideology' is cultish nonsense". In fact, it did the opposite, as it demonstrated that one side was not interested in approaching the other side to reach some degree of mutual understanding, but though mocking them was the best way to "win". Mocking the other side may be a great deal of fun, but I don't think it has ever solved any world problem. Cartoons of Trump and Johnson did nothing to shift public perception of them: they only amused those who were already minded to dislike them. It is because many other people don't share your interpretation of words like "woman" that we have a problem with word choice in our articles. One side (either side) will not win the battle by continued posts that all the other guys are not just wrong but also stupid, and if they only saw that then problem solved. In fact, continued attempts to resolve an editing disagreement by trying to persuade the other side their world view is wrong is... advocacy... and could earn you a topic ban, especially if you team it up with mocking the views of other editors and repeated misleading posts about Wikipedia consensus and policies. Instead, we have to work with understanding the various viewpoints, accepting they exist even if we don't understand and agree with them, and trying to find some compromise that ensures Wikipedia articles are the best they can be while also preventing editors from retiring or scaring off newbies. --
Colin°
Talk
07:25, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
[Rowling's] tweet didn't convince the world- let's zoom out a bit, and frame the onus where it belongs. Have those arguing everyone should now use terms like "people who menstruate" convinced the world? Why do sources on menstruation still almost always speak about women, then? To focus only on Rowling and the backlash to it (which for the most part was about her other, later comments anyway) would be to take the very culture-war approach you elsewhere deride. We must look outside of a culture war and the fact that people who are loud about it are often not representative of the general population, and look at what ordinary sources are quietly doing. Crossroads -talk- 07:47, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
people who menstruateis the go-to example is that many of the same people who find that term horribly offensive also simultaneously want to use the term
people with penises, to lump trans women (even, ironically, post-op trans women) with men. Their objection to "objectifying language" is selective, not universal.
ordinary sourcesapproach is concerned, I would simply point out that - as when you and I discussed the use of "AFAB" and "AMAB" a couple of years ago now - the "ordinary sources" I read do not typically use language in the ways you claim ordinary sources do. In particular, they do not use "women" insistently as a universal term for female reproductive biology".
I would love to see more women in powerful positions but representation has its limits: simply having a vagina and a fancy job title doesn’t make you a feminist role model." -- Colin° Talk 19:17, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
in general, on average, presumably based on some epistemology that does not actually require you to read the sources to which you refer. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:27, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Our article menstruation pointed me at Degendering Menstruation: Making Trans Menstruators Matter. There's some heavy-going academic language in that, which is a bit off-putting for me. However, three things I noticed. The first is that assuming "women" is a sufficient and accurate description of those people who menstruate is cis-normative. The second is that if we are to describe the issues faced by trans people who menstruate, then a term like "trans menstruators" is rather unavoidable. How else would you discuss the issues facing trans men changing their tampons in a men's bathroom or products designed for women's underwear or with feminine design. And then there's the whole "feminine hygiene" weirdness. I wonder, wrt menstruation, whether sometimes the focus on "not mentioning that word" but instead writing "women" or "feminine hygiene products" and then perhaps compounding it by saying "women and some trans men and non binary people" is just perpetuating taboos and stigmas and patriarchal thinking about unclean women's bodies. -- Colin° Talk 10:10, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Rydström works within a post-constructionist framework to critically explore the nature of menstruation, which many perceive to be a strictly female bodily function despite many scholars’ recognition that menstruators are of various gender identities.This sentence conflates sex (female) and gender identity. It is a strictly female bodily function. Only the female reproductive system menstruates. Unfortunately, some would prefer we engage in obscurantism over this fact. Crossroads -talk- 22:47, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Over at talk pregnancy, WAID linked to
this response to the infamous Lancet article. I note the authors wrote "We have also moved towards inclusive language, such as individuals that menstruate, so that women, girls, transmen, and non-binary individuals are included, and we have shifted from reducing these individuals to bodily functions or body parts by avoiding the term menstruators.
" Their point they make is that "individuals that menstruate" does not reduce these individuals to bodily functions or body parts, whereas they think "menstruators" does. The comparison with "people with epilepsy" vs "epileptics" is appropriate I think. This is the people-first language approach in action. It is only when you truly reduce someone to a body part or disease or body-function that it is dehumanising and reductionist.
And yet at that discussion
Clayoquot wrote that "person with a uterus" was "dehumanising". And WAID said 'the "bodies with body parts" model is frequently considered an offensively reductionist approach because it reduces the whole of a human experience to something like a mindless machine made of parts'
.
Consider:
What a term like "people with a uterus" does is place attention on two things. The gender-neutral word "people" and an organ in the body given its technical term. I know that you are more than just a person with a uterus and I am more than just a person with a prostate. But in epilepsy, the person is also more than just someone with epilepsy. They want to be considered "as whole humans operating in a complex social system" as WAID put it earlier. They don't get that opportunity. The only way we can talk about people prone to epileptic seizures is to call them people with epilepsy. You know I don't think we can replace "women" with "people with a uterus" all over the pregnancy article. But I'm not sure it is for the reasons you claim.
(Clayoquot, I pinged you as a courtesy because I quoted you, but you can ignore this if you like). -- Colin° Talk 15:05, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
I searched the previous conversations for "dehumanising" and found it was generally someone responding to or citing The Lancet, which put "bodies with vaginas" on its cover. Of course, here we have "women" being replaced by "bodies" and that is indeed reductive and dehumanising. But I suspect then people have conflated that one awful example with the "people with body parts" or "people who bodily function" and assumed the same criticism applies there too. I wonder what it says to consider "woman" more "human" than "person", and how that affects trans women, who get excluded from "womenhood" by some activists. -- Colin° Talk 17:47, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
I had a feeling of deja vu about this discussion, and that it was in fact WAID who made a point about a term that included "people". It was in the discussion of the paper about "the importance of sexed language". Here it is:
They say, for example, that a cis-gendered biological adult female who doesn't "believe in" (those are scare quotes) the existence of gender identities will read a sentence about "women and birthing people" and feel like the "women" doesn't refer to her, and that she's being dehumanized by being referred to as a birthing person. Life must be very difficult for English speakers who feel objectified and dehumanized when they're called people. (This claim is sourced to a blog.)'
And in the Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health discussion, the reductionism that seemed to be of concern, was replacing sentences that mentioned "women" or "mothers" and instead focused entirely on body parts and processes without mentioning a person at all (e.g., pregnancy has the amazing sentence: "The fusion of female and male gametes usually occurs following the act of sexual intercourse.") -- Colin° Talk 13:31, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
I had a quick look at Cardiovascular disease and Cardiovascular disease in women and my skim of those didn't find this issue mentioned, and they focused on sex (biology) as the difference and not gender. I thought it was interesting that the gender of the doctor intersected with the gender of the patient in terms of whether women got the diagnosis and treatment they needed. And also, the idea that having qualities perceived as feminine worsened your chances. Here is an example where the "gender binary" is too simplistic, and a spectrum of behaviour and perception and attitudes is present. I recall another author commenting on patient behaviour affecting treatment, and the male doctor lamenting (IIRC) in robustly gendered language that "behaving like a giant prick" was the approach most likely to give you the most attention and best treatment. Those who meekly wait for the doctor or nurse and don't like to make a fuss, get neglected.
I think we can see from the Guardian article and letter that language choice in this topic isn't easy. I think it would be hard to write about this in a way that was trans-inclusive. It would be tricky to know what factors were entirely sex-based, and which were gender-based. Searching for "cardiovascular disease transgender" shows quite a lot of articles, mainly about the effect of hormone treatment. Earlier I think we uncovered some articles about transgender people generally receiving worse healthcare (and being less willing to go to health professionals). -- Colin° Talk 09:27, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
What is the purpose of this? It looks to me like an attempt to create a new guideline, and I don't think that's a good idea in userspace, unless the goal is simply drafting a proposal that will later be put to the community in a WP:PROPOSAL process, e.g. at WP:VPPRO. If that's not the purpose, then what is it? If it IS the purpose, what exactly is wrong with extant guidelines like MOS:GNL, etc.? This is feeling like a solution in search of a problem (or at least a specific enough problem to be actionable).
Even the "worked example" above is confusing in its intent and reasoning. The potential problem with the "A man's hairline ..." example, in certain broad contexts, isn't that it contains gendered words, but that it contains a misleading half-truth (again, in certain broad contexts), and ignores the fact that women can sometimes experience a receding hairline. That is, missing information is the possible problem; it isn't a "failure" to use gender-neutral language. It would almost certainly be better to continue using sex-specific wording but be more detailed, e.g. noting that men (or males, or whatever wording is preferred) commonly experience a receding hairline among other hair loss as they age, while women/females more often experience general hair thinning, but can also sometimes experience a receding hairline. Provide more information rather than get into yet another socio-politically motivated "my word is better than your word" pissing match.
That said, wording along the lines "Men commonly experience a receding hairline as they age" would be entirely appropriate in the article
Man, with a
receding hairline link to an article where the fact that it can also affect women is covered. It simply is not relevant in
Man that women can also have receding hair. What's relevant is that receding hair in aging men is common. We're having a lot of disputation at
Talk:Sex differences in medicine and elsewhere, specifically because people keep trying to inject essentially irrelevant and distracting and even confusing "But what about ..." exceptionalism into every other occurrence of generalized sex-specific information, as if our readers had brain damage. We just don't need to do that. It is not helpful to readers and is proving disruptive internally.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
02:28, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
"Should our advice be based primarily on reliable sources or on editors' opinions" is ambiguous. Are these the reliable sources used for the sentence in dispute, reliable sources used elsewhere in the article, reliable sources found when googling the article topic + desired/opposed language choice, or reliable sources of expert opinion on the matter. Or all or some of those. And how do we weight opinions of experts who have achieved a consensus for an organisation that is neutrally in the health-information business, or experts who are associated with a minority group affected by the language choices. Ultimately editor opinion plays a necessary role in shaping any guidance or essay or paragraph, and aspects of such will be Wikipedian in nature for which no external body can help. So an answer to the question may depend on what definition we are using and splitting hairs over what "based primarily" means. Probably all of these things are important to various degrees.
Perhaps you should set out some goals of what you'd like to achieve. It seems like choices may involve prioritising some goals ahead of others, and priorities may vary depending on context. The example "idea" further up is "Articles should be written to use as few gendered words as possible". That's not really a goal but a proposed strategy that is probably too easy to shoot down since "as few as possible" is zero if one is determined to strawman it to death. Less extreme might be to consider the effect of a small and targeted change and viewed from our readers. Who benefits and who is disadvantaged or excluded by a change. Perhaps instead of offering advice about how editors should write, for some things, we just explain the approaches taken by various professional, considerate writers, and note their documented pros and cons. This may be particularly appropriate for issues for which there is no settled best approach with consensus, but for which saying absolutely nothing at all leaves a vacuum to be filled by soapboaxing by editors on both sides. -- Colin° Talk 21:19, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
As outlined below, the terminology in articles, especially medical articles, is dependent upon the support of reliable sources and it is expected that editors would use the same terminology presented in said sources.Of course, that fits perfectly with WP:STICKTOSOURCE and WP:V. WP:NPOV is also based on what sources say, not editor opinion. If anything is to be added to MEDMOS, it should be a short statement to use the terminology found in the reliable sources being cited. Crossroads -talk- 06:13, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
With so many of English scientific papers written by people who don't have English as a first language, it seems odd to place them on a pedestal of how we should write. With tuberous sclerosis complex I've read modern dermatology papers written by I suspect non-native English writers, who used terms so old, so scientifically illiterate and inappropriate that they predate colour television and the double helix. Another example could be NHS Measles which talks directly to the reader as 'you': "You can easily catch measles by..." We just don't write like that. Pah, you say, we wouldn't use such a lay tertiary site as source. Ok, how about The Lancet. We'd likely replace their "morbidity and mortality" with easier terms in our lead. We wouldn't talk about "The management of patients with measles". It seems to me replacing "patients with measles" with "people who are ill with measles", say, is not fundamentally any different to the choices we consider with gender and trans issues. We avoid writing about patients partly because our audience is not just healthcare professionals, but also it does reflect a movement to avoid medicalization. By referring to "patients", our sources are not using terms we want to use. The Lancet goes on wrt vaccination "However, urgent efforts are needed to increase stagnating global coverage ..." Again it doesn't talk how we'd talk. We could still include that opinion if we felt it appropriate, but we wouldn't write it that way. -- Colin° Talk 14:25, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
Wrt "Anything that stops editors from fighting about this for the next several years would be a win in my books"
I think a good start would be to collect references to discussions, articles and guidelines written by other people. While what we end up writing and where is a matter for Wikipedians, I don't think it has been productive for editors to simply argue from their own opinions, politics and experience about the ideal terms to generally use for X, Y or Z. The project is about building an encyclopaedia, not fighting culture wars. I don't think the average Wikipedian is any more qualified to settle these disputes than they are to settle arguments about wearing face masks or funding healthcare. I'm puzzled why we continue to engage in original research and soapboxing. I'm puzzled at the focus about what editor X thinks or editor Y understands vs what the readers will think and understand from what we've written.
Related, it might be useful to consider which aspects of this issue are specifically Wikipedian. As the current first 'problem to be solved' indicates, we can have original-research problems if we want to use inclusive language but have a source (with statistics or opinions or findings) that doesn't define their group in that language. Another aspect could be considering the context of the words, such as a general medical article, or an article specifically about sex/gender, or about social or political matters. Can we separate what issues we, as Wikipedians, are uniquely good at, from the issues that I think we should humbly admit that other brighter more informed people have already or are already debating and writing about.
The notes suggest that 'male' (and presumably 'female') may be harder words then 'men' or 'women' for those who are struggling with English. That includes both native and non-native speakers, and the latter in particular could be fluent in another language. Do we have a source for this or is it just speculation? I'm conscious that in another discussion about rewording for making things easier to read for non-English-natives, that the 'simple' word chosen was uniquely English, whereas the original word had common European variants. Perhaps although male/female are not quite as common as men/women, they are common enough, and for many medical topics, worrying if the reader can't understand 'male' would be the least of the problems. -- Colin° Talk 10:47, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
Adults are persons 18 years or older and should be referred to as men or women...Whenever possible, a patient should be referred to as a man, woman, boy, girl, or infant. Occasionally, however, a study group may comprise children and adults of both sexes. Then, the use of male and female as nouns is appropriate. Male and female are also appropriate adjectives.Neither that nor 11.12 Inclusive Language says anything about e.g. not using "women" to refer to the female sex. And the quote from 11.7 implicitly supports use of "men" and "women" to refer to sex.
can only report that which is verifiable from reliable and secondary sources...Let reliable sources make the...statements. What we do is find neutral ways of presenting them.Activist wording is not neutral, nor is it verifiable to the MEDRS we are citing. Restricting wording in a way sources do not is not justified and is instead an attempt at language reform.
The rationale explains "the new guidance broadens the language we use and aims to support people who identify in a different way to feel the service includes and represents them"
. Their approach is to add rather than replace. For example "The vast majority of midwifery service users are women and we already have language in place they are comfortable with. This is not changing and we will continue to call them pregnant women and talk about breast feeding"
. They explain that "a gender-additive approach means using gender-neutral language alongside the language of womanhood, in order to ensure that everyone is represented and included."
and "If we only use gender neutral language, we risk marginalising or erasing the experience of some of the women and people who use our services."
.
While trans people form a very small minority of their users, they acknowledge that minority groups can be marginalised and discriminated against for various reasons, including language used. Rather than dismiss that group as irrelevantly tiny, their aim "is perinatal services that are available, accessible and acceptable to the trans and non-binary community, fulfilling our professional, statutory and ethical responsibility to address health inequalities in marginalised populations."
.
Wrt context: "these language changes do not apply when discussing or caring for individuals in a one-on-one capacity where language and documentation should reflect the gender identity of the individual. When caring for cis women it is good practice to use terminology that is meaningful and appropriate to the individual; this may include terms such as woman, mother or breastfeeding"
.
Table 1 on page 16 gives a number of examples. The authors do acknowledge they are "leading the way" in the UK. On they other hand, they are an organisation whose primary mission is not gender politics but healthcare services. -- Colin° Talk 12:23, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
This editorial takes a broadly critical view of gender inclusive language change and appears to be a response to the above guideline. The author is concerned with "balancing various concerns around language choice in healthcare communication"
. For example, they argue that treating some subjects as a "women's issue"
excludes those affected by it but who not identify as women. On the other hand, "excising the word ‘woman’ in order to include transgender persons in our reproductive justice analysis can have the effect of effacing the particular lived experiences of women"
. Essentially, that it may be difficult to please everyone in both groups. They go on to explain that alternative ways of describing a patient group can be "dehumanising" and "demeaning", with a focus on biological functions and anatomy. Another problem is where "jargon-free communication" is highly desirable to reach people who have limited ability with English or limited knowledge of anatomy.
The author is concerned that "gender inclusive linguistic changes could have the unintended consequence of making biological sex conceptually less visible and much more difficult to clearly explain in healthcare and medical education"
. There is a lack of easily understood, unambiguous and simple terms for "individuals with a cervix" or "prostate-possessors". The editorial gives an example of reducing people to biological function ("menstruators and ejaculators"
) though most these examples of alternative word choices are not sourced to guidelines recommending them or articles using them.
The author notes that "gender inclusive phrases ought not be viewed as one-size-fits-all for transgender people"
and that there are a very wide variety of people who come under the trans umbrella. They conclude "Clinical terminology needs to be cognisant of diverse audiences, flexible to different purposes and allow dialogue on local and global levels. Language in healthcare should aim for clear and respectful communication."
. --
Colin°
Talk
14:39, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
Some more articles. May or may not be important enough to expand on.
"It’s the language that every adult alive today grew up using", is an explanation for resistance to or slow progression of change, but not really an acceptable argument against change. And their claim
"Nonbinary is itself a very recent coinage; the usage examples given in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary date back only to 2015."seems to be based on a misunderstanding of Webster's usage examples (they are randomly chosen from current online news sources). One argument given is that when the subject is the 'gendered experience' then we can't just neutralise the words:
'The famous slogan commonly attributed to the second-wave activist Florynce Kennedy—“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”—would be totally defanged if it were made gender-neutral. And if we cannot talk about, say, the Texas abortion law in the context of patriarchal control of women’s bodies, then framing the feminist case against such laws becomes harder. No more “men making laws about women.” Instead we get: “Some people who are in charge of policy want to restrict the rights of some other people. We oppose that because people’s rights are human rights!”'
"My feeling about nonsexist English is that it is like a foreign language that I am learning. I find that even after years of practice, I still have to translate sometimes from my native language, which is sexist English.". A caution that what perhaps comes "naturally" isn't a reliable guide to what one should write.
'woman, women are nouns, not adjectives, so say female president, female MPs etc rather than “woman president”, “women MPs”. An easy way to check is to try using man instead of woman eg “man president”, “men MPs” – if it doesn’t work for men, it doesn’t work for women.'
gender issues Our use of language reflects our values, as well as changes in society.There are several points made in the guide. I think the opening statement is important because how we write and the word choices we take reflect our values. Hiding behind the language usage of our sources seems to me a cop-out that would not fool a single reader. -- Colin° Talk 14:38, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
'Because of the illness she described herself as "not the happiest of pregnant people", adding: "Lots of people have it far, far worse, but it was definitely a challenge."'. There we go, "pregnant people" has Royal Approval. End of discussion :-). -- Colin° Talk 10:44, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
;-)
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
16:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
"We are not here to pass legislation that does not make sense to the public whom we represent. If we were to go out into the streets of our country and try to explain to the electorate—to our citizens—that we have got ourselves into a position where we are not permitted to use the word “woman” in a Bill that deals with maternity, they would not know where we were coming from.- The whole discussion can be found here and later ammendments to the Bill with Lord Lucas rationale as to why the phrase "pregnant person" was unacceptable and therefore substituted can be found here. CV9933 ( talk) 15:54, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
There is a suggestion above that rather than matching the language of sources, we could match the language of similar publications. There was an edit war at Pregnancy recently, over whether the first sentence should describe pregnancy as something experienced by "a woman" or by "a person with a uterus". For comparison, here's what other encyclopedias are saying:
EB is for teenagers/high schoolers. Funk and Wagnalls usually caters to a slightly younger crowd (~12 year olds). Magill's Medical Guide probably assumes adults. I don't know enough about the other two to make a guess there. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 21:47, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
This is a deeply thought-out statement that covers both the psychosocial aspects of language and issues of scientific accuracy. Some highlights:
To be inclusive of all people in our written materials, use of desexed or genderinclusive language (e.g., using ‘‘lactating person’’ instead of ‘‘mother’’) is appropriate in many settings. In some situations, however, use of sex-specific language may be preferable, for reasons we state hereunder. Reasons to use sex-specific language include "Translation concerns, literacy, and clarity" and "Desexed language may also alienate some readers."
Substituting ‘‘parents’’ for ‘‘mothers’’ may be factually inaccuratebecause breastfeeding research has presumably always been done with cisgender women. Breastfeeding is known to confer certain health benefits to cisgender mothers, but data are lacking as to whether these benefits can be expected in transgender men who chestfeed.
When describing the words or recommendations of any other author or organization, it would be incorrect and unethical to use desexed or gender-inclusive language if the original author or organization did not use such language.This is a big issue for us and I'm curious if it's something the community could come to consensus on relatively quickly. (Happy New Year by the way everyone! I'm typing while waiting for my kid to fall asleep and then I'll go celebrate.) Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 06:48, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
One study in Kenya, for example, found that the presence of the father significantly reduced the likelihood that young females would engage in sex and have an unwanted pregnancy. However, other research indicates that the quality of the father-adolescent relationship is much more significant than the amount of time. Further research is needed to understand how physical availability affects parents’ abilities to establish and maintain the bond between parents and adolescents.
"Mothers and fathers were tallest in Norway and the United States and shortest in Oman"It might at first seem that one could substitute "parents" here. But the article often separately deals with mothers and fathers and with "mid-parental" height, and here they are very much dealing with the biological parents split along by gave the egg and who gave the sperm, not gender roles. Another document said
"The exposure of future mothers and fathers to certain risks at the workplace can have a serious impact on the health of their unborn child."It seems to me one could substitute parents here, though I can see why the author wrote it that way as perhaps it forms a better image in the mind. -- Colin° Talk 12:01, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
I wonder though, would we be ok if where was a WHO recommendation: "mothers and fathers should..." that we substituted with "parents should..." I think that is fine, and I thought you meant that substituting "parent" for "mother" or "father" would be fine in at least some circumstances. Did I understand you correctly? Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 02:44, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
so I wonder if "mother or trans father" could sometimes be an acceptable expansion of "mother"- can you provide an example of when such an expansion would be appropriate? Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 03:45, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
WHO recommends mothers worldwide to exclusively breastfeed infants for the child's first six months[1], here are some possible statements that I would consider problematic:
It may sound like points 2 and 3 are not much different to the argument we must follow our sources wrt social language choices. But point 2 is just about being careful when rewording the name of a population, of accidentally redefining the scope of a fact or claim or opinion. Even "patients" and "people with X" are not always equivalent as the former are those receiving medical treatment or care, and the latter is everyone with X. In a condition where many are undiagnosed or choose not to get treatment, the difference could be large. Some may wrongly assume that the lockdown rules set by the UK parliament apply to all of the UK but this is a devolved matter and only applies to England. [2] Accidentally altering the scope when rewriting and paraphrasing is a general problem. And point 3 is just "don't put words into other people's mouths". If we are slave to source authors' language choices, then it matters which sources, and WAID and I have already seen a dispute where a concern was raised that sources could be cherry picked in order to support a language choice. But if the problem with the language choice is one of WP:OR or WP:V, say, then substituting or adding another source may entirely resolve the problem. -- Colin° Talk 12:15, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
Almost all sources use "woman" and "female" interchangeably...for the vast majority of sex-specific topicssounds to me like a manifesto commitment in search of a problem, and also tends to be circular (what is a sex-specific topic? If defined narrowly enough, the statement almost becomes tautological). There are certain topics, such as the reproductive health of trans and nonbinary people, where this is not at all true. While it may seem too obvious to need saying, from the actual edit history of these topics it clearly needs to be said - where Wikipedia addresses these topics, it needs to use the clear, up-to-date language actually employed in the RS specific to them, and not revert to "Almost all sources use "woman" and "female" interchangeably" on topics to which this is demonstrably false as a justification for inserting language in article space that violates current RS practices (an argument that at least one, now topic-banned, editor took great joy in making). Newimpartial ( talk) 03:14, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
This is yet another inaccurate analogy. There is no necessary connection between being a midwife and being female. However, every "pregnant person" is female. English has a word for female humans, and we should not misleadingly forgo it just because a tiny minority of them have a condition (gender dysphoria) whereby they identify otherwise. Same as the other exceptions I've mentioned about people who are missing digits or whatever. Centering rarities is misleading. It is not "people" for whom unprotected sex can result in pregnancy. It is not all "people" for whom a major aspect of their health needs involve obstetrics and gynecology. I submit that "pregnant people" is always misleading because it takes away reference to sex for something that is inherently sexed, as though it were sex-neutral.
Colin, the first and foremost reason that I point to RGW and not-advocacy is because the sources by and large haven't started using these terms - unlike not assuming midwives or other professions are a certain gender.
Clayoquot noting that "the phrase got lots of criticism from readers in the comments section" should be a warning to all of us. This is my impression too of what happens when the phrase is used. I touch a bit on this below in the following subsection. Crossroads -talk- 05:40, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
Female humanhas multiple senses because "female" has multiple senses. Trans women are "female humans" in terms of gender identity - and in many cases, often legally - although they will not have a functioning "female" reproductive system. The reason some of the sources on pregnancy (including the general guidance in Canada on covid vaccination and pregnancy) uses "pregnant person" is because of this ambiguity about when "female" is a social category and when it is a "biological" category, what it means in a particular context, and what various audiences will understand it to mean. When you argue that
Centering rarities is misleadingyou seem to be arguing against including the language of more careful sources in WP articles even when it predominates among relevant, recent, RS and essentially to be offering a rationale for the disruptive arguments recently put forward by a now topic-banned editor (who argued that "female" always means the same, biologically determined category, regardless of context or specific sourcing). I hope this is not the case. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:12, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
When medical sources talk about "female", and the context is not specifying gender identity, sex is meant. This is not true of psychiatry, for example, where "female" is much more likely to be used to invoke social than biological factors (crudely, "gender" rather than "sex"), quite aside from gender identity in particular. It is also not true of studies that explicitly identify gender, in addition to or as opposed to sex, as a factor in health outcomes. But once again you are appealing to what may be true of MEDRS as a whole to run roughshod over more specific literatures, which have their own typical features and dynamics. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:17, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
reference to differences between males and females - without further elaboration - usually has to do with sex differences. In some instances the MEDRS are explicit that they are examining gender, and in some instances they are explicitly looking at sex. But many sources in psychiatry in particular do not specify, and in such an instance I don't think stating that it
usually has to do with sex differencesis a helpful generalization. For example, feelings of physical helplessness may have to do with a combination of physiological factors and socialization, and therefore both sex and gender may come into play. I don't know why it would be helpful in this and similar cases to assume that "female=sex" - and it is steel-manning rather than ASPERSIONS on my part, I feel, when I attribute your reasoning on this to "this is what sources in the rest of MEDRS tend to do" rather than "this is my arbitrary a priori assumption", which is the obvious alternative that comes to mind.
The summary of this guideline is a bit unfair at present I think. It previously said "Audience-dependent choices", which perhaps is a little lacking in specifics.
Clayoquot
edited it to include a quote that covers one choice: "Circumstances where traditional gendered terms are more appropriate include documents written for a worldwide audience, and documents written for the general lay public."
. A quote for the other choice might be "Appropriate circumstances where desexed or gender-inclusive terms can replace sex-specific terms may include a document with an audience of health care professionals in a country where openly transgender or nonbinary persons give birth and breastfeed or chestfeed, such as a hospital policy in the United Kingdom or United States.
On the face of it, it might appear that the first audience is exactly "Wikipedia" and that would be the clear favourite. But we have to remember that the ABM's primary goal is "broader global support for breastfeeding" and while the intro to their guideline recognises their role in "ending violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people... to respect, promote, and fulfill the human rights of all LGBTI people", this is clearly something that can be sacrificed if it impedes their primary goal. They have some important differences to Wikipedia:
In the
Guardian style guide on 'Gender' it says "Our use of language reflects our values, as well as changes in society"
(my bold). I strongly believe this applies to Wikipedia too, which you might guess is one reason I'm opposed to those values being tied too strongly to the values of of our sources. But ABM is concerned about the values of their various global audiences and their government health departments. In order to achieve their primary goal, they seem willing to go along with those values (not even take the tiniest of baby steps). They are picking their fights, and trans issues isn't one they want to fight at a global level. That's their choice, and it may well save lives if their mission achieves its goal.
Much of the world remains virulently homophobic and transphobic. According to Wikipedia Nigeria, 98% of the population do not accept homosexuality. That's a country of >200 million people, with English as the official language. The UK population is only 67 million. Nobody is suggesting Wikipedia self censors or moderates its articles on homosexuality in order to accommodate better acceptance in African countries. As an encyclopaedia, our goal is all round education, which means that perhaps when reading about breast feeding, you learn a little about trans parents, and discover, even, that they exist, contrary to the "traditional values" government education you got. -- Colin° Talk 09:38, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
trans issues, but to inform people based on reliable sources, even people in Nigeria, and not to unnecessarily
distractreaders. And like ABM, we should be concerned if the former is allowed to get in the way of the latter (e.g. by allowing unnecessary insertion of "chestfeeding people" or whatever anywhere in breastfeeding articles even though trans people are not the topic). We should cover what reliable sources say about LGBT people, and this will no doubt decrease homophobia or transphobia, but the way to do that is to cover sources about them, rather than contorting random bits of text to try to insert certain phrases. Crossroads -talk- 05:02, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
"We affirm that language has power. This is demonstrated in linguistic relativity and determinism, both theories explaining how the structure of a language impacts thought and behavior. Implicit biases affect the language we use, and thereby contribute to gender inequality and health inequities, which contribute, in turn, to rising morbidity and mortality of vulnerable populations"Just as they accept their word choices have an effect, so we must also accept our word choices have an effect that we take responsibility for. Wrt your final sentence, are you unaware of Heteronormativity? Dealing with trans people in their own section or articles is an option, and might be one of the more likely options to be accepted, but it shouldn't be considered an great choice if we are able to find agreeable language to include them within the body. It perpetuates the idea that a non-binary person is wrong and not normal. Crossroads, have a look at the lead of Marriage. It does not lead with "a union between man and woman" despite this presumably being the only acceptable definition for 98% of Nigeria. The lead doesn't even suggest man+woman is the norm, and uses language like "people called spouses", "them", and "individuals". A gay couple can read our lead of marriage and feel that "this applies to me too". Yet the numbers of gay people globally who are legally married must be tiny and especially when compared to heterosexual marriage. I guess the gender critical writers of the paper at the bottom of this page would say Wikipedia was being culturally imperialistic by imposing its views of marriage on the world. Crossroads, would you please think that when you make an argument, does this really apply generally and does this really apply to some of the other social issues like gay marriage or sexual equality. -- Colin° Talk 10:05, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
our words reflect our values...we must also accept our word choices have an effect that we take responsibility forhas no basis in policies or guidelines whatsoever. Same goes for the idea that we should write in a certain style different from the vast majority of sources to combat ideas like
heteronormativityor anything about who is
normal. The only time WP:PAG do touch on such ideas is at, again, NOTADVOCACY. That simply is not our purpose, and such goals necessarily interfere with our actual purpose. That purpose includes representation of sources about LGBT people, so there is no reason to consider using these rare phrases.
Numerous studies have found evidence of LoT [language-on-thought] effects, and numerous other studies have failed to find such evidence...While there is strong evidence in support of weak forms of linguistic relativity, a strong version not only lacks empirical support, but arguably requires a pre-cognitivist view of thought as necessarily involving silent verbal encoding....weak versions of the LRH also do not require language to be the sole or even the dominant influence on any aspect of nonverbal cognition.
heteronormativity". People don't write this way to "combat" hereronomativity, just as people aren't "combatting" sexism and racism when they manage (or make an effort) to avoid being sexist or racist. They are writing how they want to write, and yet you are advocating (insisting) they must write in a way that is unnatural and possibly even offensive to them, just because their source did. You make the same mistake about midwifery as you have about marriage below. It is most convenient that our accessible sources on the topic align with published views (but very much not practice) in the US and UK. This is happenstance of our culture and our language aligning with a huge body of sources. There's nothing fundamentally Wikipedian about that, and I'm sure many other Wikipedias have to cite sources that are not in their language and do not represent their cultural views. I think they would look at you oddly if you went all culturally imperialistic on them and suggested they have to accept Western cultural ideas and our English language terms if they use Western, English sources. And I don't think there is any doubt that the paper and its writers fall into the "gender critical" category, Crossroads. Perhaps you view that term as so derogatory that nobody would claim it for themselves, but in the UK it is very mainstream. -- Colin° Talk 08:36, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
valuesis definitely not activism. Hmm. Crossroads -talk- 04:11, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
majorityof sources write, in order not to represent the diversity of language on sex and gender actually used in recent, reliable sources on these topics - and that this would be preferable to using the language most relevant to medical communication in each case. Yup, I'd call that "conservative activism": when an editor creates a (largely imaginary) status quo and then conjures up (not previously existent) rules to back it up, that is effectively
being a "conservative activist"for the purposes of the discussions in question. Newimpartial ( talk) 12:55, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
heteronormativity". The idea here (I believe) is that the only reason someone might do that is because they are an activist seeking to right great wrongs, which immediately has Crossroads reaching for WP:UPPERCASE links that he thinks ban such behaviour. What I'm trying to say, with my Scottish accent analogy, is that just because people talk or write differently to oneself, doesn't mean they are doing it to make some point or correct something (like the "faulty" accent of others or "bad" writing in our sources). And if one always perceives they are doing that in order to be disruptive, then perhaps one is carrying around some unhelpful baggage and bad faith assumptions.
I get that you don't claim great familiarity with the topic, but the specific issue around "pregnant people" arises because trans men and nonbinary people (assigned female at birth) who are pregnant do not in general consider themselves "pregnant women", and therefore (i) are not, in at least one important sense of the word and (ii) are unlikely to be reached by health information targeted at "pregnant women".
On the other hand, most pregnant women do consider themselves people, so "pregnant people" is a more inclusive category (a category that does not include "expectant fathers" who may have contributed small gametes - just people who are physically pregnant).
Your assumption that people must carry the gender identity "woman" to become pregnant is one I have heard elsewhere, but it is empirically false and, as a framing assumption, is increasingly divergent from the reliable sources on pregnancy. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:00, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
assumption that people must carry the gender identity “woman” to become pregnant. I don’t know how you got that idea from my post. My assumption is only that, by definition, you have to be physically of the female sex in order to get pregnant.
If you are not including begetters when you talk about ‘pregnant people’, you should make this clear by calling the individuals in question ‘pregnant women’. That only makes sense if either (1) you assume that "women" refers to a sex, rather than a gender identity or (2) you assume that only (a subset of) those whose gender identity is "woman" become pregnant. I was AGF by assuming the latter interpretation, because other editors have previously pointed out (on this page, and in other discussions when you have participated) that the former is not a valid assumption.
pregnantdoes not refer to people who produce small gametes, I leave that as an exercise to the reader. I am of course aware of "pregnant couples", but have never encountered any ambiguity about when a member of a couple is actually pregnant and when another member of a couple is only "pregnant" by proxy - and the latter status isn't limited by gamete production, by the way, although the former status is. Similarly, I have never seen any ambiguity about "pregnant people" as a phrase - the partners of pregnant people seemingly don't apply to themselves the restrictions on health interventions for "pregnant people", for instance. Newimpartial ( talk) 22:42, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
I do not believe that the distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ is well established with the general public- I agree. This distinction is not front of mind for most people, most of the time,
In common usage, the word ‘women’ does refer to a sex- I disagree. Even in the UK where the issue is more actively contested than elsewhere, the number of people insisting that
womenrefers to a biological sex - rather than a gender - seems to be a relatively small minority without significant support e.g. in the political, legal, medical and cultural spheres. Newimpartial ( talk) 23:42, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
Other Guardian articles only use "pregnant women" and "mother"...So, even the left-leaning press routinely writes about this topic without any desexed language(links in the comment). As for what words mean in typical usage, I find that dictionaries are helpful in elucidating that. Lastly, the example of a Scottish accent leads me to a good comparison - accents are undetectable in writing after all, but English dialects do vary in their vocabulary and grammar. We have rules at WP:ENGVAR, and nearly any editor would rewrite text written in AAVE, using the word womxn, or mixing in Maori words as in New Zealand English. Some varieties of English are indeed too divergent or distracting, or are not widespread enough, to be endorsed for usage on English Wikipedia. Crossroads -talk- 05:22, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
Once again, I disagree, Colin. "Pregnant people" is indeed a standard usage in Canadian English, appearing everywhere from the Canadian Medical Association Journal to the CBC and broadsheet newspapers. I am not saying that it has surpassed "pregnant women" in ghits, or anything, but it is a common and uncontroversial phrase that predominates in certain contexts, e.g., Covid-19 vaccines and pregnancy. Newimpartial ( talk) 18:54, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
new expression(nor does it mean anything different now than it did in the 18th or 18th century). Newimpartial ( talk) 20:00, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
To answer Colin's question above, However, I'm curious what "values around gender" such a wording makes, and why you think WHO might not hold them.
, it doesn't surprise me in the least that the WHO wants transgender and nonbinary people to get better health care AND that the WHO regularly uses terms like "breastfeeding" and "mothers" by themselves. Using gender-exclusive language some of the time doesn't signify you're don't care about including all genders; it can signify that including all genders isn't the only thing that matters when it comes to choosing words.
As several of the style guidelines have pointed out, unfortunately choosing words is something of a zero-sum game. When you change wording in a way that makes some people feel more included, that wording change might also make the content less accessible to others, such as people who are reading the content in their second language. It's not fair to imply that the WHO believes that the needs of the people who benefit from gender-inclusive wording take priority over the needs of the people who lose something from it, when the wording of the guideline suggests otherwise.
And of course, when it comes to topics like these, our wording choices send signals to others about where we sit on the political spectrum. If a health organization writes guidelines about breastfeeding and deliberately avoids terms like "mother", I'm more likely to perceive them as being on the left than on the center or the right. The WHO might not want to be perceived that way. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 07:05, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
"Use women instead of mothers, patients, or clients wherever possible, including for women who are pregnant, postpartum, and/or breastfeeding.". Also a warning about study populations:
"Gender-neutral language should not be used for gender-specific study populations. For example, a study that only included women as participants should be described as such, rather than described as a study of people."
The first editorial above describes the arguments of "simplistically" two positions. One is that "a broader understanding of gender identity is becoming apparent"
and "midwives are currently providing a variety of types of care for individuals who do not identify as women"
. Opposing that is the fact that "the vast majority of individuals midwives care for consider themselves to be women"
. They recall "advocating for women to stop being referred to as patients because many women seeking health care are not ill"
and "efforts to make women, rather than their body parts or clinical conditions, the subject of sentences."
. In addition to the "rationales" the editor considers the "ramifications" of change. "moving to gender-neutral language will seem more inclusive to some individuals, it may make other individuals uncomfortable"
finding gender-neutral terms "awkward and even alienating"
. Our challenge, like theirs, is that all these arguments are true and can't simply be dismissed. Some of the problems with gender-neutral replacement explains why that author has moved towards using the term gender-inclusive to describe their approach.
The second editorial above states that "Language is powerful, and its influence on perceptions and behaviors can have negative or positive effects. Communicating without consciousness of inclusive language can marginalize and misrepresent individuals and communities, perpetuate stereotypes, and be offensive. Inclusive language conveys respect and promotes equity."
. They warn this "also needs to be respectful, accurate, unbiased, and consistent with the preferences of the individuals and communities who are being discussed"
. Practically, "It is not always a matter of simply replacing words with a more inclusive alternative. Careful attention must be paid to the context in which the word is being used to determine if an alternative is more appropriate. For example, when discussing a health topic for which it makes a difference whether someone has a vagina or penis, one cannot simply change every gendered word to a gender-inclusive alternative"
. They conclude "It is important to bring a sense of humility to the process of using inclusive language, setting aside ego, and welcoming correction and improvement."
. --
Colin°
Talk
11:26, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
"The WHO defines respectful maternity care (hereafter referred to as respectful perinatal care) as that which is “organized for and provided to all women in a manner that ..."which maintains WHO's language but explicitly points out their alternative.
"The WHO guidelines for COVID-19 clinical management state that all pregnant people, including those with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 infection, should have access to high-quality perinatal care that is respectful, person-centered, and skilled". Here the WHO source says
"Pregnant women with suspected, probable, or confirmed COVID-19, including women who may need to spend time in isolation, should have access to woman-centred, respectful skilled care". I wonder how we feel about changing "pregnant women" to "pregnant people" and "woman-centred" to "person-centered"? On Googling "woman centered care" I find this which a quick skim does not seem to me to indicate anything female/woman-specific or about the term, but instead is a rebranding of "patient-centred care" by midwifes towards their patients.
"This study highlights the need for further research in many areas related to health equity in maternal health. Further qualitative research is needed to understand what women need to feel they are respected and in control of their own health care needs, especially during the important life transition of pregnancy and childbirth."Could "maternal" or "women" be handled differently?
I should note that not all articles in this journal are written this way, and I only looked at a few recent free-access ones. For example this and this both use "women" countless times. -- Colin° Talk 17:19, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
Everything is advocacyis simply not supported by Wikipedia policy. If that were so, then we would delete the WP:NOTADVOCACY section of WP:NOT. I address this more under #WP:OR.
So, a few more 19th century uses. Here in the 21st century, until very recently, this term was non-existent. Then it appeared and increased somewhat. It's almost as if it would be new to most people hearing it nowadays. Crossroads -talk- 06:37, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
I have no idea why you are bringing up "gender-critical"; it has a totally different meaning and has nothing to do with this. The proper comparator here is the term it is meant to substitute for, which is "pregnant women".
Also, sometimes words are identical but have different meanings. For example, "right" can be the opposite of left or of wrong. Nowaday, the term "pregnant person" is meant as a form of "inclusion" of trans and non-binary people. That is behind the recent use of the term. That is not what it meant when Kant or a few 19th century writers used it - it seems to be a stylistic quirk. None of them would have said 'I am using this term because men and women can get pregnant'. Before the rise of the new term, the term for these contexts was "pregnant women". It still is, mostly, but that is the recent history that applies most directly. Crossroads -talk- 06:37, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
The
American Medical Association Manual of Style, 11th edition, from 2020 (so, very recent and well after transgender matters began receiving heavy attention in the early-to-mid-10s), discusses "Correct and Preferred Usage" for "Age and Sex Referents"
(11.7). It states, Adults are persons 18 years or older and should be referred to as men or women.
(It had also stated that children may also be referred to as boys or girls.
) It further states that Whenever possible, a patient should be referred to as a man, woman, boy, girl,
or infant.
It then says, Occasionally, however, a study group may comprise children and adults of both sexes. Then, the use of male and female as nouns is appropriate. Male and female are also appropriate adjectives.
I emphasize that this is under a heading about how to refer to the sexes. It clearly permits, and even seems to prefer in some cases, use of "men" and "women" to refer to the sexes. The idea that these terms should be avoided or include caveats about gender identity is entirely unsupported here.
There's also
11.12, "Inclusive Language", especially 11.12.1, "Sex/Gender". While that certainly sounds like the sort of place directives of the sort being entertained here would reside, nothing of the sort is there. For example, there is no directive to avoid use of "pregnant women" as a general term, none to add statements about transgender persons to such phrases, none to favor "females" over "women", and so on. It in fact says, Use man or men when referring to a specific man or group of men and woman or women when referring to a specific woman or a group of women.
This came after a list of terms to avoid, largely ones like "chairman" and "fireman". But this seems to be a very good principle and would seem to apply to describing the findings of studies or review articles on sex-specific matters. They, after all, usually use these terms to refer to the specific groups of people they studied. 11.12.2, "Personal Pronouns", says, Avoid sex-specific pronouns in cases in which sex specificity is irrelevant.
This of course implies that when sex-specificity is relevant, than "sex-specific" pronouns would normally be used. This is of course contrary to the occasional drive-by editor who rewords a sentence talking about pregnancy to use "they" instead of "she".
If the approach being taken is to look at what sources specifically about what language to use have to say, then surely the AMA MOS carries far more WP:WEIGHT than does individual papers in the literature, or even what a couple of individual journals (out of many others) have to say. It is their job to synthesize that literature, not ours. Crossroads -talk- 06:17, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
"Transgender means of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity differs from the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth. Cisgender means of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth. Avoid using any trans term as a noun; the adjectival form is preferred (not transman or transwoman but transgender man and transgender woman)"
"the AMA Manual of Style now permits the use of they as a singular pronoun when rewriting the sentence as plural would be awkward or unclear. In addition, this construction can be useful in medical articles in which patient identifiability is a concern (eg, removal of gender-specific pronouns)". The preface describes the changes in this addition (the previous was in 2007) and the acceptance of "singular they" is the only gender/sex issue they note. They don't however mention the use of "they" to refer to a non-binary person (btw, this usage was chosen by the American Dialect Society as their "Word of the Year" for 2015) as non-binary people are not mentioned in the AMA guide.
cases in which sex specificity is irrelevant.It also says
Do not use common-gender “pronouns” (eg, “s/he,” “shem,” “shim”).That is when one would reword the sentence that way. Sex-specific topics are not included in this.
specify sex when it is relevant. Sex-specific anatomy and physiology, or sex differences in other aspects, are obviously cases when it is relevant. There is no basis here for sex-neutral terms on those matters.
Specify sex when it is relevant, it says. "Pregnant people" is not specifying sex, even though only one sex gets pregnant. Crossroads -talk- 16:22, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
specify sex when it is relevantas meaning
specify sex only when it is relevant. Do you understand it as meaning something closer to
always specify sex unless it is completely irrelevant?
Are there any examples of Wikipedia articles on health and medicine that include trans or non-binary people, apart from those directly concerning trans and gender issues. For example, the NHS includes these groups when talking about susceptible populations or those entitled to screening for some cancers. I haven't been able to find any. -- Colin° Talk 20:54, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
To achieve the goal of acknowledging that not everyone is cisgender, I think having a section on LBGTQ+ issues is often going to be a better solution than using gender-inclusive language throughout the article (a section like this could also achieve the goal of including the LGBQ people, who are more numerous than the Ts). In a section, we can explicitly describe how the needs of this community differ from the general population. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 15:52, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
We seem to be finding two different kinds of style guides (or other types of advice for writing about specialized subjects). They are:
In related areas such as suicide and gay BLPs, editors generally seem to prefer subject-specific advice (e.g., GLAAD's media reference guide). Generalist advice tends to provide less detail (so it may not answer the specific question that editors have). The trend is for generalist advice to follow reputable specialist advice, perhaps with a delay of a couple of years, so the difference in the end is not very stark.
In this subject area, I wonder whether we might have more than one type of specialist to consider: the "medical" specialist and the "people" specialist. Imagine that you are writing about pregnancy, and you have style advice from a midwives' group, a LGBT group, and a women's group. Would you prefer one type over the other? Take the best two out of three, for any point on which the three disagree? Something else? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 03:22, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
In the discussion above about ABM guidelines, some examples were considered that might fail WP:OR. It seems to me this issue could be considered separately from whether one thinks that rewording the language to be gender-neutral or adding groups to be gender-inclusive was or was not a good idea or appropriate on Wikipedia. Are we able to consider this on its own? If it is too hard to separate the feelings about it being inappropriate or essential or whatever, then is it possible to find analogous language changes that could be considered more neutrally?
An example given was "Mothers and trans fathers can experience postpartum depression in the weeks or months after giving birth"
sourced to an article that only mentioned "mothers" or "women". At what point is it safe to assume "trans fathers" experience will largely mirror those of women? Some may be entirely biologically identical to "women", some may have taken or continue to take hormones, some may have had top-surgery, some may have had other surgeries? We know frcom the guidelines above that we should be careful with study findings and statistics as 80% of women might not be 80% of trans men. But I wonder if there are issues where
The sentence only indicates a possibility, not an inevitability or a percentage chance. It would seem to me rather extraordinary that a person assigned female at birth could invoke complete immunity from postpartum depression by identifying as a man, or by growing a beard. But I can quite believe the occurrence could be affected by hormones taken or by other challenges they face.
The above sentence could be written "Postpartum depression may occur in the weeks or months after a person has given birth"
. Again, leaving aside whether gender-neutral language is a desirable thing, are there policy problems with that? The "may occur" logically implies it may not occur in some people.
What about the opposite? I know that journal articles writing "pregnant people" are a minority but lets imagine there's a new drug that treats postpartum depression and we have just one good literature review of its efficacy. And that review in the JMWH happens to say "Pregnant people who take Wonderpam are less likely to develop postpartum depression". Would it be OR to rewrite that as "Mothers who take Wonderpam..."? Would that fail in some other way?
Would we cry "OR" if someone replaced "mankind" with "humanity"? The author might have only been thinking about great men of history? How do we know they were considering women at all? Or if a source used "he" when referring to the steps a doctor might take when diagnosing something? Would we insist the article said "Male doctors must first take a history" unless a different non-sexist source was found? In the same way that we may overlook their use of a gendered pronoun rather than singlar-they, would it be non-OR to ever overlook the choice of a gendered word when referring to "people who gave birth"? -- Colin° Talk 15:07, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
"Mothers and trans fathers can experience postpartum depression in the weeks or months after giving birth"is one we can all be confident is true, because postpartum depression is known to also affect cis men and because "can experience" is a low bar. The question is whether this is the kind of statement that falls into the category of "true but original research". To see the OR in this statement, it might be helpful to see it reformulated as "Giving birth carries a risk of postpartum depression for mothers and trans fathers". This is the same type of statement as "Breastfeeding decreases the risk of breast cancer for mothers and trans fathers." How do we distinguish that the former statement is true but the latter statement may not be true, when in both cases the sources say "mothers"? We know it by bringing in our medical knowledge that's not in the source - that's OR.
, a conflation of the terms ‘‘mothers’’ and ‘‘lactating parents’’ will mask the need for future and specific research by assuming that scientific knowledge about the former applies uniformly to the latter" [11] (P.S. I'm hoping to reply to other points in this discussion in the next week; things are busy for me right now due to COVID-induced school closures.) Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 15:36, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
To demonstrate that you are not adding original research, you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented."You", the person adding it, per WP:BURDEN. If someone makes an edit adding a bunch of claims about trans fathers to an article - either explicitly or by changing "women" to "people" - and adds no sources, they will be reverted. The BURDEN is on them. I thus challenge it as seeming to be OR. Do you deny that editors routinely revert material per NOR? Your position seems to be that we can never point to NOR to remove text unless we ourselves first somehow prove no sources exist. Per my quote from NOR and BURDEN, that is not the case. Crossroads -talk- 06:44, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
This is why any advice to expand terminology beyond that used in the given sources is inappropriate, and WhatamIdoing claiming that this
is not evidence of OR. Is anyone denying that it would be contrary to existing policy and MEDRS to add advice to MEDMOS advising people to add ideas/claims to articles without also saying that they should cite sources for those ideas/claims? Crossroads -talk- 04:39, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
Should MEDMOS encourage people to add unsourced ideas? Hmm, no.Okay, glad we agree. Now: Do you agree that an endorsement or encouragement in MEDMOS to replace "pregnant women" with "pregnant people" constitutes encouragement to add unsourced ideas? The latter term, after all, includes pregnant non-women. Crossroads -talk- 05:31, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
"Rewriting source material in your own words while retaining the substance is not considered original research". Determining whether a reword "retains the substance" is an editorial judgement, not an algorithm. Editors always face the problem of working out whether putting something into your own words is equivalent enough. We do that when we use lay terms that might not 100% correspond with the technical term. We do that when a source says "patients" and we want to write "people". Those are not always equivalent. Right at the top of this section, I offered a/b/c scenarios for when rewording can be safe or might never be safe. WAID's example is definitely an (a) and an editor might face some kind of tendentious block for persistently arguing otherwise. Just as we don't require sources for things it would be ridiculous to challenge, we wouldn't require editors to find sources to say pregnant trans men were at the same risk in a theme park ride. Wrt how often this might affect medical article... Crossroads, I mentioned elsewhere that some statements we make include the word "women" but aren't actually asserting anything about the person at all, never mind asserting something about their sex or gender. A baby would be pre-term regardless of the mother's gender identity. The embryo's development from fallopian tubes through to passing through a cervix of x centimetres dilation is the same regardless of whether the mother is called John or June. -- Colin° Talk 10:14, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
I wonder if "mother or trans father" could sometimes be an acceptable expansion of "mother", 2) I asked for an example of when a Wikipedia editor might write "mothers and trans fathers" when the source says only "mothers", 3) You replied with this example, and 4) I said,
IMHO that sentence would pass WP:NOR only if there is a source saying that it is true for trans fathers.
Most...trans fathers feel guilty for passing Haemophilia A to their sons? It sounds like you are okay with adding synthesized claims to Wikipedia. However, it does not matter how certain you or I are that the sources apply to trans fathers too, since anyone who adds unsourced material is certain that their conclusions follow from sourced facts. NOR is clear, though, that sources must directly support the claims being made. Crossroads -talk- 05:38, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
feminine person engaged in parental care
- so a butch mother is not a woman? Women are defined by being "feminine"? That is not what "mother" means in the dictionary or in common use. Are we going to add weird caveats to every term that some small minority (transgender, ethnic, religious, political, etc.) defines in an unusual way?
This seems to be a rather WP:BATTLEGROUND scenario. Inserting claims about what trans fathers feel when passing on something, claims that do not exist in any source, is bad because it is OR, plain and simple. Removing OR is not wikilawyering, even if it purports to benefit some minority group.
We don't need to worry about what readers will think when reading "mothers feel guilty" if that is all the source says. It is not our job or place to write what we imagine they must have meant.
Nobody said you can't cite sources about trans people. If none of the sources cover trans people, but one of them says "pregnant people" anyway because of sloppy "inclusive" writing, we should not follow that one source over the rest. That is my point. Sources about trans people can be covered according to existing MEDRS guidelines; but that does not justify UNDUE caveats or erasure of normal language sloppily scattered all over an article. Crossroads -talk- 04:27, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Re WhatamIdoing - Ah, I had gotten a sense that the rationale for adding "and trans fathers" was ethical; e.g., to make trans readers feel more seen and included. Now that I understand the rationale is more about factual clarity, I'll address that rationale.
Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 06:33, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
it sounds like your general view is that we should first find sources that use a particular language, and then we should stick to the language style that we artificially selected for, no, that is the opposite of what I am saying, and I don't know how you drew that conclusion. It is people saying that we should say "pregnant people" and "uterus havers" that are doing that. As I said above, we should use the language that is most common in the MEDRS on the topic.
pregnant peopleexample, I don't think the point is so minor. If the source was from a study that included pregnant non-women in the research design, or that was explicitly offering treatment modalities for non-women as well as women, then it would be misleading to cite that article in a way that (through omission or substitution) pretended that it was referring to "women". Newimpartial ( talk) 20:03, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
So on topics like Canadian public health guidance about pregnancy and covid-19 vaccination, "pregnant people" would be the correct term. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:43, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
Let's say the text in question were about that - what the Canadian public health people say about COVID and vaccination. In that case, then sure, we can use "pregnant [individuals]" if that is the term they are using.I emphasize, however, that it really would require most sources doing that, and that this in no way implies that we should permit editors to do this when most of the underlying sources on a particular matter do not - as is the case the vast majority of the time. Crossroads -talk- 22:00, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
clear majoritythreshold doesn't exist in policy and simply reflects your personal opinion. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:41, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
The article notes that the push to [give gay marriage equivalence to traditional marriage] comes from organizations based in the USA and the Western world. It could thus be considered culturally imperialistic. And Wikipedia is supposed to be an international, culturally neutral encyclopedia.Crossroads, if Wikipedia was globally neutral on this matter, gay marriage would be relegated to a section at the end of the body, much like is being proposed for trans pregnancy. After all, why should we offend the vast majority of our global readers just to appease some western liberal activists? (Just in case anyone is confused: this is very much not my POV, I'm just being devils's advocate). -- Colin° Talk 08:21, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
LMAO, Crossroads. When it suited you the made-up standard you invoked was the language used in "the majority of the sources". Presented with an example where the majority may not say the thing you want them to say, you now compare apples to grapes and say, essentially, "it is DUE to use X language because the proportion of X in its universe of discourse is higher than the proportion of Y in its domain". Bollocks. I call moving goalposts. The fact is, you earnestly make up wherever "standard" seems plausible to you to win an argument within a specific terrain, and the fact that these "standards" blatantly conflict with each other when you move from one topic to another is a problem for other people. To paraphrase Emerson, consistency is a bugaboo for small minds, amirite?
Newimpartial (
talk) 12:44, 30 March 2022 (UTC) explanation added by
Newimpartial (
talk)
16:27, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
It is just an invented rationale that happens to align with Crossroads POV on the subject of gendered language. For example, I doubt very very much if more than a tiny minority of all the reliable sources on marriage consider even the remotest possibility that two gay men might marry each other. Now Colin may be wrong about the substance of his example, given that we are only to consider recent reliable sources and also considering that, as a wealthy and litigious society, 'Murica has probably produced a disproportionate literature on marriage in the last 10 years or so.
Hi everyone. Due to time constraints I’m unlikely to be able to contribute much further on the social aspects of this issue, but I’d like to say some things on the scientific aspects. I’m grateful to everyone here for the thoughtfulness you’re continuing to bring to this discussion.
W.r.t. WP:Original Research, I think it will be useful to look at more examples. The examples we’ve looked at so far (the possibility of guilt over genetic diseases and the recommendation that pregnant people not ride roller coasters) have two important things in common. One thing that they have in common is that the mechanism of the biomedical phenomenon is understood and straightforward, i.e. X-linked disease and mechanical injury to the placenta. Another thing they have in common is that we say these issues apply to trans men, we are acting in line with the precautionary principle – even if get it wrong, it’s not going to hurt anyone.
In the range of biomedical statements that we make about women and girls, there are many types of statements for which adding “and trans men” or “and people of other genders who were assigned female at birth” would be neither supportable by available evidence, nor harmless. Consider statements such as:
The mechanisms behind observed biomedical differences between sexes/genders are not always well-understood. In the cases when we do have an inkling of the mechanisms, a wide variety of explanations of sex/gender differences exist, including body fat composition, body size, various hormones, predisposing conditions such as gestational diabetes, and social and cultural factors. Any of these mechanisms could make a statement that is true for “women” not true for “trans men”.
The evidence that supports the above statements is not simple genetics, simple anatomy, or WP:NONAZIS. These statements are empirical observations, and that the evidence that supports these statements is statistics. It’s a common statistical fallacy to assume that something that is true for a population is also true for all subgroups in the population. If our guidelines give editors too much license to add genders and not enough caution about OR, I think we’re going to see a lot of this fallacy. Some cases of the fallacy will be true (because often what's true for a population is also true for a given subgroup), but all cases of the fallacy will be OR. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 05:46, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
messin such studies. But in cases where, e.g., only cisgender responses are actually included in a study population, then we would be required to follow the study's authors either in restricting their findings to the actual population studied *or* in extending their findings to a larger population through inference (if they had explicitly done so). We could also extend the findings of a primary study *if* a secondary/review article had explicitly done so with reference to that same study. What we could not do, as WP editors, is sort out that
messourselves. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:04, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
I have a feeling my main points are not getting across. I don't know how to fix that in one elegant post, so let me try responding to some parts of the above comments bit by bit.
Typically developing 46,XX humans have a higher risk of breast cancer than typically developing 46,XY humans, it isn't simply a matter of free choice whether to use "man/woman", "male/female" or other, more precise terms for these populations.
is the dominant wording in such sources. Especially when looking at the underlying published reviews or studies. But even if it was, it would not at all prove that those terms have the same substance or that "pregnant people" should be used in any other context. Crossroads -talk- 21:51, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
I don't know whether you remember, Crossroads, but you were previously publicly supportive of paraphrases by a subsequently topic-banned editor who was altering the language and conclusions of sources in exactly the way you are now saying is not ok. Does that mean you no longer support "standardizing" language to what you think the majority of sources use, in cases where the particular sources used are making specific statements using more precise language that is incompatible with your (or the banned editor)'s perception of the "standard"/majority? Are you on some kind of redemption arc, or something? Newimpartial ( talk) 04:57, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
unsourced. You can start flogging yourself now.
pregnant peopleand
pregnant womenactually reflect a difference in
substance. So far, this falls in the (very large) category of "things you assert and then never support with evidence in any way".. Newimpartial ( talk) 05:49, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
There does seem to be an observation that the more precise our claim is, the less leeway we have to reword the definition of groups studied, unfortunately I can think of lots of highly imprecise claims in category B, and any number of highly precise claims in category A. Consider, for example, the statements "Breastfeeding reduces the risk of postpartum depression for the mother" and "Immune factors and immune-modulating components in breast milk include cytokines, growth factors, proteins, microbes, and human milk oligosaccharides". The former statement is less precise and in category B, and the latter statement is more precise but is in category A. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 05:58, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
Comment Re:Should we maintain the sex–gender distinction?
: I think what this question is actually asking is, "should we impose specific terminology reflecting the sex and gender distinction" and I think the answer to that is pretty clearly "no". The term "women", for example, is usually a term for gender but sometimes a term for sex (or that doesn't distinguish the two). The term "female", in the context of humans, refers to gender less often than "women" does but cannot be presumed to refer to "biological sex" - this depends on (explicit and implicit) context. And the attempt to distinguish ==Signs and symptoms== as biology from ==Society and culture== as gender is simply not (yet?) supported by the reliable sources on these topics, who typically don't establish a clear distinction and can't be a priorized into doing so (as anyone familiar, e.g., with the literature on sex- and gender-based violence can attest).
It would be running ahead of the disciplinary literature, and misleading to readers, to insist as a matter of WP (medical?) style on "female" (especially on "females") for biology and "women" for gender - a great deal of WP:OR would be required, and we we would be imposing a specious distinction on language that, in reality, is much more fluid and nuanced. So I'm not saying we need to follow the terms used in the article cited in a particular sentence and change sentence for sentence (what if our sentence references sources that use differing terminology for what is demonstrably the same concept?), but at the same time this is not a problem that can be solved "globally", by fiat, but only "locally" for particular topics.
For example, the "pregnant women"/"pregnant people" issue is much more one of public health communication than of medical taxonomy: the two terms do not actually refer to distinct referents except in extreme edge cases (like a study that actually compares pregnant women to pregnant trans and nonbinary people). But in other instances (like sex- and gender-based violence), there isn't any simple distinction (or simple equivalency) that can be justified within the literature as a whole. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:43, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
...difference between gender and sex is a cultural idea, and some readers will find that strange. The idea that gender identity (vs, e.g., gender role) is the definitive understanding of gender for any person is also a cultural idea, and some readers will find that strange. But this is the culture that Western medical sources representRight, I think this is a very important point to make. Wikipedia respects the differences among various cultures, but it ultimately relies upon the scholarly establishment to set standards for what it says and how it says it. Especially in controversial areas like this! And the established organizations (AMA, CDC, WPATH) agree that gender identity and sex are distinct but related concepts is pretty well-established in the AMA style guide, CDC literature, etc. I don't think it qualifies as WP:OR to rely on professional organizations to tell us how to use the terms provided in the medical literature. Especially when there is such a heavy diversity of terminology in that literature. We are in a weird period of time, when multiple generations of researchers are reading, writing, editing, and reviewing these studies. As such, we often encounter scenarios when there are conflicting terms used within a single study, let alone between multiple ones and reviews thereof. I think it is entirely acceptable (and within the bounds of the WP:PAGs) for the project to adhere to one particular style even when the sources do not. As long as we can determine, with confidence, that we are not misinterpreting the results based on those terms. (E.g. using a study of all biological at-birth females and calling them "cis and trans women." — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 16:37, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
got in troublefor their behaviour post filing. Sideswipe9th ( talk) 04:03, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
Perhaps it would help if we removed the whole gender identity issue from the OR discussion, because this is very ordinary editing practice supported by the bit of OR quoted above: Rewriting source material in your own words while retaining the substance is not considered original research
Let's consider another example. Our
source says "one fifth of patients who present to specialist [epilepsy] clinics with seizures do not have epilepsy"
They either have seizures due to a psychological disorder or sometimes the heart or fainting is the cause - these are classified as Non Epileptic Seizures or NES.
Around 1 in 5 people (20%) diagnosed with epilepsy who are then assessed at specialist epilepsy centres are found to have NES."This is how Epilepsy Society word it. I think this rewording "retains the substance" and replacing "patient" with "people" here seems very similar to the replacement of "pregnant women" with "pregnant people". The Epilepsy society is writing for a lay audience so "people" reflects that point-of-view, whereas the BMJ is writing to doctors so "patient" reflects their point-of-view. Wikipedia is for a lay audience, and this is quite a typical way in which we do not write like our sources do. This is category A.
"A fifth of people diagnosed with epilepsy do not in fact have epileptic seizures."We've expanded the scope to all "people diagnosed with epilepsy" (most do not get referred to specialist centres) and this is incorrect. Those going to specialist epilepsy centres often have intractable epilepsy and a significant reason for that is that the seizures aren't epileptic in nature so don't respond to those drugs. This is category B. While it is possible that the rates of NES among specialist clinic patients are no different to the general epilepsy population, it seems highly unlikely. In fact the figure is more like 5% for the epilepsy population as a whole, though studies vary and the BMJ article does on to say "It has been widely supposed that this high prevalence reflects referral bias but a recent community based study found a similar proportion among patients with recent onset seizures". Again "recent onset" isn't the same as the whole epilepsy population.
"Some people diagnosed with epilepsy do not in fact have epileptic seizures."We've expanded the scope like above, but we've weakened the claim by making it much less precise. I think this is fine. We're just making a "there exists" claim, and the subset of those going to a specialist centre still fits within that claim for the larger group. I think this demonstrates that it is sometimes ok to alter the scope of the group being discussed as long as the claim is weak enough. This is category A.
"A minority of people diagnosed with epilepsy do not in fact have epileptic seizures."This is a bit stronger than above but still a lot weaker than "a fifth". The question then is whether expanding the scope might increase the number with NES or decrease it, and by how much. I think this is a judgement call. It would take a lot for 20% to go above 49% and the claim to be false. Whereas if the original number was 45% then it wouldn't take much for it to become wrong. A little bit of knowledge about epilepsy would make one pretty confident that in fact the percentage can only fall and so the rewording is safe, but whether we regard that "little bit of knowledge about epilepsy" as acceptable for Wikipedians is not certain. If the topic were cars or football then I suspect we'd accept that editors likely did know enough about the topic to be safe using their topic knowledge. What do you think? Is this a safe claim? I think this could be category C but perhaps in another subject domain could be A.
"A lot of people diagnosed with intractable epilepsy turn out to not have epilepsy at all."While this is correct, our source (from what is quoted at least) doesn't let us make "diagnosed with intractable epilepsy" equivalent enough to "patients who present to specialist clinics". So even though the claim is weak ("a lot of people"), it would be reasonable to challenge this claim per OR. (As WAID would no doubt point out, it doesn't fail OR because there are sources that would back up this claim; we just haven't quoted them [yet] -- if you read the body of the BMJ article, it rewords this sentence, "one in five patients with apparently intractable epilepsy referred to specialist centres"). This is category C (based on the source abstract). -- Colin° Talk 10:48, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
substancebetween "pregnant women" and "pregnant people"? In what kind of study or other publication do they refer to different populations? Do such studies exist? Newimpartial ( talk) 05:42, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
It is recommended for mothers to initiate breastfeeding within the first hour after birth... Breastfeeding appears to protect against breast cancer.
If you make certain statements gender-inclusive you can give the impression that the non-gendered statements appear to apply to all genders. For instance, if you change things to It is recommended for parents to initiate breastfeeding within the first hour after birth... Breastfeeding appears to protect against breast cancer.
The person who changes "mothers" to "parents" in the first sentence may not have even given a second of thought about the second sentence, but it's the watchers of the article who have to evaluate whether the second sentence is now OR. Lucky us!Like anyone would think the dad is protected because his wife breastfeeds?, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if we use trans-inclusive language early in an article, the reader will think that that all subsequent sentences are also trans-inclusive.
Breastfeeding has many benefits for the mother. These benefits include protection against breast cancer.
Say I change this to Breastfeeding has many benefits for the breastfeeding or chestfeeding parent. These benefits include protection against breast cancer.
By changing the first sentence, I have changed the scope of the second sentence.I have a hard time imagining the experienced editors at MOS agreeing to not do something because they aren't bright enough to do it well., that's why Wikipedia:No original research has served the community so well for the past 20+ years. I believe "Pregnant people shouldn't ride roller coasters" is original research done well, but it's still original research.
I don't know that anyone is saying that, Clayquot, but this example does bear on the concept of WP:OR. I'm not saying you are doing this, but some editors certainly do extend the concept of OR to mean "assertions that cannot be supported by reliable sources". That isn't actually what OR strictly refers to, in the WP policy framework - if someone somewhere has asserted a thing, even on an amusement park sign, that means it isn't WP:OR. It may not be MEDRS supported, but it most certainly isn't OR on the part of an editor. I have had tedious prior discussions with editors who have made this mistake about what OR is, so I feel it keenly (which, again, doesn't mean I am attributing this mistake to you). Newimpartial ( talk) 16:53, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
ORas a label in Talk page discussions where it does not strictly apply (through other would apply if the same claim were proposes in Article space). I myself tend not to so this, mostly because editors offering unsourced claims are, in my experience, typically repeating something the saw on an amusement park sign, on YouTube or on a self-published web source. In such instances, neither "original" nor "research" typically applies, so OR just seems malaprop. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:24, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
"A and B, therefore, C" is acceptable only if a reliable source has published the same argument concerning the topic of the article.And it uses "reliable" many times thereafter.
"A and B, therefore, C" is acceptable only if a reliable source has published the same argument concerning the topic of the article.(emphasis mine) Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 04:24, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any source- is more restrictive ("any source"). Since the place I most often see SYNTH arguments is as a rhetorical objection to Talk comments - rather than its intended function in relation to article text - I would rather see the use of this generally unhelpful rhetoric restricted as much as possible. Newimpartial ( talk) 12:13, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Clayoquot, perhaps you and WAID don't agree on the roller coaster example, but I think we have found examples where there really was no original research. Statements like:
Both avoid saying women/mothers and also avoid explicitly claiming they apply to trans men or "all people who breastfeed". That last claim is relatively weak since we aren't saying it offers 100% protection nor claiming it has a 50% risk reduction or whatever. There will be breastfeeding cis mothers who get breast cancer after breastfeeding. Not all claims are specified to the n'th degree and not all scope is specified precisely or even at all. I noticed that the non-talk page now says (wrt possible advice): "Redefining the scope of a claim beyond what is directly supported by the sources is a form of original research". I think the above examples about epilepsy shows that isn't true if one takes the "directly supported = uses exactly the same words" view. One can expand or redefine the scope, but only when the claim is weak enough that it still applies. I don't think it is helpful to have rationale for a rule that isn't in fact true. Better perhaps to say "Redefining the scope when substituting words can lead to claims that are not supported by the source (original research)". Or something like that. And I think some of these examples of rewriting causing problems could be much better done if removed from any culture war issue, just as I've seen some discussions about MEDRS are utterly ruined by people's political views on Covid origins etc. It is really hard to dispassionately consider "is this OR" when one really really would like for it to be OR so one can ban it.
Btw, if you think about the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine's comment about research not supporting a claim for a wider population, our sources do that all the time when they study young white men and pronounce the effect applies to all the world's population. Or think of all the drugs we describe but neglect to point out nearly all are only studied on and licenced for adults. Of course, we can say our sources authors are allowed to engage in original research. Still doesn't make it right. I think this alteration of population scope is really common, and yet here we are worrying specifically about whether trans men might vary from cis women, and not about whether elderly black women or overweight Asian children vary from young white American men with no underlying health conditions. -- Colin° Talk 17:12, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
everydayphrase? (We both already know "everyday" is not literally every single day.) Crossroads -talk- 05:35, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
sociallyis concerned, of course it applies in general. However, where I live geographically, there wouldn't be especially relevant social limits to where "pregnant people" is used - I took that to be part of what is meant by "everyday language". Newimpartial ( talk) 13:25, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
;-)
Here are two edits that I've made.
This one conforms strictly to the exact wording used in the cited sources, and was reverted.
This one, which I linked earlier today, uses a word that is not in the cited source, and was not reverted. Neither of these examples have anything to do with gender.Re WhatamIdoing's question above,
In terms of point #3, I wonder whether you disagree with the example given in that point. Do you actually believe that NOR requires you to include the exact word mothers?
. There are many issues with point #3 in
its current form, among them the fact that it talks about "mothers who are pregnant" which is really weird because the phrase wouldn't include anyone who is pregnant for the first time. If I try to answer your question about NOR while referring to point #3 I think I will confuse everyone including myself, so I will just try to answer the question as clearly as I can.
Say we have a topic such as Low milk supply, which I wrote. For this topic, the population the sources discuss is birth mothers who are trying to nurse their own babies. (That was the case when I wrote it. Let's assume for the sake of discussion that it's still the case; if people are incapable of assuming this for the sake of discussion I am honestly going to have to quit.)
When I am writing about this topic and paraphrasing from a source that uses the word "mothers", I do not necessarily use the word "mothers". NOR does not require me to use the term "mothers". I might use terms such as "maternal" or "women who have just given birth" or just "women". I might, and did, also use lots of sentences that do not indicate a gender, such as "Low milk supply is usually caused by allowing milk to remain in the breasts for long periods of time, or insufficiently draining the breasts during feeds." This sentence doesn't use gendered terms, but it is not OR because the context the sentence is in clearly identifies the population it applies to, and that population matches the population described in the sources.
I am not against all use of gender-neutral sentences. I am distinguishing between two ways that gender-neutral sentences are used: One way to use a gender-neutral sentence is in a context that makes it clear what gender the sentence is about, or at least doesn't challenge the reader's correct assumption about what gender is being referred to. The other way to use a gender-neutral sentence is to signal to the reader that the claim applies to any gender. The former is not an OR concern. The latter may be OR depending on what the sources say.
Both of us understand that NOR is about retaining the substantial meaning of the sources, not the exact words. We might disagree about when gender is substantive to the meaning of the sources. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 05:14, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
The latter may be OR depending on what the sources say" I don't think following WP:NOR means being forced to apply or imply gender with certain sentences. Nothing about that policy disallows being more vague. The issue is when context changes the meaning, such as a previous sentence which was about trans men and then using a source that is about biological men in a following sentence which is vague. That's a problem of NOR that has always applied, in any context, and I think is not a particular concern here. It's just bad wiki-writing, not a gender issue. — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 16:43, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
I'm creating this section and moving some comments here from the above section as
WP:OR and
WP:DUE are different policies. The comments below are in reply to What if a review said "Prostate problems are common in men and trans women who are over 50" and we reproduced that in an article, but the review's research study source was just a study of men. We have the same problem that the reader may think the issue has been studied in trans women, but actually hasn't (let's pretend it hasn't, as I fear WAID's SuperGoogle abilities will find just such a study). Are we ok with that? Could it be legitimately challenged?
from Colin.
Clayoquot (
talk |
contribs)
15:47, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
Setting aside that it is still extremely rare for reviews to write that way, if one review does write that way, but most other reviews stick with "women", and they all are of basically the same scope (i.e. the one with "people" language never investigated trans people), then we should say "women" per WP:DUE. The one that said otherwise was an outlier and seemingly used the term carelessly because their review never actually examined non-women. Crossroads -talk- 04:46, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject.Non-women can breastfeed, but the fact that non-women can breastfeed is a very minor aspect of the subject of breastfeeding.
Language changes whether I or you think those changes are reasonable or sensible or strange or stupid.Do you think this change has already occurred? How would one reconcile this with the fact that "pregnant women" is still vastly more common in sources? Do you agree that Wikipedia's language should not change unless that of the sources (representing the language in general) has also changed? Crossroads -talk- 06:16, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
pregnancy and the like are inherently female, and hence connected to womanhood- quite a few trans men and nonbinary parents would disagree with you quite emphatically about your
inherently, there. (2) You also them made a clearly false claim:
even though such groups have always been socially visible, nobody ever thought that for them we should write as though womanhood is incidental to the ability to get pregnant. That can't possibly be true, as generations of feminists have precisely argued that womanhood ought to become incidental to the ability to get pregnant, and therefore that we should write that way, prefiguratively. Newimpartial ( talk) 00:00, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
I don't think the way we write about occupations is a fair comparison to the issues we're struggling with on this page. It's a well-established, uncontroversial convention in English to write about occupations in a gender-neutral way, both for female-dominated and for male-dominated occupations. There's a very simple explanation for this: For just about every occupation, English has a term for the person who does that occupation, and those terms are simple to use and understand. A person who does midwifery is a midwife, a person who does auto repair is an auto mechanic - totally uncontroversial. A person who can get pregnant is a... what? In a general-audience reference work, I would generally say "woman". What do you think we should call that person? Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 05:29, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Another comment on due weight: Using gender-additive language throughout an article is not the only way to give a lot of weight to the "Men can do this too!" aspect of a topic. Actually the most common way is adding gender-additive language to the very beginning of the lead, e.g. [13] and [14]. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 05:44, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
If we claim DUE prevents the use of gender neutral language wrt pregnant people/women then it prevents it also for midwives- that's a logical statement, but I am not claiming that DUE prevents the use of gender-neutral language. I am claiming that DUE prevents using language in a way that directs the user's attention inappropriately. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 17:32, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
From the European Association of Science Editors: "The SAGER Guidelines are a comprehensive procedure for reporting of sex and gender information in study design, data analysis, results and interpretations of findings."
Highlights:
My takeaways from this are:
Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 01:26, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
"Weaving together reclaimed traditions with personal accounts from menstruators around the world, Diamant shows just how much our stories matter."If you read the actual book, the book's author describes setting up "The Pad Project",
'grounded in the conviction that "a period should end a sentence, not a girl's education," our mission is "to create and cultivate local and global partnerships to end period stigma and to empower menstruators worldwide."'So the review writer is actually using the language of the book they are reviewing.
'according to its director, Florence Schechter. “One of the questions that we always get at the Vagina Museum is ‘what did people do in the past with their periods?'”, she told me.'This is a direct quote.
"Participants were given bunches of flowers to handle when on their period and Schick reported they wilted and died within 24 h.Here we have gender-neutral "participants" and I suspect we'd find such language in any modern study too. The vital attribute is they are talking about study-participants, rather than needing to remind anyone of their sex or gender.
"Historically, the anatomy and physiology of bodies with vaginas have been neglected...This exhibition and the Vagina Museum as a whole aim to redress this lack of attention. I'll come back to that.
"objects are also displayed that help create a rich experience and reveal how people who menstruate have dealt with their periods at different times"
"This exhibition is particularly special in its focus on gendered histories, the medical visibility of women's bodies, and the cultural movement against menstrual shame and period poverty."which uses "women".
“Bodies with vaginas” is an odd way to refer to half the human race. Yet it was the quote that the Lancet, a medical journal, chose to feature on the cover of its latest issue, telling readers that “historically, the anatomy and physiology” of such bodies had been neglected. After complaints about dehumanising language, the Lancet apologised....One reason is that many of the new terms come across as dehumanising. As the Lancet discovered, many people—trans men as much as anyone else—dislike being described as collections of ambulatory body-parts and secretions. More than a whiff of misogyny is in the air.
The Lancet medical journal has been accused of sexism after describing women as “bodies with vaginas” on the cover of its latest edition. A Tweet sharing the front page has provoked a wave of criticism, with academics cancelling their subscriptions and resigning as reviewers, doctors blasting the phrase as “dehumanising” and activists suggesting the term is “unhelpful” for broader debates about inclusivity....While the language is an attempt at inclusivity, it has prompted a furious backlash - with some academics suggesting they will never work with the journal again. “Just wrote the Lancet to tell them to take me off their list of statistical reviewers and cancel my subscription and never contact me about anything ever again,” Prof David Curtis, a retired psychiatrist and honorary professor of genetics at University College London, wrote on Twitter. “Absolutely inexcusable language to refer to women and girls,” he said. Dr Madeleine Ní Dhálaigh, a GP, added: “You can be inclusive without being insulting and abusive. How dare you dehumanise us with a statement like this?” Others suggested the journal has double standards, flagging a post on September 20 which referred to the 10 million "men" living with prostate cancer and suggesting they have never seen the term “bodies with penises” used. “Considering, as the replies highlight, that The Lancet has recently published work on prostates and refer to men, I don’t think the decision to use 'bodies with vaginas' is an attempt at inclusive language,” said Dr Katie Paddock, a lecturer in education psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University, on Twitter....The campaign group Women Make Glasgow added that is has logged a formal complaint “about the dehumanising and straight up sexist cover story”, while feminist Claire Heuchan called that the term is “utterly shameful and totally regressive”. “This framing makes it sound like a coincidence that 'bodies with vaginas' have been neglected by medicine, as if it were not the product of a discrimination and oppression specific to the female sex,” she said on Twitter. “Medical misogyny... exists - and refusing to acknowledge women perpetuates it. Until [the Lancet starts] writing about 'bodies with penises', dehumanising and neglecting research specific to men, I’m going to call this erasure out for what it is: sexism.” There are also concerns that the language will undermine, rather than champion, inclusivity amid increasingly toxic debates.
If the doctrine that leads to terms like "pregnant people" were followed when writing about the vagina, that leads to talking about "people with vaginas" rather than "women". It is this reduction to a body part that made people so mad.- That is an argument against using "people with vaginas". Using it as an argument against "terms like 'pregnant people'" - as you appear to be doing - is, in fact, a slippery slope argument. Newimpartial ( talk) 23:45, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
I'm wondering if we might have a consensus that writing "people with <name of sex-specific body part>" is unsuitable in Wikipedia articles (with the exception of direct quotes). This is not a hypothetical question. Does everyone agree that this way of referring to people is unsuitable, even if we don't agree on what the best alternative is? Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 05:58, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
An edit war occurs when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other's contributions...An editor who repeatedly restores their preferred version is edit warring, regardless of whether those edits are justifiable. Claiming "My edits were right, so it wasn't edit warring" is not a valid defense.There were two editors edit warring there.
"I changed this to reflect the fact that men who have a uterus can and have given birth, as well as non-binary folks who have given birth". This is a statement of fact. The editor felt the original text was wrong or incomplete, and in their mind, improved it. Their next edit summary is
I am changing this again to reflect the fact that men can and have given birth, as well as non-binary folks. Not just women. This is misleading to already oppressed and underrepresented peoples, it needs to be changed. Again they explain why the original text is wrong and incomplete in their view. Their comment about "already oppressed and and underrepresented peoples" is an emotive comment but nonetheless is factually true. Both in society and arguably on Wikipedia too. It isn't all that different from one of our medical editors reverting some incorrect covid statement with a little rant about misinformation. That they made this change to the lead sentence of pregnancy was their biggest error, but newbies over-rate the importance or balance of some fact or point for the lead sentence all the time.
"Pregnancy, also known as gestation, is the time during which one or more offspring develops inside a person with a uterus."did not violate any policy or guideline, was factually correct and was a valid summary of the sourced body text. None of us here think it was a good choice of words. But arguing whether "person with a uterus" or "woman" is better for our readers is content dispute that is supposed to be resolved through discussion leading to consensus, not warfare.
I am not Colin, but just for clarity, I think not accepting the village pump consensus proferred by Crossroads
is overly polysemic, as a characterization. The RfC asked whether medical articles should be written in some kind of GNL. The consensus was that no, they should not. The closing statement said more than that, but was probably over its skis - a discussion held by 16 editors at Village Pump should probably not be considered to have a very high
WP:CONLEVEL compared to other GENSEX discussions, anyway, and certainly the closing statement itself isn't especially authoritative in the detail of its wording. So one can accept the essential no
consensus of the RfC without accepting Crossroads' specific reading of the closing statement - in his view we should rely on head counts of RS and follow some kind of majoritarian principle but this doesn't follow even from the closing statement of that RfC much less the actual consensus of the discussion it contains.
I for one disagree with Crossroads' account of what the Village Pump consensus actually means, but I don't disagree with the actual consensus (of no, don't do what was proposed). But then again, I'm not Colin. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:12, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
(I wrote the text below and then went to get my dinner. When I went to post it, Newimpartial conflicted. It turns out that despite not being Colin, he was pretty close, and I had to look up what polysemic means).
Actually "righteous" isn't the word I was looking for and I've amended it to "in the right" which is closer to what I meant (and what
WP:EW says). Being confident-with-good-reason about being right isn't any better.
Wikipedia:Edit warring#Exemptions is extremely limited. Having MOS or WP:V or an RFC on your side is insufficient. Wrt the RFC, what I accept is that it was proposed "articles relating discussion of topics that are sex-specific need [entirely] gender-neutral language" and this was rejected. That is the current community consensus on that matter. The RFC didn't ask for anything less than or other than this approach, and so it is unfair to assume it settles the matter beyond the RFC proposal, and of course consensus can change. Among the closing admin's comments is the claim "the terminology in articles, especially medical articles, is dependent upon the support of reliable sources and it is expected that editors would use the same terminology presented in said sources"
. This isn't true, is in opposition to editing guidelines such as
WP:MEDMOS and
WP:TECHNICAL, and doesn't reflect actual editing practice on Wikipedia. That a handful of peopled claimed this in order to support their opinions about gender-neutral language doesn't make it so, and I wish the admin had thought a bit more before repeating it as though that settled the argument.
I'm sure anyone familiar with MOS language discussions will have come across the essays
Wikipedia:Specialized-style fallacy and
Wikipedia:Common-style fallacy. The latter's nutshell says "Facts on a subject are drawn from reliable sources, but no particular subset of them dictates how Wikipedia must write"
These essays are cited in word-choice disputes at MOS when our sources (and/or the style guides for them) don't align with an editor's personal opinions, but are conveniently ignored when they do. I find both essays tiresomely long and ranty and take much too extreme a position. A shorter summary might be
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/FAQ which says "While specialized publications in a field, such as academic journals, are excellent sources for facts, they are not always the best sources for or examples of how to present those facts to non-experts"
. This isn't news to any experienced editor who has wrestled with how best to express our source expert's knowledge into words for a general audience. I wish such essays took a less combative middle ground where we sought to learn from our sources and their style guides when appropriate, and learn from non-source publications aimed at lay readers, and learn from general-purpose style guides, and mix all that with our own peculiarities about audience, voice and avoiding original research, etc.
Wrt CV9933's example, I see that an IP editor changed the article to be entirely gender-neutral on the 5th Jan. Another IP has reverted some of this and a new editor has reverted some of that IPs changes. The RFC could be cited by an editor reverting the text back to the gender-specific version. I don't have a problem with that. The newbie might benefit from a message about edit warring (with the IP) and handling content disputes, but it seems from their contribs that they aren't a single-purpose account and are here to help, so that needs done with care and encouragement. I agree with you that "parent" in the second sentence is problematic. I'd hope that the discussion here could produce some guidance with examples of how such substitutions can introduce problems that go beyond a disagreement about which wording is best. -- Colin° Talk 20:41, 1 February 2022 (UTC) Actually, I think the new editor was responding to "recent changes" edits rather than having targeted the article for change. Most of their other edits correspond with recent-changes vandal fighting and random improvements. I've left them a message on their talk page. -- Colin° Talk 22:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Crossroads, I'm not happy about the text 'Your opinion that the "person with a uterus" edit was perfectly allowable and that I should have left it be is revealing, but noted. Your dismissals of the Village Pump discussion are also noted.'
I wonder if you could strike that. Both times you characterise my position in a negative and inaccurate way, and then state "noted", which sounds threatening to be honest. Like you've saved the diff and at some future noticeboard you'll claim "Colin has a history of not accepting consensus and siding with those whose edits are rejected by the community[diff][diff]". Perhaps that's not how you meant it, but it is how it makes me feel. Yes we disagree but I wish you were trying not always to see the worst possible interpretation of what I wrote. We can surely discuss our disagreement and attempt to understand each others positions without engaging in such adversarial tactics. No doubt some of my own comments are less than perfect too. I hope this is a friendly space where editors can disagree, be critical, make and accept mistakes, learn from each other, and change their minds without embarrassment. For example, I would love it if you felt safe enough to admit "Yes, I was edit warring then" (and not "Yes, technically I was edit warring" or similar). All of us here know that editing in conflicted topics is not easy at all, and we are all human. --
Colin°
Talk
08:57, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
This section is to look at information resources aimed at providing health information to the public. These could be considered similar to Wikipedia in some ways. -- Colin° Talk 16:53, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
I had a look at www.nhs.uk which is like a health encyclopaedia, though extra accessible and much is written in the second person, so avoiding having to consider the sex or gender of the reader/potential-patient. This is particularly notable in the www.nhs.uk/pregnancy chapter, which neatly side-steps ever talking about pregnant women. They seem to just mention trans/non-binary once: Having a baby if you are LGBT+. The article on Infections in pregnancy that may affect your baby is the only location that mentions chestfeeding.
Other NHS health topics that mention trans but aren't explicitly about gender identity issues:
"boys and girls aged 12 to 13 years ..."but later mentions two groups each with their own section. The first is "men who have sex with men" who they then refer to as MSM:
"MSM up to and including the age of 45 are eligible ... MSM aged 15 and over need 3 doses of the vaccine. Those under 15 need 2.. The second is "Transgender people" which refers to both trans men and trans women.
Prostate problems are common, particularly in men aged over 50. The prostate is a small gland found only in men and trans women". This is one of the more integrated of all pages, mentioning trans women in the second sentence rather than a section or paragraph tagged on the end.
"Sexual problems can affect any man, whether he is straight, gay, bisexual or transgender."
Anyone with a womb can get womb cancer, this includes trans men and non-binary people with a womb. It usually happens after menopause, in people over the age 40.As with the prostate cancer page, trans men and non-binary people are fully integrated and the gender-neutral term "people over the age of 40" is used.
Anyone with a cervix can get cervical cancer. This includes trans and non-binary people with a cervix.". It goes on to say
"All women and people with a cervix between the ages of 25 and 64 are invited for regular cervical screening.Here it is interesting that the first sentence says "anyone with a cervix" and notes that this includes "trans and non-binary people with a cervix" and doesn't explicitly mention women, which seems to be assumed knowledge. The second sentence is also a little odd as women who have had a total hysterectomy that removes the cervix will not be invited for screening, so it isn't really "all women".
"Anyone can get breast cancer. This includes women, men, trans and non-binary people."It goes on to say
"Most breast cancers are diagnosed in women over 50 years old.". However, the main 'breast cancer' page is titled " Breast cancer in women" and talks exclusively of "women". It notes
"In rare cases, men can also be diagnosed with breast cancer. Find out more about breast cancer in men."and the linked page talks exclusively about men. So trans and non-binary are not included in much of the material here. Most of the reason to use the words "men" and "women" are to refer to statistical risk groups or those eligible for screening.
"Anyone registered with a GP as female will be invited for NHS breast screening every 3 years between the ages of 50 and 71"It later says
"If you're a trans man, trans woman or are non-binary you may be invited automatically, or you may need to talk to your GP surgery or call the local breast screening service to ask for an appointment.". There is a section at the end explicitly about this, which indicates that whether you are registered as "male" or "female" with your GP determines whether you get invited automatically. This section goes on to link to two other sites:
Searching for a term of course doesn't find examples where it could have been used and wasn't. I searched for "women" and found
My feeling then is that some of the major public health pages that focus on screening and vaccination, particularly for cancers, have been written to be trans and non-binary inclusive. But the pages that just provide information on what are traditionally regarded as men's and women's health topics just ignore trans and non-binary. -- Colin° Talk 16:10, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
Anyone can get breast cancer. This includes women, men, trans and non-binary people.I wonder why they decided to say that anyone can get breast cancer regardless of gender identity (women, men, trans, non-binary) rather than regardless of sex (female, male, intersex). Cancer is a biological phenomenon. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 07:00, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
And dozens more... I searched for '"pregnant people" site: https://www.cdc.gov/', and '"pregnant person" site: https://www.cdc.gov/'. I'm thinking perhaps pages updated in the last two years are written for "pregnant people" not "pregnant women".
many many of them use "pregnant women" when referring to research studies, so they are using the language of the study.What an idea! Now that's a good example to follow. Especially since, uniquely, we write for a site that forbids OR and Synthesis. Crossroads -talk- 06:59, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
There are others, though not as many as CDC. Although the 2020 AMA Style Guide said nothing about the issue, we have a statement attributable to the president of the AMA clearly referring to "pregnant people". I think that settles any doubt about the AMA's position on whether such language is appropriate for public health messages. -- Colin° Talk 17:22, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
WEIGHT covers all types of MEDRS, not just public health messagingseems at best tangentially relevant when it comes to the terms we should use in an articles where public health messaging is relevant to the article's topic. Newimpartial ( talk) 18:03, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
what proportion even of AMA documents use "pregnant people" vs. "pregnant women?- the "proportion" here is irrelevant, since presumably any sourced document will include both terms (in reference list and main text) when dealing with sources where the relevant term is used in its title or in discussing its findings. It would take a higher level of reading than "it uses one in the title but the other more often in the body" to determine which term a source actually prefers, in terms of usage - this is a question calling more for qualitative than quantitative methodology, IMO. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:20, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
It is notable that Cancer Research UK did not test its “inclusive” approach with a male-specific cancer. Its campaign messages about prostate and testicular cancer address “men”, rather than “everyone with a prostate” or “everyone with testicles”. (Addressing “people with a cervix” is, of course, only inclusive of people who know they have a cervix. Many women do not have that detailed knowledge of their internal anatomy. And those who speak English as a second language may well not know the word.)...But the drift towards gender-neutral language (at least when discussing matters that affect women) makes it increasingly hard to articulate all this. How can you describe the maternity penalty as a factor in women’s disadvantage in the workplace, without committing the “essentialist” faux pas of associating women with pregnancy and motherhood?[17] And:
This linguistic shift is being driven by both compassion and fear. Compassion, because organisations are keen not to be seen to be excluding those whose sense of their gender does not match their sex, such as people who identify as trans or non-binary. And fear, because they are worried about attracting the wrath of online mobs should they be deemed to have violated a set of rapidly changing taboos about gender and sex that hardly existed five years ago—and which, outside a few rarefied circles, still don’t....Furthermore, understanding could suffer. Medical advice, for instance, has to be clear and intelligible by all. That is why Britain’s National Health Service often prefers words like “stomach ache” to “dyspepsia”, or “heart attack” to “myocardial infarction”. One survey conducted by a cervical-cancer charity suggested that around 40% of women are unsure about the details of what exactly a cervix is. This implies that asking “people with cervixes” to turn up for screening appointments may not be clear or intelligible, especially to women who have English as their second language.[18]
“Bodies with vaginas” is an odd way to refer to half the human race. Yet it was the quote that the Lancet, a medical journal, chose to feature on the cover of its latest issue, telling readers that “historically, the anatomy and physiology” of such bodies had been neglected. After complaints about dehumanising language, the Lancet apologised....On September 18th the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) republished a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Supreme Court judge, on the anniversary of her death. The quote was a defence of a woman’s right to have an abortion. But the ACLU’s version—for which it, too, later apologised—replaced every instance of “women” with “people”....One reason is that many of the new terms come across as dehumanising. As the Lancet discovered, many people—trans men as much as anyone else—dislike being described as collections of ambulatory body-parts and secretions. More than a whiff of misogyny is in the air.
Stonewall have been campaigning for trans rights since 2015 and it isn't possible to read their material published for organisations (I guess you have to pay to get it).
This webpage answers some questions such as "Does Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index require organisations to remove the word ‘mother’ from HR policies?". Their answer aligns with the "additive approach" we've seen mentioned in some guides. Workplace policies are more similar to the legal documents we noted elsewhere that are under pressure to be inclusive mainly from the point of view of not leaving people out of things they are entitled to or are prevented from. In the culture war over trans rights (particularly gender self identification in the UK, which Lewis opposes), Stonewall are a player but also a target. A google search "pregnant people" site:
https://www.stonewall.org.uk
returns no results. I did find
Family leave and pay which for example says "The person giving birth to the baby is entitled to the following maternity leave and pay". I think this kind of language is inevitable in legal explanations. I wouldn't expect an organisation that now addresses trans rights to state that any other way. At the bottom of the article, though, they use "pregnant women" twice. So I don't really get the feeling that Stonewall is policing language very strongly here. --
Colin°
Talk
10:35, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
But aren't those who are outspoken in opposition to the conspiracy "organizations who purport to represent minority groups" also activists? If not, what are they?
Newimpartial (
talk)
09:32, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Regarding the 'every wording is political' argument, no, not everything is political in the same way. Wikipedia is not for advocacy, and hence not for wording that is political in a way involving change from how the language is used in reliable sources. We are not part of the vanguard of self-proclaimed "progressive" change efforts, nor would we advocate older language now replaced in reliable sources by newer language. Otherwise you'd have to say that people saying that writers should use womxn and those who say they don't need to are both activists. Crossroads -talk- 06:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
("pregnant individual" OR "pregnant person" OR "pregnant patient") NOT ("pregnant woman")
You will have to add the usual five-year limit and specify reviews in the side bar). That looks like more than 10% of MEDRS-compliant sources are using gender-neutral language.("pregnant individual" OR "pregnant person") NOT ("pregnant woman")
, I get only 12 results.
Clayoquot (
talk |
contribs)
03:40, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
reasonable professional peopledecide to use one phrase over another? I mean, if it were, say, only 1% of them, should that not impact our decisions? They are the experts after all, the ones who can best evaluate the arguments. I also see no reason to think abstracts as a group are not representative of articles as a group, phrasing-wise.
the terminology in articles, especially medical articles, is dependent upon the support of reliable sources and it is expected that editors would use the same terminology presented in said sources.I also don't believe treating "women" like a dirty word we should avoid as much as possible is in any way "brilliant", natural, or WP:PLAINENGLISH.
politically active editorsreally needs no response from me. Your own arguments on this page even make political points, such as under #Effective communication about pregnancy, birth, lactation, breastfeeding and newborn care: the importance of sexed language, where you equate certain wording to using "he" to describe women, and this very section, where you describe certain wording as "conservative". Crossroads -talk- 05:50, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
reasonable professional peopledecide to use one phrase over another? I mean, if it were, say, only 1% of them, should that not impact our decisions? They are the experts after all, the ones who can best evaluate the arguments." I see little valid comparison between cutting out one-half of the population, an entire sex, by using "he", and using "men" or "women" without needing to account for a small minority of people with gender dysphoria. Additionally, the former is very rare in recent RS, and the latter remains extremely common. The common language operates similarly, per dictionaries. The two are not "identical" at all. I also don't appreciate the continued politically charged framing of this as "trans-exclusionary", when there are other ways to include trans people without removing mention of men and women from their own sexes, such as by specialized sections and articles (like transgender pregnancy). Crossroads -talk- 06:36, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
every wording is politicalargument is intended to address, but that isn't what I'm saying - but at least that's another square in fallacy bingo :p. Active opposition to linguistic change can be, and often is, activist in orientation, as is your insistence that "pregnant people" is a controversial neologism and that "assigned female at birth" is a euphemism. There is a difference between using terms and being an activist for specific terminology, and the difference is not based on whether one prefers old or new language - at least, not in most cases. Newimpartial ( talk) 23:52, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
"It is paid to: Pregnant people or People who have recently given birth". This is the "easy read" version. The standard version uses second-person.
These are just two of many examples I browsed and what struck me was how many concerned legislation. If you read the earlier-posted midwife article, you'll know "The 1902 Midwifery Act prohibited uncertified women from working in the role, but because it assumed the job was only ever carried out by women it took a 1926 law to close the loophole and exclude unqualified men too." So possibly those writing legal documents are adopting "pregnant people" in order that it covers all possibilities. -- Colin° Talk 15:59, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
Two articles this weekend.
"About 30% of eligible people are not adequately screened against second most common cancer in women under 35". The article mainly uses "women". The article quotes cisgender female drag queen Victoria Scone:
'Scone said, as a queer woman, she was initially uncertain whether cervical screening was imperative. “However, this new campaign has clarified that all women and people with a cervix, including those in the LGBTQ+ community like myself, are eligible for a screening, so I booked myself in,” she said.'The video repeats this "woman and people with a cervix" format. The NHS figures quoting in the sub-heading as "eligible people" are repeated in the body as "about 30% of women aged 25-64 who were eligible" but the source says "eligible individuals aged 25 to 64". The appendixes clarify who are eligible, which among other factors are "a woman or person with a cervix" and notes that the automatic letters are triggered if "registered [at their GP] as female or indeterminate", and those registered as male need to apply for themselves if they are otherwise still relevant.
-- Colin° Talk 14:03, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
an overwhelming majorityof sources don't use the new language, especially among academic article, which on Wikipedia carry far more "weight". Even if I were to grant the premise that this were merely a matter of stylistic choice, there are all sorts of stylistic matters in which sources differ but Wikipedia guidelines only permit one style, for consistency's sake. MOS:HEADINGS is just one example of this. Crossroads -talk- 05:19, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
I think your apparent concession that it happens that the first definition in the dictionary aligns with gender critical ideas about the only meaning of the word "woman"
is entirely mistaken. There is no lexicographical reason to believe that the reference to "female" in dictionary definitions refers to "female sex" or equivalent - the gender critical spin on "female human being" doesn't align with what woman, or female human being, actually mean in either specialist or nonspecialist usage.
Newimpartial (
talk)
15:01, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
biological female, XX, person with a uterus who can get pregnant, that isn't in fact what dictionaries actually say nor is it what they mean. If Crossroads actually means to say this, he is wrong, and if he doesn't mean to say this you shouldn't be strawmanning his argument by importing "gender critical" nonsense that he has not actually asserted.
"However, every "pregnant person" is female. English has a word for female humans, and we should not misleadingly forgo it just because a tiny minority of them have a condition (gender dysphoria) whereby they identify otherwise". If I've misunderstood Crossroad's point then they can do two things: explain what is wrong and fully explain what they do mean. Until then, I don't think I'm strawmanning. I also don't think it is helpful for you to describe positions as "nonsense". Let's leave the "You are not just wrong; you are stupid as well" style of debate for twitter and extremists. Doing that prevents someone saying "Yes, that is in fact my position". -- Colin° Talk 16:17, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
(m)any people will mean "adult XX biological female who can become pregnant" when they use the word "woman"- that simply isn't what a dictionary means if it places "adult human female" in that first definition space, and pretending that dictionaries actually are saying that is both a poor reading of what dictionaries actually say, and unhelpful argumentation regardless of one's actual POV.
rabbit holes, above.
"A female adult human being"(no other definitions) and defines "female" as
"1 Of or pertaining to the sex that in animals produces ova and brings forth young. 2 An individual of the female sex, as a woman.I downloaded Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary 32nd Edition (2012) only to find it didn't define "woman". It did define "female" as
"1 an individual organism of the sex that bears young or produces ova or eggs.Then I tried Mosby's Medical Dictionary 10th Edition (2017). It defines "woman" as
"An adult female human"and "female" as
"1 pertaining to the sex that has the ability to become pregnant and bear children; feminine. 2 a female person. I tried a couple of others and they didn't define "woman" but did define "female" as the egg/young-producing sex. So perhaps you could apologise for saying I was "
An individual of the sex that bears young or that produces ova or eggs, or a person who has a particular physical appearance, chromosome constitution, or gender identification(emphasis added); other sources similarly include elements in defining "female" or "woman" that contradict your statement that
Medical dictionaries have precisely one definition of "woman" and it is the "uterus having" meaning- this isn't any more true of medical dictionaries as a class than it is of other dictionaries, and to claim the contrary in the face of evidence would be a bit more than "misleading", IMO.
Crossroads argument is that because medical dictionaries define "woman" the way we are currently using it [which is also the way gender critical feminists define it]- emphasis added. As Tonto might have said to the Lone Ranger, "Who is 'we', white boy"? Whether or not a source (including a Wikipedia article) is defining "woman" in terms of gender presentation or expression, or in terms of reproductive anatomy, or in chromosomal terms or legal terms is determined by the specific source. We have MEDRS sources that use "female gender" when they mean anatomical sex, and ones that use "female sex" when they mean gender role. It is certainly inappropriate to read (and write) Wikipedia articles - including medical ones - as though each mention of "woman" meant "person with a cervix"; what "woman" means depends very precisely on the context given by the source, which may be incomplete but certainly cannot be overruled by a medical dictionary. I am not saying editors should always use the terms the sources use, but we certainly should not impose arbitrary assumptions about what sources ought to mean by the words they use. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:13, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
"Are medical dictionaries wrong when they define "woman" as they do?", is to challenge the premise. Many medical dictionaries, as you have noted, do not define "woman" at all. Those that do almost never provide a direct definition in terms of biological sex. Even the term "female" is not consistently defined by medical dictionaries in a narrow anatomical or chromosomal definition. The idea that medical dictionaries define woman anatomically, so Wikipedia must do so as well, is based on an demonstrably false premise - conceding that major premise seems absurd to me. What is more, even if there were a consistent and precise definition of woman to be found in medical dictionaries, it would be WP:SYNTH to impose that definition on the specific MEDRS themselves, particularly when some MEDRS documented that either they themselves or other studies use other, specific, definitions of "women" or other terms, and these often conflict with those offered in medical (and other) dictionaries. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:14, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
I am unaware of saying any things that aren't true
in this discussion. The only reference to medical dictionaries I could find in this section (which is what we had both been referring to), prior to my intervention, was
this recent one by Crossroads. For some reason you are now referring to comments made by Crossroads in other sections on this page, but that doesn't falsify anything I have said about this section (his comments were
this one on January 27,
this one on February 10 and
this one on February 16; in none of these diffs does Crossroads present evidence from medical dictionaries, and in none of these instances do you respond with evidence from medical dictionaries, either, incidentally).
Second, the way you refer to the many medical dictionaries
you consulted, in your last diff would lead me to believe that you consulted a number of medical dictionaries prior to my comment There is no lexicographical reason to believe that the reference to "female" in dictionary definitions refers to "female sex" or equivalent
- in fact, I only see one citation by you to a dictionary prior to
this recent comment, and the
earlier comment did not cite a medical dictionary. Now I have no way of knowing when you consulted medical dictionaries and what you did with what you found, but you certainly did not present any of your findings on this talk page until you responded to
my
well-intentioned
critique.
Now to be clear, when I say When a dictionary says "adult human female", it is not specifying what sense of "female" is meant and it is
- that is a comment on content and not on a contributor. You can absolutely continue to dispute what I said in my immediately preceding comment that dumbass misleading to pretend that it is"Female", like "woman", covers a range of meanings including gender and gender identity
, but your recent assertions based on medical dictionaries do not actually provide reason to support this, particularly when they conflict with the actual literature on sex and gender in medical research, which is quite clear on this point.
In my initial, rather mild comment,
above, I was reacting to your immediately prior comment that the first definition in the dictionary aligns with gender critical ideas about the only meaning of the word "woman"
. For that statement to be accurate would require "adult female human being" not only to be the only meaning of "woman", it would also require that "female" within that phase be defined exclusively in a biological sense favored by gender critical activists. Actual reliable sources, whether dictionaries or other sources, seldom take this step, and you conceded that logic to Crossroads without either of you presenting any evidence in its support. The fact that the very first medical dictionary I obtained full access to did not limit itself to a narrow definition of "female" confirmed my impression, formed through extensive prior consultation of nonspecialist dictionaries (among other sources), that RS do not generally provide a rationale to define "female" (or "woman") in the reductionist way you so readily concede. You seem to presuppose that if a dictionary includes something biological as the first definition of "female", that this definition is meant each time the word is used, but there is no reason to believe this to be the case.
Newimpartial (
talk) 00:11, 20 February 2022 (UTC) completed
Newimpartial (
talk)
00:56, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
then there's no need to change to accommodate a tiny number of people with a mental illness, as they keep putting it.I will clarify my viewpoint on dictionaries under #Dictionaries. Crossroads -talk- 05:39, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
"The word "dysphoria" appears 10 times on this page, 9 in your text. Our sources on this issue don't use that word, but neutrally refer to people who are trans or non-binary. Why emphasise a diagnosis of mental illness, when our sources don't?". You didn't answer my question, which was made was in response to your text
"English has a word for female humans, and we should not misleadingly forgo it just because a tiny minority of them have a condition (gender dysphoria) whereby they identify otherwise."and
""without needing to account for a small minority of people with gender dysphoria". You claim I misrepresent your argument. So why have you mentioned a mental illness 10 times on this page, and twice as a reason to dismiss people's views? As I noted earlier
"if those aren't your views, then you've expressed yourself badly and might want to strike some sentences."It isn't good enough to say you are misrepresented. You have to say what you mean instead, and if that contradicts what you wrote earlier then say that your earlier text was badly put or that you've changed your position or whatever. We can't just ignore that you have repeatedly brought mental illness into the discussion in sentences where you dismiss viewpoints. -- Colin° Talk 09:03, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.They later summarise the term
Gender dysphoria: A concept designated in the DSM-5 as clinically significant distress or impairment related to a strong desire to be of another gender, which may include desire to change primary and/or secondary sex characteristics. Not all transgender or gender diverse people experience dysphoria.I think "mental illness" is a fair description of an officially defined psychiatric condition causing "clinically significant distress or impairment" and for which one seeks specialist medical help. The final sentence of that quote is siginifcant, and one reason why our sources refer to "transgender or gender diverse people". Another reason is of course the stigma surrounding mental illness and idea that crazy people can be dismissed. Which is why I think it is very wrong for Crossroads to twice dismiss the concerns of readers and refer to them not by a neutral description but by focussing on this one term that is officially a mental illness. -- Colin° Talk 12:45, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
It was taken out from mental health disorders because we had a better understanding that this was not actually a mental health condition, and leaving it there was causing stigma.So you can forgive me for thinking that the position you had taken emphasising GD as mental illness was most likely incorrect. CV9933 ( talk) 15:14, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
What do you think?Well it all seems to be a bit of a political minefield. Maybe that is one reason whay the pageviews for this venue far exceeds the number of participants. CV9933 ( talk) 13:15, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Other Guardian articles only use "pregnant women" and "mother". This one from a month ago about the UK government doesn't use those terms at all. Same for this one. This one makes points about "pregnant women" only. This one from yesterday about a CDC study always uses "women" and "mothers" in its own voice, and only uses "people" or "person" when quoting a CDC official from a press conference, who herself only does so some of the time. There are many more like this. So, even the left-leaning press routinely writes about this topic without any desexed language. Crossroads -talk- 00:49, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
On the other side of this page, Clayoquot asked:
Something I noticed when looking at the professional examples was how inconsistent they often were. I think this may reflect that what we are talking about is not really "terminology" outside of a discussion of language used for gender and sex in medical articles. At pregnancy, the terminology is "gestation", "live birth", "last menstrual period", "spontaneous miscarriage", "induced abortion", and so on. There's even a section on "Terminology". These are the specialist terms for that topic which require accurate definition and consistent use. Per my earlier epilepsy example, the reader would be confused if some of an article said "focal seizure" and the next paragraph said "partial seizure" about the same thing. On the other hand, we might substitute difficult terminology with a lay-reader-friendly equivalent at times, such as the lead. But the words "woman", "person", "individual" are everyday words that don't meet a dictionary definition of terminology. They can sometimes be very import, such as we have seen with the writing of laws, but these components aren't what we are teaching the reader or words that only experts use. Typically, reader won't be paying any attention to them. I wonder they if that is why these articles get away with being inconsistent.
On a practical level, we have seen times where it may be necessary to write "women" because that is what the data is for, so any writer taking a "pregnant people" approach would have to compromise. And we haven't found a convenient alternative word for the person who can become pregnant. -- Colin° Talk 16:15, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Above, Clayoquot asked about the "people with body part" approach, and WAID and I thought there were situations where that language would be fine, even necessary. And continuing the thoughts about all the different values we are trying to weigh up and that each of us bring when editing/discussing, I thought it could be worth considering how much the context affects the values. For example, consider the following parts of an article
And then we also have different kinds of articles
For example, at Transgender pregnancy, it says "Non-binary people with a functioning vagina, ovaries and uterus can give birth." I would not expect that language in the lead sentence of Pregnancy any time soon. Although we have seen public announcements from the CDC about "pregnant people" and covid, the CDC's information pages about pregnancy tend to use "women". On the NHS pages, they write "Anyone with a womb can get womb cancer, this includes trans men and non-binary people with a womb. It usually happens after menopause, in people over the age 40." but the NHS currently mostly uses "women" when dealing with women's reproductive health issues. While some things we have discussed, such as OR and V, don't change contextually, the values we might emphasise likely change depending on where we are writing. I would fully expect articles and sections on transgender/nonbinary issues to use language more sympathetic to that population group. I would expect resistance to that approach in the lead of a topic women would identify with. In between, following the examples from CDC/NHS, it may be more acceptable to use e.g. gender neutral / people with an X / adding-trans/nonbinary approaches when dealing with the sex related aspects of topics such as cancers and infections. -- Colin° Talk 17:45, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Addressing “people with a cervix” is, of course, only inclusive of people who know they have a cervix. Many women do not have that detailed knowledge of their internal anatomy. And those who speak English as a second language may well not know the word.[26] And:
One survey conducted by a cervical-cancer charity suggested that around 40% of women are unsure about the details of what exactly a cervix is. This implies that asking “people with cervixes” to turn up for screening appointments may not be clear or intelligible, especially to women who have English as their second language.[27] The same applies to many parts of sex-specific anatomy. Crossroads -talk- 05:38, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
"Cervical cancer is when abnormal cells in the lining of the cervix grow in an uncontrolled way. The cervix is part of the female reproductive system. It is the opening to the vagina from the womb."This not only addresses the body-ignorance problem, but doesn't say "women". Most of their pages on cervical cancer occasionally mention "women" but their screening page does also say "Cervical screening is also for anyone within this age range who has a cervix, such as trans men and non-binary people" and links to I’m trans or non-binary, does this affect my cancer screening?. I'd really rather discuss health information pages that are in some way similar to Wikipedia's mission, and professionals thoughts on medical writing, rather than a tweet and a opinion piece in a conservative-right political magazine. -- Colin° Talk 12:08, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
I came across this academic paper, which I think has some value to our discussion. The author is Lal Zimman, who is trans and an academic on linguistics, specifically running a "Trans Research in Linguistics Lab". I guess if Zimman edited the lead of Pregnancy, it would be not be unfair to describe him as a language reform advocate! Here are some points I noticed.
"are high in frequency; it is unusual for a person not to be gendered if they are to play any kind of significant role in a speaker’s discourse. We have seen this in websites (NHS, CDC) that use second-person, or the midwifery articles that use "pregnant people", that eventually you come unstuck and have to say "women".
Words that can be used to refer to a person of any gender, such as person, human or individual, arguably carry their own gendered implications specifically because they refuse to specify their referent’s gender. In the Context section above, there are areas where this approach varies in the degree it is noticed and surprises or is expected by readers.
"At times, the gender neutral option may feel clunky or unnatural..., the perception of speech as sounding natural, articulate or aesthetically pleasing derives from a long history of socially informed norms of use."This kind of opposition to a language form is common, with its own long history of use wrt alternatives to sexist, racist, homophobic and words other minority groups find offensive. Typically it is employed by someone outside of those groups and is I think the weakest argument. As Hofstadter noted above, "sexist English" was his native language. Earlier the author notes
"when I speak about you I am not just representing my own point of view; I also bear some form of responsibility towards you when it comes to the way I represent you linguistically."and here they mean respecting how the subject or reader wishes to be represented linguistically, and not focused entirely one one's own views about language or how one was taught as a child.
"hedge all generalisations about gender"and I think that relates to our discussion about our several Mothers/guilty/Haemophilia phrases. Precision is not always necessary and being less precise gives one flexibility. The second approach, awkwardly for me, advocates using extremely precise language about the people-group you are discussing. So "women" in the three examples is replaced by "People assigned female at birth" or "people who are perceived as women" or "Everyone with a cervix" (wrt cervical cancer screening). Zimman says
"To the uninitiated, these phrases can seem wordy, complex or even amusing (particularly in the case of [the last example])", so I think Zimman does accept that this approach would be ridiculous if attempted generally without regard to context. But we can see from some of the academic guidelines that authors of papers and conductors of studies are being asked to be much more precise about their people groups, and to avoid just dividing everyone into "women" and "men" and thinking that assumption is good enough. I can see all three phrases being used on Wikipedia when precision is highly valued in that context. And we have seen such language used on public health websites, specifically in the sections or pages dealing with trans + medical issues (coincidentally also on cancer screening and risk). In the right context, it can be appropriate. In the wrong context, likely unacceptable.
-- Colin° Talk 18:28, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
an opinion piece by a bunch of like-minded friends) with your receptivity to the Lal Zimman article in the previous section, which was quite radical in some changes it advocated for, and certainly was not by some 'balanced committee'. As for
Is inclusivity "Here's a leaflet we wrote specially for trans people, because you guys are so odd and talk weirdly", I certainly don't think inclusivity is deprecating the language of the vast majority in favor of that of a small minority. Material specifically for trans people makes sense. Also, most academic work on cultural imperialism and privilege is by people from developed nations, so I don't see why that matters. I will read the final paper when it comes out and point out highlights here. Crossroads -talk- 05:20, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
The sources for this are now available. I checked the claim "They may not know, for example, that “a person with a cervix” is a woman and refers to them"
. This is sourced to a study about cervical cancer leaflets (18 in English and 4 in Spanish) and their accessibility to Mexian women living now in the Kansas, USA. The 20 study participants were Spanish speakers and they were interviewed in Spanish. The women had low health and educational literacy levels (some were illiterate). The study did not address whether the women knew that women had a cervix and its relevance was further compounded by the various ways to describe the cervix in simple Spanish. As I noted earlier about a magazine article making a similar point, you'd likely get similar results asking about what the liver did and what it was connected to, but few people would be ignorant that they had one. I'm sure we all agree that "woman" is far more accessible than "person with medical-term-for-body-part", but I can't really imagine any serious usage of this appearing outside of an article that contained a big diagram of a female form and labelled body parts. We have only ever seen naive usages of this approach except for very targetted material (i.e. a web page on trans people reminding the reader that "anyone with an X may get Y"). It is one thing to see these kind of baseless claims in an opinion piece in a magazine well known for conservative views, but disappointing that an academic journal didn't fact-check. I wonder if this opinion piece was actually fact checked at all? --
Colin°
Talk
15:16, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Edited by: Jennifer L. Payne, University of Virginia, United Statesand
Reviewed by: Lauren M. Osborne, Johns Hopkins University, United States, neither of whom are authors (of which there are already ten). More on this article coming soon. Crossroads -talk- 05:21, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
'Why is this always about women's health? Where's the equivalent article complaining about "people with a prostate"? Well, now at least we have a source that says it's not happening for men's health.'. Is the "source" this article? It says
"Notably, desexing language in relation to males occurs less frequently"but their evidence for that is Do we need the word ‘woman’ in healthcare? which we've already discussed. That article says
"Arguably, discussions around gender neutral terminology appear to focus mainly on alteration of female-specific language, rather than amending male-associated words.Now that sentence doesn't claim male-associated words are altered less often, but that the female-specific language generates the most discussions. The article does go on to offer two anecdotes (comparing Irish health service cervical cancer screening information with prostate cancer, and noting Prostate Cancer UK refers to men on their information page). The first is unconvincing as we've seen variation of approach within the NHS pages on women, so seeing variation overall, with a sample size of two, doesn't tell me anything statistically meaningful. The second is absurd as there's no counter example for women, and seems basically "I found a web page on the internet where adult males were referred to as 'men'".
"However, every "pregnant person" is female. English has a word for female humans, and we should not misleadingly forgo it just because a tiny minority of them have a condition (gender dysphoria) whereby they identify otherwise.". The word you refer to here is presumably "woman". I cannot find an intepretation of this that does not define woman as solely applying to "female humans" (and by 'female' you mean those who can become pregnant). Which also corresponds to the primary dictionary definition (adult female) that you repeatedly advocate for in this discussion. I also interpret this as saying those who think of themselves otherwise are mentally ill and can therefore be dismissed. You repeated this dismiss-those-with-mental-illness line when you wrote
"without needing to account for a small minority of people with gender dysphoria". Crossroads, I'm not about to call you names over this. But if those aren't your views, then you've expressed yourself badly and might want to strike some sentences. The word "dysphoria" appears 10 times on this page, 9 in your text. Our sources on this issue don't use that word, but neutrally refer to people who are trans or non-binary. Why emphasise a diagnosis of mental illness, when our sources don't? -- Colin° Talk 08:59, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
identifies aslanguage should be understood as equivalent to
has an ... identitylanguage or other variations thereof. It seems obvious that fine differences of wording carry quite large differences of meaning in this domain, which mitigates against the straw poll methodology you so often favour. Newimpartial ( talk) 03:11, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
I highly recommend reading the above-named paper for anyone considering this issue. It details numerous issues that can come up with the use of language that removes all reference to a person's sex. And it 'brings the receipts' with many documented cases where writers (who should know better) use it and create major errors and use terminology that itself marginalizes. These examples are in the paper itself and especially in the supplementary material, in which they both list examples and explain the problem with them. In no way are these isolated issues when people try to use this sort of language. And if people who should know better commit such major mistakes, editors who attempt to add such wording to Wikipedia will all the more commit those mistakes, and they already do when they do try.
The authors are not transphobes or 'gender critical'. They say that sensitivity to, and acknowledgment of
trans people's needs is a good and important intention
. They later say that In some circumstances, application of gendered rather than sexed meanings of words is appropriate and we fully endorse the importance of being inclusive and respectful (12).
They mention on an individual basis as well as Targeted public health campaigns should address the needs of this group, not just to ensure that the language used is suitable (152) but because they may have additional social needs or medical needs associated with treatments such as testosterone use or surgery to remove breast tissue (153, 154). Similarly, targeted health support materials are of value and have already been produced by some organizations [e.g. (155–157)]. Development of separate desexed materials (much as might occur for people from different language backgrounds) may be a useful strategy [e.g. (158, 159)].
In a Wikipedia context, we can follow this on articles like
transgender pregnancy; if there is not enough material for a dedicated article, dedicated sections for trans people, as done for other groups with particular needs and as suggested above under
#Existing Wikipedia examples, can be done. One article doing something like this is
Menstruation#Who menstruates and
Menstruation#Terminology.
The authors go on to note that uses of this language in general contexts are often not deliberated regarding their impact on accuracy or potential for other unintended consequences.
This also applies to edits.
They note that Crucially, words such as “woman,” and “mother” can have both sexed and gendered meanings. The long-established sexed meanings are that “woman” means an adult of the female sex, and “mother” means a female parent (36).
And can anyone truly deny this? As with very many words, it can have different meanings in different contexts. That is simply how the language works in practice. All the medical dictionaries, even now, define 'woman' the same way. If one were to take a dogmatic 'no, now "woman" always means a gender identity', then our language lacks a word for "adult people of the female sex" - quite an oversight! And earlier, use of alternative desexed terms had been justified on the grounds that readers will supposedly know who is meant by 'people with a cervix' or 'pregnant people' - but if that is so, they definitely understand what is meant by 'cervical cancer happens in X% of women'.
Here are each of the types of issues they discuss and my highlights from each:
works against the plain language principle of health communication and risks reducing inclusivity for vulnerable groups by making communications more difficult to understand (57). Those who are young, with low literacy or education, with an intellectual disability, from conservative religious backgrounds, or being communicated to in their non-native language are at increased risk of misunderstanding desexed language (58–62). However, even women with high levels of education may not be familiar with female reproductive processes and terms of female anatomy and physiology and so may not understand some desexed terms (63–65). They may not know, for example, that “a person with a cervix” is a woman and refers to them (59).Note the numerous studies cited for the points made here and below.
Referring to individuals in this reduced, mechanistic way is commonly perceived as “othering” and dehumanizing (67). For example, the term “pregnant woman” identifies the subject as a person experiencing a physiological state, whereas “gestational carrier” or “birther” marginalizes their humanity. Efforts to eliminate dehumanizing language in medical care are longstanding (68), including in relation to women during pregnancy, birth, and new motherhood (67, 69–71). Using language that respects childbearing women is imperative given the prevalence of obstetric violence (18, 72, 73). Considering women in relation to males as “non-men” or “non-males”, treats the male body as standard (8) and hearkens back to the sexist Aristotelian conceptualization of women as failed men (74).
Terms such as “parents” and “families” as replacements for “mothers” can inappropriately include fathers and other family members, thus diminishing and invisibilising women (75). Use of “people” and “families” as replacements for “women” can similarly inappropriately include males and other family members. Women have unique experiences, needs and rights in relation to pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding that are not shared with others (18, 76–79). It cannot be assumed that a woman’s interests will align with those of her husband or partner. This is most clearly illustrated by the issue of domestic violence...However, text referring to “birthing families” can suggest other family members have rights regarding a woman’s decision making during birth. Similarly, text referring to supporting “parents” or “families” to make infant feeding decisions (82) suggests people other than the mother should make decisions regarding breastfeeding (75). This overlooks that partners and family members may directly or indirectly undermine breastfeeding (75, 83). It also obscures the positionality of women as rights-holders and family members as duty-bearers in relation to breastfeeding (76).They also offer criticisms of "additive language", stating that it creates confusion as to whether sex or gender identity is meant, and that terms like "birthing people" can still be considered objectifying.
Replacing a word with another of different meaning as if they are synonyms makes communications inaccurate or confusing. For example, in a growing number of papers, the severity of COVID-19 disease in pregnant women is being misrepresented by comparing “pregnant people” to “non-pregnant people” (40, 85–92) when the comparator in the research in question is “non-pregnant females.” Given the greater severity of COVID-19 disease in males (93), this misrepresentation means readers may under-estimate disease severity in pregnant women.This is all the more an issue for us, as Wikipedia policy strictly requires editors to represent reliable sources accurately and avoid original research. Nothing we write in the MEDMOS guideline can override this and permit editors to misrepresent the sources by using terms that differ in meaning from that found in the sources. And anything to be written in MEDMOS permitting different terms than that in the sources would not somehow limit editors to rare cases where both statements are correct and verifiable; it would open the floodgates to numerous bad edits and time-wasting disputes resulting therefrom.The authors give further examples:
it has been incorrectly stated that “1 in 8 people” develop breast cancer (94), that “8 in 10 people” will get pregnant after having unprotected sex (95), and that “1 in 10 people” have endometriosis (96)....correctly stating that 1 in 20 people have endometriosis reduces the cognitive impact of the statistic because of the higher denominator and obfuscates a key feature of the condition: that sufferers are almost exclusively female, and males have virtually zero risk.Regarding "breast/chest", they note that "chestfeeding" can be confused with a method of tube feeding using formula. They also state,
The word “breast” is a sex-neutral term which refers to the mammary glands of males and females. Referring to “chests” rather than “breasts” is medically inaccurate. The “chest” in medical terminology refers to the ribcage and everything within it and does not include mammary tissue (97). Chest pain may signify a serious heart or lung condition, whereas breast pain may signify a breast condition such as mastitis.A further issue:
Desexed language can make it unclear who is being referred to. Does “breastfeeding people” mean mothers, infants or both? Are “postnatal people” those who have just given birth or those who are providing postnatal care?And while normally I would not consider it our place to worry about how language reflects social power relationships, the arguments in favor of desexed language indulge in such, so it's a two-way street:
Using the phrase “breastfeeding parents” rather than “breastfeeding mothers” or “women,” both suggests the partner is participating in the act of breastfeeding and makes invisible the sex of the person breastfeeding the child. In this way, desexed language obscures the practical and power imbalances in relationships, decision making, and economics that breastfeeding mothers may face because they are female (98–102). Similarly, avoiding references to “girls” means that their very specific vulnerabilities as pregnant minors or minor mothers may be overlooked (103, 104).
Replacing “breastfeeding” with “human milk feeding” even when the mother is feeding directly from the breast, disembodies it and places emphasis on the milk as separate from the mother. The role of the breastfeeding mother becomes inconsequential and other individuals can be seen as equivalent caregivers even of very young infants. “Human milk feeding” places expressed milk feeding on an equal footing with breastfeeding thus supporting the trend toward predominantly, or exclusively, eschewing direct breastfeeding in favor of bottle feeding expressed milk that has been noted in some countries (110–112). Expressed milk feeding has significant drawbacks from a public health perspective...It also works against efforts to recognize the unique relational aspects of breastfeeding that support maternal caregiving capacity and infant mental health (50, 117).
language changes have the potential, through linguistic processes, to undermine recognition of what mothers mean to all infants.They note:
Women used to be invisible when “he” or “men” were used as the default contributing to the disregard of women in research, policy, and public life (138). In the midst of the current move to desex language, we argue that if women and mothers are not named, it makes it more difficult to effectively advocate for them; “women” disappear into “people” and “mothers” disappear into “parents.” This inevitably changes the focus.There are real costs to certain interpretations of "inclusivity". And:
New “parents” do not have the same health needs or experiences as new “mothers” although language in publications or research design that does not distinguish between these groups can suggest that they do [e.g. (136)].
The article notes that the push to de-sex language in these topics comes from organizations based in the USA and the Western world. It could thus be considered culturally imperialistic. And Wikipedia is supposed to be an international, culturally neutral encyclopedia. The article notes some ways forward, some of which I covered above, summarizes by recommending things to think about, and concludes. It states, there are significant implications to desexing language when referring to inherently sexed processes and states.
I very much agree. These are serious concerns that ignoring would be to the encyclopedia's detriment. Crossroads -talk- 06:39, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
Clayoquot, pinging you because I want to be sure you are aware of this paper. More replies soon. Crossroads -talk- 06:48, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
The "culturally imperialistic" comments in the text are the weakest aspect of many weak arguments. One of their sources is a blog by
Graham Linehan. That source contains some correspondence to La Leche League International from an international group of "Leaders" and the response they got. It is worth reading both, though I have no way of verifying the accuracy of the quoted material within such a dodgy source. The response lists a number of bodies who are using "gender-inclusive language", though it seems the numbered references have been lost from the blog. LLLI go on to argue "Using a variety of terms for gender inclusion is not a hallmark of colonial oppression, rather the opposite. Western colonialism is responsible for suppressing the expression of gender diversity in many cultures around the world, and introducing concepts of homophobia and gender “norms” that were not a part of the indigenous cultures"
.
The claim in the article "the impetus to desex language in relation to female reproduction flows from a philosophy developed in the USA and within which American understandings and priorities predominate"
is sourced to
Queering Moominland: The Problems of Translating Queer Theory Into a Non-American Context (you can click on the "PDF" link to read it). The only times "trans" appears in that source is at the start of "translating" or "transposing". The article is mainly about sexuality and whether gay culture concepts and concerns translate from American and UK media (more TV programmes than academic writing) into Finnish culture. They spend some time literally wondering how to translate the word "queer" into Finish. That's not relevant to us. They quote one interviewee who argued that antagonism between genders is less strong in Finland. Our article writers completely fail to appreciate that the world into which "queer theory" or "gender identity" ideas were explored is one that is also American and Western culturally. It isn't like we were internationally neutral before all these people came along with their funny ideas about gay and lesbians being normal. It is weird that they only think the "change" is culturally problematic and don't think that the status quote they want to keep was also culturally idiosyncratic too.
Feminism in all its varied forms could be argued to originate from US/Western cultures and contain a huge dollop of those cultures mixed within its language and assumptions. The argument made in our article here is akin to saying that since Feminism originated in Western thought, and attitudes to male/female roles vary world wide, those arguing against sexist language and ideas should stop imposing their imperialistic ideas on the rest of the world. The same argument can be made for heternormative or homophobic material... that because being gay is viewed negatively and even is illegal in some countries, anyone arguing Wikipedia should not be homophobic in its language is imposing their Western imperial concepts onto an international project. It just is rather silly.
Crossroads, the dictionaries you so love are products of a Western culture: the Oxford English dictionary does not go around asking Finish or Nigerian people what "woman" means to them, nor do English dictionaries examine the literature of non-English-speaking cultures, for quite obvious reasons. I would expect a British English dictionary to conform British concepts and language usage, though it helps when they explain when and why Americans talk and write wrongly. I don't think there is even the slightest evidence that Wikipedia is a "culturally neutral encyclopedia" but if it were, would you advocate we ditch our imperialistic dictionaries? -- Colin° Talk 11:15, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
Crossroads, wrt dictionary definitions, Man is defined as "An adult male human" which I'm sure you are happy with and would use in your own writing. But the second definition is "A human regardless of sex or age; a person." Oh dear. While that's a definition we have to accept in order to understand hundreds of years of English literature, and a fair amount of contemporary writing and speech, it is unlikely to be an acceptable use of the word in Wikipedia's voice. The fourth definition "The human race; mankind" is not just anyone but everyone. Even worse! It seems we have "erased women" entirely. Typically only one dictionary meaning is valid at any one time, and in writing there may be confusion or even deliberate ambiguity between two definitions (the basis of all puns). The existence of a definition tells us little more than that is how some people use (have used) the word in some context. It is still up to us if we want to use it that way for ourselves. -- Colin° Talk 18:02, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
As for whether the authors are "gender critical", I'm reluctant to put labels on people but their writing certainly falls into that category. One of the authors also wrote Sex, gender and gender identity: a re-evaluation of the evidence. In both articles the authors clearly distance themselves from an ideology or belief that they do not share. Both "queer theory" and "gender identity" get put into scare quotes. They are concepts dreamt up by other people, and are attacked for being quite obviously ridiculous (in their view). It is one thing to briefly make a sympathetic remark about a people-group, but that doesn't mean they accept them or their ideas. -- Colin° Talk 11:15, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
One of the more useful parts of the paper is the list of where people have made mistakes or introduced inaccuracies or confusion. The authors and Crossroads both view this list as evidence the whole approach is misguided and should be abandoned. But I see it as information from which we can learn. The biggest problem with the former use is that the list was not created neutrally. It very much represents the output of a lot of work collecting examples and then selecting only those that have problems. The list does not include cases for which a "desexed" approach was technically just fine. To give an example close to home, this very encyclopaedia is full of mistakes made by unqualified amateurs (and by those qualified but foolish in other regards!) As they say, Wikipedia shouldn't work, but it does. All of us could easily list mistakes editors have made transcribing facts from source to article. That doesn't mean we must give up and go hire the authors of the sources instead. A similar example could be where the popular press make mistakes reporting on medical issues. Again, all of us can find many examples (there are whole blogs devoted to how newspapers like the Daily Mail distort medical stories) and while some of them just represent human ignorance and make one wonder what they teach in school, many of those examples are useful to learn from. The same kind of statistical misunderstandings, for example, are often made, and we need to both avoid making them ourselves and write in a way that our readers avoid making them. But I have no intention of giving up my Guardian subscription in favour of a Lancet one. -- Colin° Talk 16:17, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
The AMA Style guide above says "Adolescents are persons age 13 through 17 years. They may also be referred to as teenagers or as adolescent boys or adolescent girls, depending on context. Adults are persons 18 years or older and should be referred to as men or women"
.
According to
ONS Conception and Fertility Rates, there were nearly 15,000 conceptions in England and Wales to those under 18 in 2019. And according to
ONS Births by Parent's Characteristics, there were 3,600 births in 2020 in England and Wales to those under 18 (and 4,500 to those age 18, many of whom would be under 18 when they conceived).
WHO says "In some African countries 30–40% of all adolescent females experience motherhood before the age of 18"
and "25– 35% of adolescent girls in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Nepal begin childbearing as early as 17 years".
That's a lot of "people" who are by definition "girls" and are being excluded by the use of the word "woman" when considering aspects of pregnancy.
I don't know if this helps or hinders the case for including trans and nonbinary people. Teenage mothers are another disadvantaged and stigmatised group, and teenage pregnancy is regarded in our countries as a negative thing. I guess the teenager may prefer to be regarded as a grown up "woman", rather than a "girl". Is that the case? But this awkwardness where neither "girl" nor "woman" seem accurate may be enlightening if we look at Wikipedia articles and professional literature about teenage (or adolescent) pregnancy.
The lead of
teenage pregnancy says "Teenage pregnancy, also known as adolescent pregnancy, is
pregnancy in a
female under the age of 20, according to the
WHO"
. I looked up the source. It says "The term “adolescent” is often used synonymously with “teenager”. In this sense “adolescent pregnancy” means pregnancy in a woman aged 10–19 years. In most statistics the age of the woman is defined as her age at the time the baby is born. Because a considerable difference exists between a 12- or 13-year-old girl, and a young woman of say 19, authors sometimes distinguish between adolescents aged 15–19 years, and younger adolescents aged 10–14 years."
They sometimes use "woman" to cover an age range that includes children and adults but do use "girl" if the age range is entirely sub-18. I note our lead does not "STICKTOSOURCES" here, as the source says "woman", not "female". I'm probably not alone in finding the source wording uncomfortable. I suspect "pregnancy in a woman aged 10–19 years" would not last long on Wikipedia, with editors rightly feeling that a 10-year-old is a girl.
The article and literature is comfortable using the phrases "pregnant teenager" and "adolescent pregnancy". There is nobody jumping up and down about how ridiculous it is to use gender-neutral terms "teenager" or "adolescent", nobody complaining that these girls have been desexed. Of course, the articles do use the words "girl" and "women", so they aren't entirely gender-neutral and it would be impossible for them to be so. But it shows that one can write gender-neutral sentences about this topic. Perhaps here the vital attribute in those sentences is that the person is under 20 and pregnant, and not that they are female or identify as a woman. There is a connection with Zimman's comment above that at times, the fact that the subject is described with a gendered/sexed term isn't being asserted, it isn't important, and could then be described instead with gender-neutral language with no loss or change of meaning. -- Colin° Talk 10:44, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
There is nobody jumping up and down about how ridiculous it is to use gender-neutral terms "teenager" or "adolescent", nobody complaining that these girls have been desexed.Well, would you agree that these terms are much more common in sources about teenage pregnancy, proportionately speaking, than "pregnant people" is in sources about pregnancy in general? That right there is the reason - people can see that "pregnant teenager" is emphasizing the age, whereas "pregnant person" is removing sex where normally it would be mentioned. Crossroads -talk- 05:23, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
There are several comments above about what dictionaries say. So here's one, taken from The American Heritage Medical Dictionary (2007):
From here, we decode the other words, also from this dictionary:
They don't have an entry for "human", but fortunately that doesn't seem to be in dispute.
This set of definitions appears to encompass cis women, trans women, trans men, and female-bodied non-binary adults. One interpretation of this definition is that a woman is any "fully developed and mature human that produces ova". Another is that a woman is any "fully developed and mature human with characteristics of the sex that bears young". Since one of the examples is "female fashions", these characteristics could be social. But the unspecified characteristics could also be biological, with the result that anyone with a female body could also be included. In short, this medical dictionary does not let us say with certainty that woman excludes any adult except cis men.
I have looked at several medical dictionaries; few define woman, and this is the only one I've found that defines both woman and female. One edition of Segen's, for example, defines woman but not female; I believe that the most recent version defines neither. I was surprised to see one that defines female in terms of gender instead of sex(!): "In humans, the gender that produces oocytes and bears the young" (from Farlex 2012).
My initial conclusions: There are multiple definitions, they don't maintain the sex–gender distinction, and different dictionaries do not fully agree with each other. If you were to write "This article uses the term woman in compliance with Segen's", you've provided no clarity. Also, there is no medical dictionary that always excludes trans folks from being a woman or a female.
In the end, I don't think that "follow the dictionary" will be a productive approach. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:27, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
I'll clarify my viewpoint on dictionaries after some confusion under #Guardian and following from #Analysis (Crossroads). My point isn't that we start with definitions and then regulate all article text under those definitions. Rather, my point was in response to the idea that we should use terms like "pregnant people" and "people with cervixes" because "women" supposedly refers to a gender identity only nowadays. As can be seen in this section, those sections, and in pretty much all dictionaries (medical ones being especially relevant for our purposes), though, the definition about being the female sex (as seen by checking those same sources under "female") is still current and is either the most prominent or listed solely.
As I said: "As with very many words, it can have different meanings in different contexts....If one were to take a dogmatic 'no, now "woman" always means a gender identity', then our language lacks a word for "adult people of the female sex" - quite an oversight! And earlier, use of alternative desexed terms had been justified on the grounds that readers will supposedly know who is meant by 'people with a cervix' or 'pregnant people' - but if that is so, they definitely understand what is meant by 'cervical cancer happens in X% of women'."
My central position is that we should not encourage editors to write about these things in ways the sources being cited do not. Replacing "women" with "people with vaginas" or whatever when the source says no such thing is not warranted because the meaning of "women" can be in reference to the female sex. Unless one wants to claim all the dictionaries are wrong, that is simply true. And allowing random editors to enforce solely a gender identity definition regardless of context is permitting advocacy and is opening a Pandora's box of numerous, reoccurring, and unresolvable disputes. Crossroads -talk- 06:19, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
"because "women" supposedly refers to a gender identity only nowadays"or
'no, now "woman" always means a gender identity'. (my emphasis) Looks like you have been furiously fighting a strawman. -- Colin° Talk 08:53, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
I've been thinking about how we got into this mess where Crossroads thought we, as editors and participants in this discussion, were suggesting that "woman" only had a gendered meaning and not a sexed meaning. I'm reminded also of when Crossroads got upset when I suggested our articles are written in a way that was "trans-exclusionary" or "denied their existence". Because I think Crossroads is primarily focused on what editors (and our sources) meant when they wrote a sentence. And I have at times been describing what some of our readers understand when they read our sentences. They are two different points of view, and for communication to be successful we should try to match them if possible.
Consider for example the debate about
Master/slave (technology). I'm old enough to remember configuring one of the hard discs in my computer as "master" and the other as "slave". I'm sure this topic has been discussed on Wikipedia but I don't know where. Some readers will find that terminology offensive and an example of systemic unthinkingly racist colonial language, etc, etc. I can go to my dictionary and find definition of "slave" as #3 "a device (such as the printer of a computer) that is directly responsive to another"
or in another dictionary #7 "A machine or component controlled by another machine or component."
or another dictionary #5a "a device that is controlled by or that duplicates the action of another similar device (the master device)"
. None of those definitions cause offense. But there are other definitions: "a person held in forced servitude"
and "One who is owned as the property of someone else, especially in involuntary servitude"
and "a person legally owned by another and having no freedom of action or right to property"
. And those definitions remind many readers of historical and ongoing injustice of the most grievous kind. Now we can claim all we like that when we as editors write "master/slave" or when our sources write "master/slave" they are referring to a computer protocol and not entertaining racist thoughts or seeking to cause offense. We might even argue that those who are offended are deliberately using the wrong definition of the word. I don't think those arguments are strong. Indeed many issues arise when a privileged or majority group fail to see or appreciate the concerns of a disadvantaged or minority group.
Another example could be "man". One dictionary has "1 An adult male human. 2 A human regardless of sex or age; a person."
. Another has "1 an individual human // especially : an adult male human"
. A third has "1 A man is an adult male human being. 2 Man and men are sometimes used to refer to all human beings, including both males and females. Many people prefer to avoid this use.
Editors with those first two dictionaries could try hard to claim their sexist language was perfectly fine according to the dictionary, though the third dictionary makes things a little harder (but certainly not impossibly hard -- we have MOS discussions where dictionaries marking terms as problematic or offensive has not convinced some participants).
So when our sources write "pregnant women" and we write "pregnant women", we can argue that here they and we are using the sexed definition, where "women" is anyone with a uterus, carrying a baby. That definition does not exclude trans men. But for some readers, the gendered meaning will be prioritised in their mind. For them, we have excluded trans men (who are "men", not "women") and have been "trans-exclusionary" in our writing.
We can jump up and down and claim "I'm not be racist" / "I'm not being sexist" / "I'm not excluding trans men"... look look, "the dictionary agrees with me!" Too many MOS discussions take that position, where somehow the editor has to become convinced about the language change or language problem and agree that it is rational and correct for them. It's all "I" "I" "I". But language change isn't always rational or sensible, and it isn't up to us as writers to agree with it, only to recognise it and try our best. Once we press the [Publish changes] button, it is what our readers think that matters most. -- Colin° Talk 11:24, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
language change isn't always rational or sensible, and I certainly agree, but from that I conclude that this is precisely why Wikipedia should not permit change to its language to new styles unless and until such styles are the norm. The only alternatives are fad chasing and/or writing in ways that few sources do, which is likely to lead to us writing in ways that are not
rational or sensible. Good changes will win out in the end, and then we can change accordingly. Crossroads -talk- 05:57, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
"I see no other way to understand this other than a claim that the meaning of "women" is solely gender-identity-based now". This seems to be your impression and it is now clear you have been attacking that idea (that nobody else here has) with your attempts to bring dictionaries into the discussion. I don't know why you didn't just come out with this straight away, rather than keep asking us to read dictonaries.. don't you remember I kept asking you why?
The same progressives who push for pregnant people have no problem saying “Black Lives Matter”—and in fact decry the right-wing rejoinder that “all lives matter.” Yet, hopefully, all lives do matter—and about half of the people shot by U.S. police are white. So why insist on Black? Because the phrase is designed to highlight police racism, as well as the disproportionate killing of Black men in particular. Making the slogan more “inclusive” also makes it useless for political campaigning. Pregnant people does the same. The famous slogan commonly attributed to the second-wave activist Florynce Kennedy—“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”—would be totally defanged if it were made gender-neutral. And if we cannot talk about, say, the Texas abortion law in the context of patriarchal control of women’s bodies, then framing the feminist case against such laws becomes harder.I venture that there are far more readers who perceive this negatively far more than even know a pregnant non-binary person (remember that many such persons would find that pregnancy exacerbates dysphoria). And this is to say nothing of the fact that many, frankly, strongly disagree with the idea of defining womanhood as a gender identity and disconnected from sex. We may personally disagree with them, but that is a deeply held belief that, in this analysis where "offense" is being considered, does have to be accounted for. There are much better ways to cover transgender pregnancy.
Lastly, I'm a younger reader, and I very much notice it. This idea that Millennials or Gen Z are all talking like this now is blown way out of proportion by older activists who wish to present it as inevitable and 'the right side of history" This is a straw man argument. I have yet to see someone actually express this view in these terms. — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 16:46, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
we must also accept our word choices have an effect that we take responsibility for.Crossroads -talk- 04:16, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
One reason is that many of the new terms come across as dehumanising. As the Lancet discovered, many people—trans men as much as anyone else—dislike being described as collections of ambulatory body-parts and secretions.The Telegraph:
activists suggesting the term is “unhelpful” for broader debates about inclusivity.Crossroads -talk- 05:15, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Sadly, Colin, that was not even the most frustrating comment Crossroads made on gender identity issues within a one-hour period, as I noted here. See also the prior context for his comment, discussed here. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:47, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Values-based reasons to use "pregnant women" have been noted repeatedly elsewhere on this page: Great, @ Crossroads. Can you give me a bullet list of the reasons? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 02:14, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
The same progressives who push for pregnant people have no problem saying “Black Lives Matter”—and in fact decry the right-wing rejoinder that “all lives matter.” Yet, hopefully, all lives do matter—and about half of the people shot by U.S. police are white. So why insist on Black? Because the phrase is designed to highlight police racism, as well as the disproportionate killing of Black men in particular. Making the slogan more “inclusive” also makes it useless for political campaigning. Pregnant people does the same. The famous slogan commonly attributed to the second-wave activist Florynce Kennedy—“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”—would be totally defanged if it were made gender-neutral. And if we cannot talk about, say, the Texas abortion law in the context of patriarchal control of women’s bodies, then framing the feminist case against such laws becomes harder.
you'd have a hard time getting the community to agree values in ignorance of the end-effect of their choice wrt gender languageand
on a political hot topic culture war like this one, having a wide community discussion would be about as productive as a Twitter storm. If we can't even decided whether ships are gender neutral, this topic has no hope.On that note, I'd say that if the community can hardly decide not to gender ships, degendering the actual male or female body is extremely unlikely. Crossroads -talk- 06:04, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
wethat reads
"pregnant peopleand perceives
implicationswhile having
reactions. In some parts of Canada for example, the term is used, nobody seems confused and nobody seems to mind. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:48, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
Clayoquot's list of values are (at least in their single-word expression) things we might all agree are good to have., the same is true for WAID's list of values. I agree that tradition, which I didn't think of putting on my list, is valuable to many of us at least on a subconcious level. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 15:06, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
Nobody reads "Foster care youth are more likely than their peers to become pregnant as teenagers." and turns purple at this liberal woke nonsense suggesting 15-year-old boys in care might become pregnant.and
…(nobody is saying it is statistically flawed or dishonest to represent pregnancy study results on "girls" as "teens" or "adolescents"…Since you have raised the question, I do think it is statistically flawed and dishonest. (Though I don’t
go purple, as far as I am aware.) My guess is that the sentence would get less reaction than the expression ‘pregnant people’ solely because of the arrangement of the words – if it said ‘pregnant youth’ the reaction might be different. Sweet6970 ( talk) 11:40, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
an idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning.And, whether we like it or not, "pregnant people" has different connotations than "pregnant teenagers". The former invokes transgender identity and pregnant men and has increased in use for that purpose. The latter is designed to emphasize age and was never meant to invoke pregnant boys - and so it doesn't. And that connotation of "pregnant people" happens regardless of whether one likes that connotation. Someone can be a big fan of the phrase, but if they read that in an article, they will still think we are making a claim about trans men.
making a racial or gender inequality argument. If "pregnant people" can be argued for because of "including marginalized people", "pregnant women" can be argued for because of "not marginalizing women's health". But, again, I'd rather not be arguing about values and I don't think the community would either. Crossroads -talk- 07:13, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
AFAICS, WAID only linked to a long list of possible "values" that people may have, not to a subset of values they think are motivating the desire to retain language that some may call heternormative or cisnormative., I was referring to WAID's comment from 16:43, 5 April 2022 in which she mentioned "including marginalized people" and "precision" as values. Clayoquot ( talk | contribs) 15:45, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion, and the term "Guardian reader" is used to imply a stereotype of liberal, left-wing or "politically correct") uses ‘pregnant women’ in articles about the UK, then the usage ‘pregnant people’ is not established in the UK, even in ‘politically correct’ circles.
tyranny of the majority. That’s a strong expression to use to refer to saying ‘pregnant women’ rather than ‘pregnant people’. I am not intending to tyrannise anyone, and I don’t see how I could do such a thing on Wikipedia. Sweet6970 ( talk) 16:15, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
To Colin: Thank you for clarifying that you are not accusing me of tyranny. I didn’t think you were, and I’m sorry if my post came across as accusing you of accusing me of tyranny……… I’m acquainted with the meaning you linked to, and I assumed that meaning was what you meant. What I was trying to convey was that I think your comparison is way over the top, and inapplicable in the context of editing Wikipedia.
You refer to ‘a dislike of the unfamiliar’. My view, which I have tried to express before, is that unfamiliar language is a barrier to readers’ understanding, so it should be avoided if possible. Where it’s not possible to write articles in a way which is ideal for everyone, I think we have to give precedence to the understanding of the majority, over the preference of any minority. Sweet6970 ( talk) 20:32, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
W.r.t. Colin's question on why "pregnant people" is more controversial than "pregnant teenagers": I could speculate on why, but I don't think the reasons or even the quality of reasons matter to editorial decision-making at Wikipedia. What I care as a Wikipedia editor about is choosing language that a broad section of the political spectrum uses when they are speaking to a general audience. The paths by which subcultures adopt different ways of speaking are complex and not always rational. The path doesn't matter. What matters from our perspective is where the path has led.
It's occurred to me that there are two questions: 1) Do we prefer to use language that is used across the political spectrum, avoiding language that most readers would associate with a very narrow segment of the political spectrum?, and 2) Which specific language forms/phrases are used by a very narrow segment of the political spectrum?
For clarity, I'm referring to language that people use when they are speaking/writing to a general audience. For instance, doctors might say to a transgender nonbinary female-bodied patient, "These are the symptoms of a heart attack in people who are assigned female at birth." The same doctors might not want to have a poster in their waiting room whose headline is "Heart Attack Symptoms in People who were Assigned Female at Birth". When addressing a transgender individual, "assigned female at birth" is something centrists and probably even some conservatives would say and be proud of saying. But they wouldn't want to say it in the headline of a poster for their waiting room.
I have followed this page enough to know that people can argue forever about whether "pregnant person" is used by a wide or narrow segment of the political spectrum. Have we gotten around to discussing question #1? What do people think of the principle of avoiding language that's strongly associated with a narrow segment of the political spectrum? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Clayoquot ( talk • contribs) 23:56, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
language that is used across the political spectrum, avoiding language that most readers would associate with a very narrow segment of the political spectrum. The (non-Scottish) census succeeded in this, by referring to sex registered at birth. This is a factual, objective criterion which avoids the politically-charged term ‘sex assigned at birth’ which is, also, probably unknown to many people.
Labelling of editors and negatively viewing their motivesgoes on already, and I think having a principle that we should use language which is generally accepted would avoid much of this. Sweet6970 ( talk) 12:13, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
'Because of the illness she described herself as "not the happiest of pregnant people", adding: "Lots of people have it far, far worse, but it was definitely a challenge."'-- you can't really get more Establishment than the royal family, and Kate was upper-middle-class, private school, aristocratic family Establishment before her marriage. So Wikipedia is more conservative than the Royal Family? -- Colin° Talk 13:06, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
Backlash from "gender critical feminists" in the UK may show up on a "News" tab, but I don't think that makes it news nor does it really help to define "acceptability". It seems to me that terms used in MEDRS sources for public communication are generally a better indicator, in this domain, than "terms to which nobody takes offense" - the latter offering a vanishingly short list for these topics IMO. Newimpartial ( talk) 18:28, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.Should we listen to someone who appears to be themselves hurtling towards a twitter ban? -- Colin° Talk 07:43, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
Seventy-eight percent (78%) of respondents wanted to receive hormone therapy at some point in their life, but only 49% of respondents have ever received it....A large majority of transgender men and women (95%) have wanted hormone therapy, compared to 49% of non-binary respondents. Transgender men and women were about five times more likely to have ever had hormone therapy (71%) than non-binary respondents (13%).The following pages discuss rates of receiving and of desire for various surgeries. Crossroads -talk- 03:18, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
"Although the intention was to recruit a sample that was as representative as possible of transgender people in the U.S., it is important to note that respondents in this study were not randomly sampled and the actual population characteristics of transgender people in the U.S. are not known. Therefore, it is not appropriate to generalize the findings in this study to all transgender people.".
'that online and paper surveys may reach transgender respondents with “vastly different health and life experiences.”'Their new survey for 2022, also online, has extra effort on
"reaching trans people who are least likely to be reached by an internet-based survey, due to race or ethnicity, income, age, geographic location and other life circumstances, such as being an immigrant"
Colin, I think you are also making assumptions that could get you in trouble
. From personal and anecdotal evidence, I think you are understating the relevance of gender-affirming interventions and of related physiology. First, stating that trans/nonbinary is primarily something that involves the mind of the person
is partly true but also importantly false: it is true in reflecting the defining attribute (gender identity), but false in that, even for many of us who are nonbinary and are not dysphoric, medical interventions are a key part of our sense of self, in a sense without parallel when being gay or bisexual
- there aren't any medical treatments that members of queer communities pursue as part of their sexual identities, the way many, many of us see medical interventions as following from our gender identities.
Second, I think you may also be assuming, wrongly, that sex assigned at birth is inherently a valid criterion for biomedical categorization while gender identity is not. I know that isn't literally what you are saying in your comparison - some trans people go on to have surgery or take hormones is a variation just like some cis women go on to take the pill or to have lots of babies
- but your overall tone (e.g., does "top surgery" change your fibre requirements?
) would tend to lend credence to those who want to see the physical/biological characteristics of AFAB people as one statistical set and those of AMAB people as another, within a straightforwardly bifurcated universe, while interpreting the differences between cis and trans people as essentially "involving the mind" and not the body. I think this is at best, unproven and at worst, profoundly misleading about real world trans and nonbinary populations.
Newimpartial (
talk)
11:55, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
"People assigned female at birth shouldn’t eat fewer than 1,200 calories a day and those assigned male at birth should stay above 1,500 calories.
"Women shouldn’t eat fewer than 1,200 calories a day and men should stay above 1,500 calories.
"sloppily replaced a typical term with "assigned X at birth" to be "inclusive" without actually taking care to be sure that it applied to trans people, ironically being sort of transphobic in assuming that a trans man is the same as a woman physiologically". In what way does the first sentence apply to trans people, but the second doesn't. I think your mind has assumed "Ah, 'people assigned female at birth' is one of those trans advocacy phrases so they are including trans people". But trans men are men, are they not, and trans women are women, are they not? So the second sentence suggests that a trans woman should not eat fewer than 1,200 calories a day. And it permits a trans man to eat 300 calories more. Is there any evidence that those assigned female at birth but who have a gender identity of male can enjoy 300 more calories with no ill effects on the waistline than those who are cis gender? You see, if we take your nit picking approach to this, there are potential problems with either sentence. (I suspect the calorie figures are related to body height and build, which more probably correlates to sex assigned at birth than it does to gender identity). Both statements have serious limitations in that they don't factor in health situations like pregnancy or old age. The latter sentence is not inclusive of those who are nonbinary, which make up around a third of the trans respondents in that 2015 US trans survey.
Re: "Language that's strongly associated with a very narrow segment of the political spectrum" - I'm going to dispute the premise a bit, so I thought it was worth quoting the relevant phrase at length. I don't think any of the terms we are talking about are themselves strongly associated
with any part of the political spectrum - it seems to me that any political/cultural salience of these terms arises from the context in which they are used.
As a non-MEDRS example, most of the times I see WP editors trying to insert "born female" or "female sex" into articles is in the BLPs of nonbinary and trans people, and inserting those phrases in that context is at the very least a culture war dogwhistle, and in many cases a rather more straightforward expression of anti-trans sentiment. So in this context, that usage seems strongly associated with a particular stance.
On the other hand, in Canadian media (and I have previously produced a long list of links on this), "assigned male/female at birth" is the standard way in which nonbinary or trans people's pre-transition sex assignment is discussed. So in this context, and based also on how these sources are actually read, "AFAB" and "AMAB" do not seem to be strongly associated with any politics.
But I really do think this depends on context. I can read a cis biography on Wikipedia that uses terms like "female sex" without thinking that any POV editing or political intention went into composing or editing it. And if I saw "assigned female at birth" used universally in coverage of the news - outside of contexts where sex assignment is actually the relevant concept - I would wonder whether some kind of agenda was at work.
So in MEDRS issues as well, I don't see how we could identify "Language that's strongly associated with a very narrow segment of the political spectrum"
except in the context of much more specific domains of language use.
Newimpartial (
talk)
17:55, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
Aside from the difficulty of determining political language (and the potential abuse of that by those who hate something) I'm puzzled at the idea that replacing "woman" with "assigned female at birth" in an article on heart attacks, say, would need any kind of new rule. AFAICS, the "assigned XXX at birth" phrase is only used when discussion gender/trans issues. As with Crossroads below, can you find any example of any mainstream publications that have adopted this language as their method of communicating to a general audience about "women"? If not, then why bring politics into play as the means to prevent it. As Newimpartial notes, and we have seen in our publications, the use of "anyone with a prostate" or "assigned female at birth" is occasionally necessary when one is explicitly highlighting a trans issue. I don't think any publication uses it as a way of referring to women outside of that. Do they? -- Colin° Talk 11:47, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
can't find anyonedoing it, then you agree that we shouldn't either. Then it gets equated with bizarrely written stuff like
low dermal spectral emissivity. But if even one general-public-focused source does, then it becomes a matter of personal editorial style choice regardless of what the particular sources being cited say.
Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?[my emphasis] [28] Sweet6970 ( talk)
I am concerned that you don’t seem to be concerned that you know that the census asked for sex registered at birth, and yet you have still referred to it as asking about sex assigned at birth. These terms are completely different.
And I have already said [29] that sex registered at birth is an objective criterion – it has an undisputed factual meaning, whatever your views on gender. And I have already said [30] that you have referred to the joke made by Boris Johnson. The joke was political, and was aimed at Keir Starmer. The joke would not have worked if Mr Johnson had referred to sex ‘registered’ at birth. Sweet6970 ( talk) 22:27, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
This language was described earlier as being associated with a very narrow segment of the political spectrum, and therefore to be banned.By this I clearly meant when describing people in general. Sources on average talk about trans topics differently, by necessity, than general topics. Crossroads -talk- 05:49, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
there is no process by which sex is assigned. Like the Canadian sources, the UK government appears to recognize "assigned" as a synonym for "registered" in this context. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:19, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
That doesn't seem to be the case in the UK government source I just linked. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:28, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Is it still typical for parents to go to the registry office?I know in Northern Ireland, from the birth of my nephew, that the registry office paperwork is included in a "new mother/father/parent pack", alongside some other useful pieces of paperwork, nappies, and the like that a new parent will need. That form can then be posted or hand delivered to a registry office and a birth certificate can be ordered after. As far as I'm aware, only one hospital here has a registrar office on site ( Downe Hospital).
It makes it sound as if some bureaucrat…..I was not saying that bureaucrats assign sex to babies. Sweet6970 ( talk) 09:56, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Colin and WhatamIdoing:
-Suppose on an article on women in society, such as Women in the United States, someone replaced each instance of "women" with " womxn". Should this be reverted, and if so, why? If not, why not?
-Suppose that we added to the MOS text that editors may choose to write "women" or "womxn". Is this a bad idea? Why or why not?
Crossroads -talk- 05:24, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
I read through a bit of a proposed law recently. One section of the law affects "children". The written term in the law is "children"; the word used by all of the politicians (that I've seen) is "children". As you'd expect, the word "children" is defined in the law. As you might not expect, the definition is: any "person under the age of 18".
If you were writing about this law for some reason, would you write about:
The first option chooses STICKTOSOURCE over educational value (e.g., over readers discovering that it applies to 17 year olds). The second option chooses readers who understand technical/legal jargon over those who don't (e.g., over many of those teenagers discovering that it applies to them). The third option is clear enough – nobody will read that and believe that 17 year olds are exempt – but it says what the source (explicitly) means rather than using the language of the source itself, so it could be accused of not sticking closely enough to the sources. (I suspect that the politicians themselves don't really want any of the 17 year olds among their constituents to notice that the politicians have decided that they're all a bunch of children – children, by the way, that this particular country is very happy to have enlist in their military, but still "children" in the eyes of this law.) Under "something else", I suppose we could say children and add a note saying that "for the purpose of this article, the word children means all children plus some non-children".
Which would you choose? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:16, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
would you repeat "any person under the age of 18" in every sentence?It depends on the context.
I don't think that we can take your advice to say that the term is being used unusually, unless we have a source that says this (and I haven't seen any. The media seem focused on more fundamental flaws).That is why I said
If the definitions in the text of the law, or the supplementary explainers, or in politician statements in media made in support of or against it, state that "children" is being used very and possibly unusually broadly. If the sourcing isn't there, then we can't state as such.
Alice in Wonderland stunt. Their approach seems reasonable, and in fact, similar to
The top of pregnancy could say "in a biologically female human", and the rest of the article could proceed on with whatever language the editors thought best, because once you got past the first sentence, it should be entirely clear what those words referred to.in WhatamIdoing’s post of 01:19, 28 March 2022. Sweet6970 ( talk) 14:47, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'
Do you believe that the community would support a ban on using gender-neutral language when writing about sex-specific but not trans-specific content? Imagine that there was an RFC that proposed something like "Never use the term pregnant people or other gender-neutral or gender-eliding phrases when discussing matters of gynecology and obstetrics, except when unavoidable (e.g., direct quotations) or explicitly writing about trans-specific subjects. Always specify females, women, or girls; do not use phrases such as people with gynecological cancer, a person recovering from childbirth, or those who could become pregnant".
Would you personally support such a rule? Do you think such a proposal would be accepted? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 16:43, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
We haven't really discussed "gender-eliding phrases". One of the midwifery editorials warned against eliminating the person altogether, but that's not the same as having some sentences that don't refer to gender. Perhaps you mean something else, but here's what I took it to mean.... Look at the lead of pregnancy if I "fixed" all the "gender-eliding" in green ink.
the woman carryingmore than one offspring, such as with twins. Pregnancy usually occurs by
a woman havingsexual intercourse, but can also occur through
the woman undergoingassisted reproductive technology procedures. A pregnancy may end in
the woman having alive birth, a spontaneous miscarriage, an induced abortion, or a stillbirth. Childbirth typically occurs around 40 weeks from the start of the
woman'slast menstrual period (LMP). This is just over nine months ( gestational age). When using fertilization age, the length is about 38 weeks. An embryo is the term for the developing offspring during the first eight weeks following fertilization (i.e. ten weeks' gestational age), after which the term fetus is used until birth. Signs and symptoms of early pregnancy
in a womanmay include missed periods, tender breasts, morning sickness (nausea and vomiting), hunger, and frequent urination.
A woman may confirm her pregnancy
a woman becoming pregnant
Other than if someone actively removed the woman/person out of the entire topic, I don't think you could tell the difference between "gender-eliding" and merely good writing that avoids repeating the obvious. -- Colin° Talk 18:49, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
'“Being pregnant, giving birth and breastfeeding are the only time in my life that I felt a proper awareness that I am female,” another woman wrote recently. “I don’t mean in a gender identity sense, I mean in a ‘I have a female body and am doing something only a person with a female body can ever do’ kind of sense.”'That writer might have used "female body" but some do feel that creating and feeding that new life is very much an identifying feature of what it means to be a "woman". Perhaps it is a greater problem that our Wikipedia article neglects women not through word choices but because it really isn't talking about them at all. -- Colin° Talk 21:19, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
female(for humans) as though it referred to biology and not society/culture isn't particularly well-attested in sources, isn't notably applied in the corpus of reliable sources, and is for all practical purposes a neologism. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:59, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
comes out of scholarship. Outside of medical/biology sources, I doubt that these particular usages can be discerned at all - certainly sociological and historical literature continues to use the adjective "female" to refer to gender. As far as MEDRS are concerned, as well, while there is now an accumulation of literature warning researchers and writers to be attentive to the distinction between sex and gender, it would be radically premature IMO to conclude that scholars had settled on "female" as meaning only biological sex. If anything, I would say that the use of "female" (and especially the neologistic noun "females" for humans) has developed in certain pockets of non-scholarly writing rather than within scholarship. Newimpartial ( talk) 18:28, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
As a CC contributor to the Sex and gender distinction article, I support this content. Newimpartial ( talk) 21:25, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
Listing some major general-public facing websites that deal with health and medicine. I'm not judging the content of these websites, and don't claim they are reliable sources (or even reliable reads). I'm listing them because they are big, show up in google search results, and have health information as their business model rather than, say, trans rights, or racial equality.
Livestrong.com would appear to be our first example of a general-public facing health website that is widely adopting trans inclusive language. Their article Why We Use the Words We Use and What They Mean to Us explains their values and mission influence the choices they have made. They accept they will make mistakes. They also acknowledge the need to use the language of sources at times (and in quotes) which might not align with their preferred choice.
They appear to use a wide range of language choices available. The most obvious is saying "people assigned female at birth" rather than "women" for many topics. But they also include "pregnant people", "menstruating person", "people with endometriosis". -- Colin° Talk 12:50, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Healthline.com is another general-public facing health website that appears to have widely adopted trans inclusive language. Their website emphasises it provides "health and wellness advice that’s inclusive and rooted in medical expertise". They do this through the use of Conscious language, which is described as "the intentional use of words and terms to create empathetic, inclusive, and non-stigmatizing content". Their editorial process "prioritiz[es] accuracy, empathy, and inclusion". As a result, there is frequent use of "assigned female at birth", "pregnant people", "if you have a vulva", "if you have male genitals", etc. They also have a lot of articles on gender and trans issues, which AFAICS are entirely supportive. -- Colin° Talk 21:58, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
Verywell.com is another similar website, which I can't link to as it is on the blacklist. Their "2022 Diversity and Inclusion Pledge" commits them to inclusive content, citing examples covering ethnic diversity, sexuality diversity and gender diversity. They have an "Anti-Bias Review Board" which is helping to make "pregnancy and menstruation content gender-inclusive". A quick search shows their content currently uses less such language compared to Healthline. -- Colin° Talk 21:58, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
Webmd.com is yet another public health website. Its editorial policy does not mention inclusion or diversity. Although they have a few articles about trans gender and other genderqueer topics, which are positive about the topic, they don't have much. Searching for "trans" gets autocompleted to "trans fats" typing "nonbinary" has nothing though really wants me to read about "non-hodgkin lymphoma. -- Colin° Talk 21:58, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
The England/Wales census asked "What is your sex? Male/Female" and then asked "Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?" The Sex question asked respondents to use the value on their birth certificate or Gender Recognition Certificate. For the Scottish census, it said "If you are transgender the answer you give can be different from what is on your birth certificate. You do not need a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). If you are non-binary or you are not sure how to answer, you could use the sex registered on your official documents, such as your passport." This ability to "self identify" is controversial and legally challenged by a feminist group, which lost. The Scottish follow-on question is different, and asks "Do you consider yourself to be trans, or have a trans history". Both follow-on questions were optional, but the sex question was not.
We have seen studies defining groups as "assigned female at birth". In the UK, one can change one's sex with a GRC (and on the Scottish census, don't even need that). Much of our discussion has focused on gender, and perhaps assumed sex was fixed and related firmly with binary biology. But if that were so, we'd see "women" replaced by "females" perhaps, and that isn't what is going on. Instead the complicated "Assigned (or registered) female at birth" is used. -- Colin° Talk 13:12, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
This turned up on my watchlist today. The change had edit summary "pregnant people" -> "pregnant women", we're not yet at the point where grammatical gender is absent from English. The previous text existed since 2019, when Doc James made this edit replacing "obstetric patients" with "pregnant people" (no edit summary). As far as I can see, this is the first time that has been challenged. The source dates from 1961 and speaks of "500 cases", "a series of 500 unselected consecutive anaesthetics", "500 patients", and "500 unselected consecutive cases of vaginal deliveries". So the source is gender-neutral as was the longstanding text. I wonder what editors make of today's edit. -- Colin° Talk 19:52, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Methoxyflurane is no longer a drug of use in obstetric practice.So, outcomes from its use in obstetrics, gastrointestinal or otherwise, are not relevant and should not be presented as though this is something that still goes on. Crossroads -talk- 06:17, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
"Another misleading edit summary. "Pregnant people" is the stable version of this article, and has been syntactically and grammatically standard in English for hundreds of years. Wikipedia doesn't care about your personal opinions when they are not backed up by sources or policies.". You then reverted Newimpartial, taking the text back to the previous (but not longstanding) "pregnant women". Your edit summary
'Per consensus at the WP:Village Pump, "the terminology in articles, especially medical articles, is dependent upon the support of reliable sources and it is expected that editors would use the same terminology presented in said sources." The source does not use "pregnant people". Searching Google Scholar & PubMed shows that the actual standard terminology in sources is "pregnant women"'.Now, I don't understand this. It is interesting you keep quoting that sentence as though it is gospel when it is in fact nothing more than the personal opinion of one editor and their own interpretation of what some of the 16 or so participants at a 4-day brief discussion said. We have already discussed how it is not in fact true and never has been true, so it would be good perhaps to get that idea overturned more generally (i.e. not a discussion about trans issues, but to correct the idea by some conservative language advocates that we are slave to our sources when it comes to word choices). That aside, you then throw that in the bin. The source does not use "pregnant women" either. I quoted all the terms it uses. You decided in your second sentence to invent a rule that Wikipedia is constrained to use "standard terminology" to describe men or women, and that you personally have determined this through analysis of Google Scholar and PubMed that the Standard According to Crossroads is and will forever be "pregnant women". I am quite boggled.
"The best practice is to research the most reliable sources on the topic and summarize what they say in your own words". Do I need to take the "in your own words" bit and enlarge it to 24pt flashing red letters? Or the lead of WP:OR, which says
"Rewriting source material in your own words while retaining the substance is not considered original research."But mostly we have WP:STYLEVAR, which says
"When either of two styles are acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change."and that
"Edit-warring over style... is never acceptable". -- Colin° Talk 15:44, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
grammatical gender, which has nothing whatsoever to do with their edits on any construal of the prior or the proposed language. Kehoe's second doubles down on "grammatical gender" and then raises a non sequitur point about "
He gave birth", which has nothing to do either with grammatical gender or with the article text in question. Crossroads then based his rationale on using
the same terminology presented in said sourceswhile reverting to Kehoe's text that was not based in any way on the article's sources. Mendacious edit summaries like these are a direct violation of the first bullet of WP:SUMMARYNO and ought always to be reverted as disruptive when they are made. BOLD edits that offer bogus rationales should never be accepted on principle. Newimpartial ( talk) 03:46, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Re: they show that "pregnant people" carries the exact connotations of pregnant men that I said it did
- the summaries show no such thing. They simply show that Aidan has a prejudice preconception about the term "pregnant people" that you happen to share, so you think it proves something. Complete, illogical, illiterate nonsense.
Just to be clear, I wasn't "complaining" about language being or not being in the sources, I was calling you out on using "source-based language" as a rationale for an edit where you reverted to BOLD language that wasn't in the source given. You just can't accept that as what you actually did, can you? Newimpartial ( talk) 04:29, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
In a series of 500 consecutive obstetric patients, Boisvert and Hudon observed vomiting in 12 (4.8%) patients during or after administration of methoxyflurane anesthesia.
"In a series of 500 consecutive pregnant people, vomiting occurred in 12 (4.8%) during or after administration of methoxyflurane anesthesia."
four editorsthat
focused ... on the word that offended them, but if so you have made a false statement - my edits were based on the false and misleading edit summaries; I wasn't
offendedby any
words.
stronger signal ... that further reverts would not be allowedseems to me, ahem, unproven, and also an attempt to "legalize" a part of our WP:EW that relies on inductive rather than deductive reasoning. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:35, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
unexplained unsourced POV edit, or something. I do have an underlying objection to the POV/POINT nature of the edits I reverted, but e.g. if there had been a coherent rationale presented in the summary, I would have opened a discussion while possibly reverting per IMPLICITCONSENSUS. My actual reverts, however, in absence of honest and policy-relevant edit summaries, were motivated in the first instance by the summaries given; per WP:NOTSUICIDE, I am not in the habit of opening Talk discussions in such cases.
style(in the sense of STYLEVAR and the MOS) that would require or even encourage the use of "people" or "women" or pretty much anything else, except that per MEDMOS we don't use "patients" or "you" - and STYLEVAR doesn't apply to that, either, because those are defined as "unacceptable", rather than documenting multiple acceptable styles. Not all issues about article text are "style" issues in the sense of STYLEVAR, and this one ain't. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:24, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Do not confuse patient-group prevalence figures with those for the whole population that have a certain condition. For example: "One third of XYZ patients" is not always the same as "One third of people with XYZ", since many people with XYZ may not be seeking medical care.This case seems very similar. What this sorry saga shows is the importance of holding closely to our specific sources, and that substitutions that even experienced editors think are fine can actually have unnoticed problems. Crossroads -talk- 14:19, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
community supportfor interpolating phrases like "pregnant women", when those are absent in the specific sources used in an article, than there has been for interpolating phrases like
pregnant peoplewhen they do not reflect an article's sourcing. You keep invoking a "most sources" ghit shell-game that neither WP policy nor the community demonstrably support. And speaking of "behavioural issues", my successful filing against Maneesh - which I dare say has a higher WP:CONLEVEL than your VP discussion - was based in the first instance on Maneesh's edits to replace sourced and stable terms with unsourced
sex-specificlanguage in the same way that you just did. There is also an interesting parallel between your recent revert, which I linked above, and your edit-warring on Maneesh's behalf to remove sourced discussion of trans people's health conditions. I would even speculate that it was Manessh's POV crusade that
started this mess; the
evidence of community supportfor your WHATABOUTISM and your general defense of Maneesh's POV editing was, ahem, limited, while the eventual consensus was that such conduct was disruptive. Newimpartial ( talk) 14:30, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Style guides can advise and prohibit words too, and currently MOS does neither here- true, but that does not mean that every editorial choice not advised or prohibited by the MOS is therefore a matter of style, and subject to STYLEVAR. If an issue isn't discussed in the WP MOS or in a subject-specific MOS (as are, for example, the varieties of English), then I would expect at a minimum that an editor would be able to cite at least one recognized style authority before trying to invoke STYLEVAR - and in cases where some style authorities would mandate a specific approach and others would not, it would be wikilawyering to argue that "thou shalt not edit war over style" from the STYLEVAR guideline covers all cases where one editor chooses to invoke a style authority, as though by doing so they could impose a 1RR restriction. That simply isn't what STYLEVAR means, or what it's for. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:29, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Crossroads, a straw poll wants what it wants. That doesn't change the pattern of you doubling down on POV edits that I have reverted, without discussion or any policy-relevant justification. And of course you were there
for Maneesh - you were the first of a list of editors who shared the POV of the POV editor in question and who were unable to convince Admin that, in filing to have an editor removed who was disruptive in precisely the "sex-based" terminology issue we are now discussing, I was making an attempt to remove an opponent from the topic area
. The lengths to which you are willing to go not to recognize the community's failure to agree with you on a consistent basis (while repeatedly drawing attention to a few occasions where discussions were resolved to your satisfaction) is a truly impressive achievement in rationalization.
Newimpartial (
talk)
19:44, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
you can't base (your insertion of "pregnant women") on a VP discussion about the terminology used in the sources when "pregnant women" isn't used in the article's sources, which seems entirely germane to the current topic in detail. Later, you stated that
It is those seeking to enforce phrasings that are out of step with the rest of Wikipedia and the vast majority of MEDRS that have "behavioral" issues, but the Maneesh case is a direct example of the contrary (given your rather arbitrary declarations about what is or isn't "in step"). If you are under the impression that people making edits you like don't have behavioural issues but people making edits you don't like have them - which is what your comments communicate - well, that just isn't what the diffs show, as I have demonstrated. You can't just wander through the field of editor behaviour as though it were your personal flower garden, picking what you fancy, any more than you can perform any other exercise in Humpty-Dumpty terminological fiat, and expect for other editors simply to nod and go along with you.
two questions, I have stated (more clearly than usual, I think) why STYLEVAR does not apply to these cases. I have nothing to add on that score. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:09, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
an editor wrote a decent article. Wikipedia is by definition collaborative, and WP:OWNership is a bug, not a feature. The question is to what extent consistency is to be given weight against competing values, such as accuracy, accessibility, and felicity of prose. STYLEVAR can't be used to pre-judge the balance among those values, in any useful way - it is relevant mostly to aspects such as ENGVAR, DATEVAR and CITEVAR that, strongly as editors may care about them, are inherently somewhat arbitrary. Newimpartial ( talk) 20:46, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
affected people need to be described as women, patients, cases, or peopleis a simple "style" issue to which STYLEVAR might apply. We do have style guidance not to use "patients" or "cases" from MEDMOS, and the community gropes periodically towards norms on disability language, but questions about whether to describe people as people, by gender, by nationality or whatever else are in the first instance content issues, not style issues. (Although the current guidance about hyphenated nationality is found in the MOS, as is GENDERID, these both are clearly to resolve content issues as well, not only issues of style - and neither is left to STYLEVAR.) Pretending something is a style issue in order to deploy STYLEVAR strikes me as essentially disingenuous, and I would happily defend myself at 3RRN against anyone filing against me for a second revert against a clearly inappropriate language choice, regardless of the
first editor's preferences. Also, we don't have a general rule saying
"if you can't agree, then first editor wins"- this would only apply to one-versus-one disputes, even if it were true, and in WP:3RRNO cases it isn't any kind of a thing. Newimpartial ( talk) 21:06, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
manor
womanmust not be used, per GENDERID, I haven't noticed any MOS guidance about when we should use gendered vs. gender-neutral terms for individuals of known/specified gender (aside from GENDERID concerns). And while I have been around a great many of these discussions, I have literally never seen any participating editors make STYLEVAR/first-mover arguments of the kind discussed above.
larger groupsbeing more
arbitraryto describe, this is certainly the case. However, I would expect such questions to be decided (1) based on the sources and (2) according in the first instance to the salience of the descriptor - which is a content issue, not a style issue, IMO. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:41, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
I have to say, I'm not thrilled with the circularity of the internal anatomy of a female
. Human pregnancy is a concrete possibility for what is virtually a subset of those assigned female at birth, but it is not a clear, much less an overwhelming, majority of AFAB people. And I don't regard the question whether it is one in 15,000 pregnant people, one in 15,000 pregnant women, or one in 15,000 pregnant "females" as being any more a style question than it is a content question - since each of these formulations makes a slightly different claim and carries vastly different connotations. Likewise, whether the findings of a study are more accurately circumscribed by noting that the subjects were all American, all cisgender, or all college students is something for which I would rely much more on sources than on STYLEVAR.
Newimpartial (
talk)
05:17, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
Human pregnancy is a concrete possibility for what is virtually a subset of those assigned female at birth, but it is not a clear, much less an overwhelming, majority of AFAB people- what I meant by
concretehere was, essentially, at a specific point in time. AFAB people who do not ovulate due to life stage or chemical inhibition have no
concrete possibilityof pregnancy, nor do (at least some) infertile people, nor celibate people, etc. The population for whom none of these things is true
is not a clear...majority of AFAB people, at least in Canada, which is my reference point.
concrete possibilitylanguage, not your
real possibilitylanguage. I don't think the statistical risks associated with pregnancy are best measured by
the percentage of humans that ever give birth during their lifetimes- but even if I did think that, that percentage was never what I was talking about in this discussion. I introduced the
concrete possibilitylanguage, you said you were
confusedby what I said, so I explained what I meant. Shouldn't that be the end of the digression?
between menarche and menopause(according to their age) barely scrapes by 50% at present, according to Statistics Canada, which validates my
not a clear...much less an overwhelming majoritylanguage, does it not? Even if you insist on counting people within that age range who do not ovulate for whatever reason, which I still believe to be the wrong methodology. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:41, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
"Human pregnancy only happens in humans that have the internal anatomy of a female."I don't see how that statement is at all influenced by how many AFAB are currently of fertile age in Canada. I still don't really know what the word "concrete" suggests. It seems that you are arguing about "could become pregnant today" and WAID's sentence was relevant to any point in their lives and wasn't claiming that it happens to many/most/nearly-all/very-few. -- Colin° Talk 13:06, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
WAID's "original sentence" was Human pregnancy only happens in humans that have the internal anatomy of a female.
I have two objections to that sentence - not to its truth-value, which is obvious, but to its appropriateness and relevance - but I'm sure I did not express these objections very clearly.
My first objection concerns the phrase humans that have the internal anatomy of a female
, which I regard as circular and not a helpful way to describe ovaries and a uterus (assuming this is what the phrase means). Even a female reproductive system
would be better, since that phrase has a non-circular referent.
My second objection is that, while pregnancy only happens to AFAB people (and maybe just maybe a miniscule proportion of non-AFAB intersex people? Maybe?) - at any point in time, roughly half of AFAB people do not experience ovulation and cannot possibly become pregnant (this is what I meant by "concrete possibility"). WAID seems inclined to break this into different subgroups, referring explicitly to people before menarche, post-menopausal people, and infertile people (the latter presumably including people who have had hysterectomies) but not wanting to count people whose ovulation is prevented by injection or other hormone treatment, for some reason.
Anyway, on the basic disagreement: to me, the point in time measure is more relevant than the lifetime measure, particularly since what we were talking about in the immediately preceding section was health risks among "pregnant females". It seems obvious to me that, in the first instance, the larger population relevant to those risks (but who are not actually pregnant) is "people who might become pregnant at a specified point in time", rather than "people who are fertile, might be fertile in the future or might have been fertile in the past". Maybe I am wrong about this, but I don't think I am obviously wrong in a way that would justify WAID's I am talking about...I am talking about
language - as though it were WAID's job to define what we had been talking about all along. I was objecting to WAID's sentence, and offering my reasons for that objection, however difficult these may have been to understand at a specified point in time. ;)
Newimpartial (
talk)
13:46, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
concrete possibilityfor someone who has had a hysterectomy, for example? Newimpartial ( talk) 15:04, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
humans that have the internal anatomy of a female, and I am saying (1) that this is not the best label for any population, and (2) that the population it does refer to is not the relevant population, precisely because it includes people
who had a hysterectomy before ever becoming pregnant, along with those who just plain don't want children, among many other categories of irrelevant people. This is precisely my point. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:08, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
anatomy of a female" constructions are unlikely to gain traction, since the sources don't use them.
a quick way of saying kind of "those with the anatomy we associate with the female sex"doesn't exist for some contexts, in any practical sense. Meanwhile, I gave the Olympic categories as an example of a place where any unsourced paraphrase for the category is probably counterproductive, because the actual categories themselves are complexly constructed.
Well, I'm not going to defend the label "neologism" except to say that, for me, it evokes one of the problems with using "females" for humans. But the underlying fact here is that "female", for humans, is not widely enough understood as a term for "sex, not gender" that it could be used that way in article space uncontroversially and without explanation, especially as a replacement for terms used in sources. Like anything else, of course, it can be used with sourced explanations when neutrality can be achieved in doing so. (The same is true for "women", "people" and other terms.) Newimpartial ( talk) 13:39, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
the attempt to use "females" for humans as an attempt to designate sex rather than gender is what I understand to be a neologism(emphasis not even added - it was there already). Newimpartial ( talk) 16:44, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
we speak here purely of biology. That isn't a consistent connotation in any ENGVAR of which I am aware, and - for reasons I believe I have already set out - I don't think editors or readers benefit from the pretense that this is the generally understood signification of these words, in the context of human beings. And some of the ways that have been proposed to give additional precision, such as your "
people with the internal anatomy of a female, do (I think) more harm than good through misplaced specification. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:55, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
that particular distinctionas a house style. For one thing, the boundaries between
medical and non-medical articlesare essentially non-existent (the boundaries are often within, not between articles), and adopting this "house style" for the discussion of non-medical, non-biological topics would be entirely inappropriate IMO.
basic meaningsand their relevance. At a minimum, there are some situations where a "basic meaning" would suffice and other situations where more precision is required, so a house style that was adequate only in situations where "basic meanings" suffice would not strike me as especially useful. What I take to be the best practice, on the issues we are talking about, is to describe more rather than less precisely which groups are at risk or are the targets of certain medical information. And when we are choosing among less precise alternative terms based on their "basic meanings", I think we need reasons better than the first-editor principle to choose between them. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:19, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
Almost, WAID. What is missing is something like "without explanation and support from references". I believe that if we start using females to refer specifically to biology
without explanation and support from references in any articles, then
something like what you describe will happen. I also disagree with your qualifier (probably small fraction of)
, and I wouldn't use the more passive be confused
but rather the more active be misled
. I believe we would be actively misleading these readers both in the medical passages themselves (remember, I do not hold the boundary between "medical" and "non-medical" topics to exist at the article level) and also when the same readers confront non-medical passages.
Also, as a piece of anecdata (anecdatum?), I have to date encountered more readers being misled by the assumption that "female" probably refers to biology, in passages where it does not, than readers erroneously concluding that "female" does not refer to biology in instances when it actually does. Newimpartial ( talk) 19:04, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
we should probably minimize the use of female to refer to non-biological content, strikes me as precisely the opposite of what core policy WP:NPOV calls for us to do. What we have in sources
for non-biological contentis a broad group of authors from varied perspectives using the term "female" to refer to biological or social or gender identity phenomena depending on the context, and then we have a much narrower constellation of POV, generally Culture war authors who insist that "female" in the context of human beings designates biology and nothing else. In this situation, we fail NPOV if we adopt the latter convention.
we should explain the terminology (in the article text, or in a footnotes reference bundle, as appropriate)is not clear to you? To paraphrase my position as,
Um, let the readers keep being confusedis a pretty ugly straw goat; I would have expected better of you WAID, TBH.
to impose a distinction between female biology and female genderin texts that do not specify
whether biological or social referents are meant, which is a prerequisite of the approach you had suggested above (to restrict "female" to biological content), as far as I can tell. Newimpartial ( talk) 03:48, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
female bodiesas a phrase seemed fairly unproblematic, and did not require those using it or hearing it to make decisions about sex vs. gender. Now, that phrase has been substantially weaponized, where (often, not always) people use it purposely *either* to mean sex *or* to mean gender (bodies of people with female gender identities). For Wikipedia to choose one or the other as a matter of house style would not offer actual clarity to readers or avoid the culture wars conflict, but would rather mean taking a side in it, in a way that would violate WP:NPOV. By contrast, contextual usage decisions based on sources can achieve both clarity for readers and NPOV, I believe.
Do you really believe ... It feels likecomments above.
non-hypothetical concernsabout the language to be used in a topic where both MEDRS and non-medical sources are cited is that of Intimate Partner Violence, where much of the literature does not (and arguably cannot without great difficulty) separate "biological" from social factors, and where the language used in the studies themselves certainly does not admit to the assumptions of the style that you, WAID, have recommended. To be clear, the issues arise not primarily in relation to gender identity but concern social gender and gender socialization - but I don't think that makes a difference to the issues at hand, because I can't see any rationale to force a formulation of the distinction between sex and gender identity onto sources that treat these issues in other ways, any more than it makes sense to impose a parallel OR distinction between sex and gender socialization where sources are not making *that* distinction (nor, for that matter, would it be appropriate either to equate or to impose an OR distinction between gender identity and gender socialization/gender roles, IMO - our job is to follow the sources, not to lead them). Newimpartial ( talk) 11:11, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
I'm a GP, a medical doctor who routinely deals with pregnant women and who has worked fairly intensively in obstetrics in an English-speaking country. I have good French and German and decent Spanish, I have a good understanding of grammatical gender vs sex. I strongly disagree with most of what Newimpartial has to say. I am lucky enough to have plenty of paid work and so have no good incentive to spend energy here arguing here with Newimpartial nor with anyone else. I don't intend to argue this further, though if there is some mechanism to demonstrate that relevantly-educated professionals find some internal-Wikimedia decision not congruent with general societal perspectives nor with those of the relevant professionals, I would be happy to engage with that. My CV, including my email address is here: https://www.parhasard.net/work/aidan-kehoe-cv-en-20220212.pdf . My Irish Medical Council registration number is 406484, this can be verified here: https://www.medicalcouncil.ie/ Every good wish, Aidan Kehoe ( talk) 20:02, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
This forthconing article and others by this same author might be interesting for you lot. Haven't finished reading it yet myself. Apologies if this has already been noticed - this page is rather large... Tewdar 18:56, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
The language of maternity is alive and well – so why not expand it to include trans parents? by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett. It seems The Guardian isn't entirely gender critical, after all. -- Colin° Talk 20:30, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
"For example, when “women” is replaced with “people with a cervix”, this aids misunderstanding, particularly for those with low literacy or learning difficulties, or who are non-English speakers."aside from the awkward "aids misunderstanding", I think "non-English speakers" would have problems with anything one wrote in English. I presume they meant those without English as a first language.
"Communicating statistics when language is desexed is fraught, as the NHS discovered when it wrote about how “ 8 in 10 people” will get pregnant after having unprotected sex"Except that's not what the NHS wrote. They wrote:
"8 in 10 people under 40 years old will get pregnant within 1 year of trying by having regular sexual intercourse without using contraception."which limits those "people" to those "trying" to "get pregnant". Their male partners are not trying to get pregnant. The current NHS site says
"If you are under 40 and have regular sex without using contraception, there is an 8 in 10 chance you will get pregnant within 1 year.", which on its own is actually worse, since a male reader could interpret this as applying to them. But then if you read it in context of the article title
"Trying to get pregnant"and the preceding sentence
"You’re more likely to get pregnant around the time you are ovulating. This is when an egg becomes ready and you are at your most fertile."And also remember the NHS is written second person, so it assumes the reader is reading something relevant to their own body (e.g. Cervical cancer symptoms).
“If you’re in bed one and you want to talk about breastfeeding, I will talk to you about breastfeeding,” says Hazard. “And if Charlie is in bed two and is a trans man and wants to talk about chestfeeding or body feeding, what skin off my nose, really, is it to talk to Charlie about chestfeeding? None whatsoever … But it just means that I continue to provide that individualised person-centred care that I’m actually duty bound by the regulator to provide.”
that some editors have difficulty imagining that the diverse readership of those Wikipedia's articles is as relevant to how they should be edited as is some normative category of reader they can more easily imagine reading a given article. I doubt I could have come up with a better illustration if I tried. You seem easily able to imagine ESL readers encountering articles on this topic, but you cannot as easily hold in mind the family, friends, and service providers of trans people doing so - or for that matter, people looking into these topics on Wikipedia who may be involved in policy decisions regarding health care for trans people. You have a specific sense of one group of readers, but don't seem able to imagine these others. Newimpartial ( talk) 13:42, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
I added this to the Sex and gender distinction article a while ago. To my surprise, it was never modified or removed, despite me mentioning it a few times. I can only conclude that the language used was acceptable to all, even though it contains several terms that would usually be given short shrift. Yay for me, I guess. 😁👍
In 2011, it was reported that an untypical Corded Ware burial, dated to between 2900 and 2500 B.C., had been discovered in Prague. The remains, believed to be anatomically male, were orientated in the same way as women's burials and were not accompanied by any gender-specific grave goods. Based on this the archaeologist Kamila Věšínová suggests that it was likely that this was an individual "with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual", while media reports heralded the discovery of the world's first "gay caveman". Archaeologists and biological anthropologists criticised media coverage as sensationalist, as well as criticising Věšínová's original statement, in which she conflates sex, gender, and sexuality, arguing that, although the burial might well represent a transgender individual, it does not necessarily mean that they had a different sexual orientation, or that their culture would have considered them 'homosexual'. Turek notes that there are several examples of Corded Ware graves containing older biological males with typically female grave goods and body orientation. He suggests that "aged men may have decided to 'retire' as women for symbolic and practical reasons."
Tewdar 09:10, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
Canada is the first country to provide census data on transgender and non-binary people. This indicates that about 0.33% of the 15+ age group identify as trans. Within this, 28% are trans men, 31% are trans women, and 41% nonbinary. However, the trans percentage shows a strong correlation with age, and is about 0.85% in the 20-24 age group. [35]. In the younger 15-19 age group, there are slightly more trans men than in the 20-24 group, but fewer trans women and nonbinary. I don't know if those differences are significant and if they are, what the reasons might be. I haven't found similar age breakdown for sexuality, though the overall LGBTQ2+ figure is 4%. -- Colin° Talk 11:00, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
New study by Pew Research Centre. Discussed more in the article The Experiences, Challenges and Hopes of Transgender and Nonbinary U.S. Adults. -- Colin° Talk 16:14, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
This opinion column by a linguist:
wonders how much value there is in using the Correct™ words. If society disapproves of a given subject (e.g., women, trans people, poor people), then changing the words we use to describe them doesn't significantly change society's view of those people. There's definitely a Euphemism treadmill effect, and there may be a Slacktivism factor (i.e., I don't have to do the hard work of solving difficult problems, because I used the current lingo on social media, and that's enough).
This suggests that language like people who are pregnant does not have a meaningful role in social change, and therefore it should neither be encouraged in the hope of promoting equality (because it doesn't really work) nor removed on grounds of Wikipedia:Righting Great Wrongs (because it doesn't really do that). WhatamIdoing ( talk) 03:31, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
I found two articles by this author on the singular they: The Atlantic in 1918 and New York Times in 2021 ( letters in response). Both are far more enthusiastic about language change as an expression of the acceptance that the gender binary is inadequate and acceptance of those who are non-binary. Perhaps the point of the previous articles isn't so much that using new terms will itself directly lead to a better society, but that as society changes (progresses hopefully) then the use of new terms signals acceptance of the new beliefs. That acceptance fuels acceptance in others via this viral thing called communication: the words we use. Beliefs that it is just fine to have two female parents, or for a man to have a husband, or that someone might not regard themselves as fully male or female. These signals work in both directions, as sticking to the old terms may indicate refusal to accept, just as some gender critical people insist on misgendering trans people.
What I liked about the NYT piece was the comment that language change is a spectator sport. I think that's the flaw with the RFCs we often have, where we think it is at all reasonable to ask random people on the internet whether language change should be permitted (or enforced) on Wikipedia. It satisfies some egos to think "You're asking me? Oh, well since you are asking, here's what I think..." I also like how in both articles he considers the change to be hard work but worthwhile, and gives examples of writers in history who made a fuss about change that we long ago accepted. "And most likely, some people at first didn't like it. They died, and here we are."
:-).
So perhaps this comes down to acceptance. Do you insist that there are only two sexes that cannot be changed simply by having "feelings". Or do you accept that trans men are men, trans women are women and non-binary people exist? If you accept that, then surely it follows that one would at least wish to be inclusive in one's writing. It seems to me that despite the efforts of some vocal journalists and lobby groups and some right wing politicians, that there is acceptance among health professionals and academics, and acceptance in law, with varying degrees of practicability. The television series Dr Who had their lead character, who has always been played by a male actor, regenerate into a female actor. If that's not trans, I don't know what is. They are an alien, though, so not entirely "normal". I read in the papers that for the next series (with a male lead actor again) their new companion is played by a young trans woman. Indications of a new normal?
McWhorter's acceptance of singular they comes from his acceptance of non-binary people. One of the letter writers says "Rather than dismissing their uneasiness, over language or gender, let’s admit that it’s hard to change how we talk. We should do it anyway. We’ve jumped through hoops for the gender police for millennia. We can jump through a few more when some pathbreaking soul asks us to see them simply as themselves."
. --
Colin°
Talk
14:48, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
The above articles (and others) refer to language police and frequently suggest it is those on the left/liberal or trans activists who are policing every word. But where is the evidence for this? We haven't uncovered any articles in the media or academia or letters to the editor moaning about cisnormative language and demanding that the publication refer to "people with uteruses" or whatever. We found one hospital that suggested that as well as referring to "women" in hospital publications they should include trans people who need their facilities, but not (as the right wing media suggested) advocating "women" are erased. But we have plenty examples of the other way around, where writers of all sorts of backgrounds take it upon themselves to get upset online and complain about people who are different to themselves and any efforts to include them. Similarly if you look at any twitter storm or Mumsnet posts about this topic, they always start with the gender critical or trans exclusionary person complaining.
The infamous Lancet front page (which I still think was sabotage) was drawn from a review of a political exhibition and itself was making political points. The author is trans friendly (may even be non-binary, I forget what their twitter said). So they chose to use certain language to refer to those who menstruate (the topic of the exhibition). This wasn't "language policed" on them. And that use of language for making political points or for protest is far from unusual. Plenty feminists moaning about those making abortion laws being people who have a penis or lack a uterus. What resulted from the Lancet front page was a torrent of language policing from the political right and from the gender critical.
Is this imbalance accurate, or have we just not discovered the articles? If it is accurate, why is it being perpetuated as a myth that "trans advocates" or the "trans lobby" are policing word use? If they are, they are a pretty rubbish police force. -- Colin° Talk 07:54, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
"At the time of writing, despite the media myth of a powerful trans lobby, in the UK there are no openly trans newspaper editors and no trans staff writers at any major newspapers, no trans television commissioners, no trans High Court judges, no trans MPs, no trans members of the devolved legislatures of Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, and no trans chief executives at major charities."
Do people refer to the de facto ban on the "N word" as "language policing? I am not under the impression that many do - those using the term "language policing" for something other people are doing are importing assumptions about whether the language concerns under discussion carry importance and whether those they criticize are expressing a legitimate or illegitimate reaction. Because few people think the use of the "N word" is an unimportant matter, and few believe people criticizing its use are doing so without legitimate reason, we don't often hear this called "language policing" even when a particular scenario is under debate. Newimpartial ( talk) 16:30, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
Yes, Jordan Peterson is from, and often lives in Canada. Meghan Murphy is also Canadian. But neither of these figures has much of a following in Canada - there is no "conservative movement" or populist groundswell following their opinions on gender identity, and insofar as Peterson has inspired Canadian incels it is the straightforward misogyny, not anti-trans statements, that has found an audience within Canada. As I say, we do have elements of a culture war here, but gender identity just doesn't have much of anything to do with it. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:16, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
use the pavement (sidewalk)is a highly ethnocentric generalization that applies only to a small minority of the world's pedestrians. So I would dispute both premises, and insist that except in situations that have really good sourcing for this language for some reason, we should follow other sources that are more precise.
WAID, you gave an example of misgendering but I don't think that's actually what this sandbox or any of the people arguing about "language police" are talking about. As Newimpartial suggests, language change that is actually accepted and transgressions of which are considered by all reasonable people to be hateful are not counted. So misgendering a trans woman is no longer "language police" but as you say is serious enough to get yourself a Twitter ban if it seems you make a habit of it. I'm not aware Twitter has banned anyone from using the word "women" wrt pregnancy. We don't even see trans people banning the word "women" wrt pregnancy. But it seems that when some people use other terms instead, certain groups think or claim the word is now banned by the language police. I think really the term "language police" has dropped into those words used by the right or aligned pressure groups, along with "social justice warrior", "politically correct", "woke", "cancel culture", etc, etc, that are more about labelling the opposition with a recognised slur (in their eyes) even if inaccurate or using terms nobody understands. We need to be careful about repeating these terms, outside of quotes, because they are so loaded and so carelessly applied. -- Colin° Talk 17:07, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
When I looked at the NHS in December, I found that Womb cancer causes, Prostate problems, Cervical cancer causes were all trans inclusive. But Ovarian cancer was not. Notably the page was formatted with sub-sections on the same page rather than in separate pages as the trans-inclusive pages were, so perhaps it was due an update. It was updated on February 15th to Ovarian cancer Overview and Ovarian cancer Causes, etc. These are now trans inclusive.
Today, there's a news report that includes a TV interview of the UK's health secretary (who has previously expressed strong trans exclusionary opinions) being asked by an anchor on Sky News to explain the change. He is not in favour.
Having listened to this interview with Sara Wilcox, NHS content designer I know that the language used on those pages is carefully considered and trialled to ensure that it works for everyone. It must be very frustrating for Wilcox's team to go through all that process and have a health secretary who admits in the interview that they haven't seen the page (and know nothing about the change they are asked about) but disapprove of it anyway. I don't know about your countries, but being appointed health secretary isn't an indication one knows anything about health. He could be defence secretary next month if Johnson reshuffles his cabinet. There's some response from NHS Digital reported in The Guardian.
There's also a new page Having a baby if you're LGBT+ that links to three new guides. These pages were added on 31st May but the sub-pages have rather odd dates for their "page last reviewed" and "next review due", which might be a mistake but also could be related to allegations that the pages had been "blocked" for a year. What is interesting is that they exclusively use the term "chestfeeding" rather than "breastfeeding" or a combination. -- Colin° Talk 16:10, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
This report released last week:
Parker, Kim; Menasce Horowitz, Juliana; Brown, Anna (2022-06-28). "Americans' Complex Views on Gender Identity and Transgender Issues". Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. Retrieved 2022-07-03.
seems similar to the More In Common report about the UK. (I haven't finished reading the UK report, and I haven't started this one.) WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:51, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Quite a detailed questionnaire about trans attitudes. A few parts of the analysis/interpretation are imo a bit dubious when they describe when the group as a whole are "generally against" or are "generally ok with" something, when the two numbers are quite similar and there's a huge "don't know" group that could easily shift the viewpoint one way or the other if those "don't knows" were able to know. Trying to argue that 41 vs 39 is meaningful with a 25 "don't know" is foolish I think. It gets better, I think, when they start looking at sub-groups such as men vs women, grouping by age or politics, or by whether you know someone who is trans.
The interesting and I guess for me expected result is that if you know someone who is trans you are much more likely to be supportive (though not completely supportive of all things). I find this interesting as there's no guarantee the person you know is likeable (while you can choose your friends, you can't choose your family or colleagues). It suggests perhaps that being able to empathise with people the question concerns may shift opinions towards being more supportive of additional or existing rights, and being ignorant makes it easier to dismiss them. It also correlates with the increase in support among young people, who are also much more likely to know someone.
The unexpected result for me was that women were more supportive of all trans rights than men. Perhaps I've read too many gender critical feminists! For example, overall there is negativity towards allowing trans women to use women's changing rooms (34 + / 43 - / 23 ?), though views on toilets were closer (38 + / 41 -, 25 ?). But when you ask women it is closer on changing rooms (40 + / 37 - / 23 ?) and strongly for toilets (45 + / 34 - / 21 ?). Similar result for using women's refuges. I would say that the opinion of women on using women's bathrooms and refuges is a tad more relevant than what men think about it.
There are also some results that seem to demonstrate that opinions are not based on the arguments normally put forward. For example, about 60% are against or don't know if trans men should be allowed to use men's toilets or changing rooms. I suppose some might be concerned for the safety of the trans man themselves, but do the rest think trans men are a danger to cis men, or just feel this is perverted/unnatural? Similarly about half of people think trans men should not be able to allowed to compete in men's sporting events, and the usual quarter don't know. Perhaps they think they need to be symmetrical with the trans women opinion in order to be neutral/fair/unbiased, but this isn't what the debate is about or what sporting bodies have decreed. This to me shows there's a huge dollop of ignorance in this whole debate and the answers here don't necessarily reflect what people might say if they thought about it some more.
Looking at the raw results, knowing someone who is trans generally halved the size of the "don't know". And early on the survey showed the vast majority did not pay any or much attention to the trans debate. This is the problem that we will also share for social debates at MOS, where most people have not researched the issue but feel compelled to give their opinion, which is more likely to reflect prejudice or politics or some recent news story they saw on social media, or even, whether they are well disposed towards the person raising the RFC. Could this be shifted perhaps by changing the questions to not just abstractly ask about "trans women" using bathrooms:
Could such personalised examples be used to examine how different readers might react to how our articles put things? -- Colin° Talk 14:27, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
-- Colin° Talk 15:08, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
"biologically female human of any gender identity, role, or expression"- rather, they use the word "woman" to address that large and relevant population who identify as women. Newimpartial ( talk) 11:18, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
I came across an article about the Associated Press Stylebook making recommendations about trans coverage: New From AP: Use ‘Accurate, Sensitive, Unbiased Language’ To Cover Trans People. The article is by a pro-trans author and includes links at the bottom to some other resources too. The full AP guide can be found: AP Style Diversity Communications Recommendations / AP Stylebook: Transgender Coverage. One recommendation is:
Avoid terms like biological male, which opponents of transgender rights sometimes use to oversimplify sex and gender, is often misleading shorthand for assigned male at birth, and is redundant because sex is inherently biological
Their guidance aligns with the view (which they ascribe to "experts") that, for example, a trans woman is a woman (not merely a person who identifies as a woman), should be referred to as "she" (unless they wish otherwise) and that this is who they are, not what they have become. The guidance makes no mention of " gender ideology", a term used by anti-trans writers as though they are fighting some cult. Instead, the various terms and word choices are regarded as being neutral, and deviance from that would indicate a biased or careless writer.
Among the links given in the newspaper article, the Trans Journalists Style Guide and TJA Best Practices for Trans-Inclusive Language in Abortion Coverage.
Earlier in our discussion, the AP guide was referred to as "generalist" in that this organisation doesn't exist to promote e.g., midwifery or LGBTQ rights, etc. So I think it is significant that it regards the neutral position as being supportive of trans terminology, and rejecting the kind of language used by the gender critical or right-wing journalists. -- Colin° Talk 09:32, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
'grounded in the conviction that "a period should end a sentence, not a girl's education," our mission is "to create and cultivate local and global partnerships to end period stigma and to empower menstruators worldwide."'. The authors are using "menstruators" much like we might use the word "teachers" or "writers". The Lancet writer reviewing an exhibition on periods at the Vagina Museum writes
"objects are also displayed that help create a rich experience and reveal how people who menstruate have dealt with their periods at different times". Again, the word here is used like one might say "people who cook" or "people who fish". You wrote that "people who menstruate" was bad because it was reductionistic. I read those sentences and think those are powerful women who are not ashamed of their bodies and its functions and find the word "menstruate" no more problematic than "walk" or "eat". Earlier you wrote
'I could imagine a Wikipedia article that said something like "Anyone with a prostate can develop prostate cancer; however, it is most common among older men". I don't think that is unsuitable, and IMO it doesn't have the demeaning feeling that some other uses of "people with anatomy" could. That would seem to agree with my position. Reductionistic language can be problematic, perhaps often so, but I think there is a place for it and it is likely more common that you think. "People with heart disease"; "Circumcised men"; "Obese people"; "People with lung cancer"; etc. We are grouping all these people and classifying them by their ownership of a health issue or body part of lack of. Of course, it can also be problematic: "Epileptics" or "The prolapse in bed three" are both unacceptable. -- Colin° Talk 08:55, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
Rare birth defects or other such conditions(emphasis added). Clearly you believe it is, and clearly (some) others disagree. For those who disagree, your argument that trans and nonbinary people should be written about they way we might write about amputees - well, it may seem somewhat offensive. Newimpartial ( talk) 03:59, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
necessitatesno such thing. The issue of
people withlanguage is entirely orthogonal to whether to use terms like "women" in reference to reproductive biology. Nor has any evidence of a
Trojan horseyet been produced... Newimpartial ( talk) 04:12, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
one can write some sentences without the W-word and still sound normal". Most of the sentences in a sex-related medical article like pregnancy do not contain that word. The gender of the person is irrelevant to most of the article and the reader does not need continual reminders of their sex. Doing so is mostly a quirk of English, where we might use a sex/gender specific word even if not required. Some quirks like this change over time. For example, we dropped the habit of writing "he" to refer to a singular person, when previously that was considered entirely normal practice. In the article 2020 United States presidential election we don't keep reminding readers that the voters and the candidates are American. It is vitally important that both of them are American but can be established early on and assumed afterwards. I wonder why, if you think pregnancy or menstruation are so obviously sex-linked, we need to keep reminding readers at all? -- Colin° Talk 07:34, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Ok, I made a mistake with the earlobes and should have written "free earlobes" or "attached earlobes", in order to refer to a sub-group by their anatomy. Crossroads, I'm sure you are aware that 'the English language already has a word for "people who menstruate"'
copies JK Rowling's infamous tweet. Think for a minute. That tweet didn't convince the world. Nobody woke up and said "You know what, you are right, this 'gender ideology' is cultish nonsense". In fact, it did the opposite, as it demonstrated that one side was not interested in approaching the other side to reach some degree of mutual understanding, but though mocking them was the best way to "win". Mocking the other side may be a great deal of fun, but I don't think it has ever solved any world problem. Cartoons of Trump and Johnson did nothing to shift public perception of them: they only amused those who were already minded to dislike them. It is because many other people don't share your interpretation of words like "woman" that we have a problem with word choice in our articles. One side (either side) will not win the battle by continued posts that all the other guys are not just wrong but also stupid, and if they only saw that then problem solved. In fact, continued attempts to resolve an editing disagreement by trying to persuade the other side their world view is wrong is... advocacy... and could earn you a topic ban, especially if you team it up with mocking the views of other editors and repeated misleading posts about Wikipedia consensus and policies. Instead, we have to work with understanding the various viewpoints, accepting they exist even if we don't understand and agree with them, and trying to find some compromise that ensures Wikipedia articles are the best they can be while also preventing editors from retiring or scaring off newbies. --
Colin°
Talk
07:25, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
[Rowling's] tweet didn't convince the world- let's zoom out a bit, and frame the onus where it belongs. Have those arguing everyone should now use terms like "people who menstruate" convinced the world? Why do sources on menstruation still almost always speak about women, then? To focus only on Rowling and the backlash to it (which for the most part was about her other, later comments anyway) would be to take the very culture-war approach you elsewhere deride. We must look outside of a culture war and the fact that people who are loud about it are often not representative of the general population, and look at what ordinary sources are quietly doing. Crossroads -talk- 07:47, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
people who menstruateis the go-to example is that many of the same people who find that term horribly offensive also simultaneously want to use the term
people with penises, to lump trans women (even, ironically, post-op trans women) with men. Their objection to "objectifying language" is selective, not universal.
ordinary sourcesapproach is concerned, I would simply point out that - as when you and I discussed the use of "AFAB" and "AMAB" a couple of years ago now - the "ordinary sources" I read do not typically use language in the ways you claim ordinary sources do. In particular, they do not use "women" insistently as a universal term for female reproductive biology".
I would love to see more women in powerful positions but representation has its limits: simply having a vagina and a fancy job title doesn’t make you a feminist role model." -- Colin° Talk 19:17, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
in general, on average, presumably based on some epistemology that does not actually require you to read the sources to which you refer. Newimpartial ( talk) 17:27, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
Our article menstruation pointed me at Degendering Menstruation: Making Trans Menstruators Matter. There's some heavy-going academic language in that, which is a bit off-putting for me. However, three things I noticed. The first is that assuming "women" is a sufficient and accurate description of those people who menstruate is cis-normative. The second is that if we are to describe the issues faced by trans people who menstruate, then a term like "trans menstruators" is rather unavoidable. How else would you discuss the issues facing trans men changing their tampons in a men's bathroom or products designed for women's underwear or with feminine design. And then there's the whole "feminine hygiene" weirdness. I wonder, wrt menstruation, whether sometimes the focus on "not mentioning that word" but instead writing "women" or "feminine hygiene products" and then perhaps compounding it by saying "women and some trans men and non binary people" is just perpetuating taboos and stigmas and patriarchal thinking about unclean women's bodies. -- Colin° Talk 10:10, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Rydström works within a post-constructionist framework to critically explore the nature of menstruation, which many perceive to be a strictly female bodily function despite many scholars’ recognition that menstruators are of various gender identities.This sentence conflates sex (female) and gender identity. It is a strictly female bodily function. Only the female reproductive system menstruates. Unfortunately, some would prefer we engage in obscurantism over this fact. Crossroads -talk- 22:47, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
Over at talk pregnancy, WAID linked to
this response to the infamous Lancet article. I note the authors wrote "We have also moved towards inclusive language, such as individuals that menstruate, so that women, girls, transmen, and non-binary individuals are included, and we have shifted from reducing these individuals to bodily functions or body parts by avoiding the term menstruators.
" Their point they make is that "individuals that menstruate" does not reduce these individuals to bodily functions or body parts, whereas they think "menstruators" does. The comparison with "people with epilepsy" vs "epileptics" is appropriate I think. This is the people-first language approach in action. It is only when you truly reduce someone to a body part or disease or body-function that it is dehumanising and reductionist.
And yet at that discussion
Clayoquot wrote that "person with a uterus" was "dehumanising". And WAID said 'the "bodies with body parts" model is frequently considered an offensively reductionist approach because it reduces the whole of a human experience to something like a mindless machine made of parts'
.
Consider:
What a term like "people with a uterus" does is place attention on two things. The gender-neutral word "people" and an organ in the body given its technical term. I know that you are more than just a person with a uterus and I am more than just a person with a prostate. But in epilepsy, the person is also more than just someone with epilepsy. They want to be considered "as whole humans operating in a complex social system" as WAID put it earlier. They don't get that opportunity. The only way we can talk about people prone to epileptic seizures is to call them people with epilepsy. You know I don't think we can replace "women" with "people with a uterus" all over the pregnancy article. But I'm not sure it is for the reasons you claim.
(Clayoquot, I pinged you as a courtesy because I quoted you, but you can ignore this if you like). -- Colin° Talk 15:05, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
I searched the previous conversations for "dehumanising" and found it was generally someone responding to or citing The Lancet, which put "bodies with vaginas" on its cover. Of course, here we have "women" being replaced by "bodies" and that is indeed reductive and dehumanising. But I suspect then people have conflated that one awful example with the "people with body parts" or "people who bodily function" and assumed the same criticism applies there too. I wonder what it says to consider "woman" more "human" than "person", and how that affects trans women, who get excluded from "womenhood" by some activists. -- Colin° Talk 17:47, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
I had a feeling of deja vu about this discussion, and that it was in fact WAID who made a point about a term that included "people". It was in the discussion of the paper about "the importance of sexed language". Here it is:
They say, for example, that a cis-gendered biological adult female who doesn't "believe in" (those are scare quotes) the existence of gender identities will read a sentence about "women and birthing people" and feel like the "women" doesn't refer to her, and that she's being dehumanized by being referred to as a birthing person. Life must be very difficult for English speakers who feel objectified and dehumanized when they're called people. (This claim is sourced to a blog.)'
And in the Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health discussion, the reductionism that seemed to be of concern, was replacing sentences that mentioned "women" or "mothers" and instead focused entirely on body parts and processes without mentioning a person at all (e.g., pregnancy has the amazing sentence: "The fusion of female and male gametes usually occurs following the act of sexual intercourse.") -- Colin° Talk 13:31, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
I had a quick look at Cardiovascular disease and Cardiovascular disease in women and my skim of those didn't find this issue mentioned, and they focused on sex (biology) as the difference and not gender. I thought it was interesting that the gender of the doctor intersected with the gender of the patient in terms of whether women got the diagnosis and treatment they needed. And also, the idea that having qualities perceived as feminine worsened your chances. Here is an example where the "gender binary" is too simplistic, and a spectrum of behaviour and perception and attitudes is present. I recall another author commenting on patient behaviour affecting treatment, and the male doctor lamenting (IIRC) in robustly gendered language that "behaving like a giant prick" was the approach most likely to give you the most attention and best treatment. Those who meekly wait for the doctor or nurse and don't like to make a fuss, get neglected.
I think we can see from the Guardian article and letter that language choice in this topic isn't easy. I think it would be hard to write about this in a way that was trans-inclusive. It would be tricky to know what factors were entirely sex-based, and which were gender-based. Searching for "cardiovascular disease transgender" shows quite a lot of articles, mainly about the effect of hormone treatment. Earlier I think we uncovered some articles about transgender people generally receiving worse healthcare (and being less willing to go to health professionals). -- Colin° Talk 09:27, 25 September 2022 (UTC)