Changing words like ‘women’ and ‘mothers’ to gender-inclusive terms like ‘vagina owners’ or ‘birthers’ in medical research has the potential to dehumanise women and diminish the importance of the mother-child relationship, leading researchers have said.
In an opinion article officially published in the journal Frontiers in Global Women’s Health on Feb. 7, 10 women’s health experts from Australia, the US, Europe and Asia acknowledged that desexing the language of female reproduction have been done with a view to being “kind and inclusive” to LGBT+ people, including those who are pregnant or birthing but do not identify as women.
However, the researchers said the language changes have “delivered unintended consequences that have serious implications for women and children.” Those consequences include “marginalising” women’s humanity because using alternative terms for ‘women,’ such as ‘gestational carrier,’ ‘birthing people’ or ‘pregnant families’ involve references to body parts or physiological processes.
