you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]gnarlyfem 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

I'm the one who created the private women's health subreddit. The reason it was created is because we didn't want to be shamed for using language that accurately describes our bodies and experiences. We were told to stop calling ourselves women, and were offered "uterus haver" or "f'd up ovary haver" as a way to be inclusive. Which if you understood women's health, plenty of women have to have these parts removed for life saving reasons. So then they're going to be asked to refer to themselves as havers of those now missing parts, or else be called transphobic? Forcing women to call ourselves by the body parts that give us so much pain and hinder our health, is dehumanizing. We don't hate that we're women, we just wanted a place to learn and commiserate with other women experiencing the same thing. That's it. No one is going into the prostate cancer sub and telling men to stop calling themselves "men", and instead refer to themselves as "f'd up prostate havers" or "cancer asses." It's not a difficult concept to understand why we feel the way we do.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I completely agree with you for the most part. But I had a look on the example you give, and nowhere does the sub claim to be a male only space. They are 'inclusionary' merely by not bringing up gender at all.

eta: Urgh, I was going through that sub looking for how they might have dealt with trans issues in the past... RIP /u/rogre and fuck cancer.

[–]gnarlyfem 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It doesn’t have to claim to be male, because only males have prostates. Just like only females have ovaries. How do you think those men would feel if their support sub was brigaded by women who identified as men, and told them to change their language? Instead of saying “man” they now need to say “cancerous prostate haver”, and when they rightfully defend their right to call themselves men, they are banned from their support group. Those that stayed quiet during the argument are left with their community closing for a couple days, only for it to reopen, where they then find out their long time male mod has been kicked out, and now women and transmen (who are also women) are the new mods. Do you seriously not get this?