Thread by @VikiLovesFACS

Periodically, I get a lot of heat for using gender neutral phrases like “pregnant people” or “people who have periods” rather than “women”.

So today, I’d like to take a few moments to explain why I do that, including some of my more personal reasons… 🧵

But let’s start by being clear that women are people!

So these phrases include pregnant women and women who have periods. 2/

Second, I am aware that the reason I get hear for this is because it’s inclusive of trans men, and some people have a problem with that. 3/

I am probably more conscious of pregnant trans men than your average person because one happened to be in my antenatal support group when I was expecting my son.

He really opened my eyes to a lot of things, but mainly just that… this is a thing that happens. 4/

It costs me nothing, by my use of “people” to include those like my friend from antenatal group.

So why wouldn’t I? To acknowledge the existence of other people is just polite. 5/

But actually I have a more personal reason for preferring “people” to “women” when talking about the biology of sexually mature biological females, and this is it… 6/

What about girls?

7/

I got my own period age 9. The “only women menstruate” crowd would therefore have 9-year-old me down as a woman.

But I didn’t feel like a woman, or think of myself as a woman. And society would have been horrified had I done many of the things that women are allowed to do. 8/

To me, this makes it very clear that “being a woman” is not a biological thing, defined by being able to get pregnant - clearly not or you would stop being a woman after the menopause.

Rather, it’s a social construct. 9/

For people like me, who study the female reproductive system, this does make things a bit difficult. Because most often I am talking about “sexually mature biological human females”, whether they are women, girls or trans men. 10/

But to say that is long-winded and makes me sound like an anthropologist from Alpha Centauri.

So, I say “people”.

We’re all people. 11/11