Collective account for pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding concerns of women. Sex-based language due to sex-based oppression. Donate: tinyurl.com/6fmkuebs
Joined February 2021
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- Followers 6,755
- Likes 2,615
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Pinned Tweet
10 Oct 2025
Here’s our free, updated toolkit with plenty of tried-and-tested strategies to help you challenge & change situations in your work/volunteer life. If you work with ‘women’ & not ‘birthing people’ you need this💪
with-woman.org/wp-content/up…
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Babies, eh?
Even after millennia, they still need *mum* to prioritise their needs for love, milk & closeness, how very dare they😱
One boffin publishes, saying it’s outrageous, & argues for ‘gestators’ (ffs) to focus on ’gender justice’ in ‘lactation’. 🤯
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/…
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Here’s a tip-top substack explaining just how bereft of knowledge, care & understanding this idea actually is.
lucyleader.substack.com/p/la…
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With Woman retweeted
May 20
Are newborns blank slates? Does it matter to them from whom the oocyte for their conception came or who gestated and birthed them? Using research from adoption, donor conception and surrogacy, this paper argues for consideration of the child's experience in surrogacy language.
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With Woman retweeted
Then the word "women" gets ditched entirely!
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With Woman retweeted
@justsay_mother For years we’ve tried to protect words like “girls,” “women,” “mum” & “pregnant women.”
The gov refused to restore them, so now we’re asking for research. We shouldn’t have to fight this hard.
See MPs deleting our words. Sign:
petition.parliament.uk/petit… & ask a mate
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With Woman retweeted
May 11
This illustrates the reality of lack of sufficient maternity leave and inadequate workplace breastfeeding provisions. The author is incorrect, this is not what being a parent looks like, male parents do not have this experience. This is sexism experienced by women who are mothers
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With Woman retweeted
We’ve talked about “Gabrielle” Darone, the trans-identifying man who joined a women’s support group for mothers who had experienced stillbirth after “simulating” one of his own. He got grieving women kicked out of this group for objecting to his behavior, which included asking women if he could “breast feed” their infants.
Would you believe that he wasn’t a one-off?
Meet “Kylie Palm,” another man who pretended to be pregnant and then faked a stillbirth. He even tried to raise money for a doll to “help him grieve” for his imaginary baby. Mr. Palm also joined a parental grief/stillbirth group, and he, too got women who had experienced the loss of an actual child kicked out of their own support group.
Now I’m wondering how many other men have done this in their fetishistic pursuit of women’s pain.
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Apr 16
Good to see how govt’s women’s health strategy sees sex as paramount, over ‘gender’ or ‘gender ID’. No ‘birthing people’ or ‘ppl with a uterus’ here - just plain language👍.Plus no ££ from NIHR for any research which doesn‘t clarify if sex matters👍
assets.publishing.service.go…
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Mar 30
This paper demonstrates that desexing language isn’t needed. Women don’t like it, they find it harder to understand & it can risk harm. We’re women & girls, mothers & sisters & daughters. And it matters.
'desexed language may undermine clear communication, is poorly accepted and risks obscuring women’s health needs.'
A qualitative systematic review of the implications of desexed language in women’s healthcare and healthcare literature
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.….
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Language in health comms should be clear - women lose out when it’s not. Brava, Karleen👍
My chapter from The War on Sience on the desexing of language in women's health has been republished in @Quillette. Exclusively, it is accompanied by figures showing the spread of this language from the US and with a recording of me reading it!
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With Woman retweeted
Feb 26
If you can spare a few pounds and want to help women access single sex, trauma-informed therapeutic support the link is here. Thank you again 🙏❤️ zeffy.com/en-GB/donation-for…
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Feb 26
We agree. Avoiding sexed language is confusing, & avoids the reality that everyone who is pregnant or gives birth is female…& knows she is. This important report loses impact by pandering to the idea that sex doesnt matter.
I have just complained to @ComplaintsBbc about the interview @BBCr4today with Baroness Amos about her interim report on Maternity services in England and Wales. They are getting worse due to insufficient number of midwives (twas ever thus!) I wrote: "Dehumanising language - word "mother" NOT used: In the interview with Baroness Amos about her interim report on Maternity services in England and Wales, the interviewer (Emma Barnet or Anna Foster - both women and mothers!) and the interviewee Lady Amos refuse to use the words "mother", "woman", "pregnant woman", "delivery", "new mother", "pregnancy", etc. when talking about being pregnant, giving birth and maternity services. They talk about "effect on FAMILIES" instead of effect on "mothers giving birth" or "newly delivered mothers". This is dehumanising for women. The obvious, the natural language for anything concerned with maternity MUST be the SEXED language which I have just listed.
I note that just before this item the newscaster reported that 40 more midwives have been recruited by the Hospital trust where a woman giving birth was treated in an appallingly negligent way and nearly died and lost her baby as a result. At least the Trust recognised that the key to proper delivery of babies is sufficient number of midwives on duty".
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With Woman retweeted
Feb 23
Extremely disappointing to hear women referred to in such a dehumanising way. It sullies the message and the intention of the film.
Endometriosis is a female specific disease, experienced only by women.
We are not people “born with a uterus” We are women.
@BAFTA
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Feb 11
Well done. Nice scarf 😀
Feb 11
Really good to see a big turnout for the maternity commissioner rally today organised by @theodoraclarke and @LouiseAThompson. MPs and peers were in attendance, along with lots of mothers (and even a few babies).
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With Woman retweeted
Feb 11
The mother's body is an incredible thing!
Feb 11
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Happy birthday, language paper😀. Every day, in health & maternity-related communications & in academic publishing, we still see meaning obscured, confusion arising, & clear messaging sacrificed to an un-evidenced notion of inclusion🤨.
Four years today, our paper on the importance of sexed language in maternity was published. It has >200 000 reads. Yet desexed language continues to spread. The only research on impact is with 16 Americans and 146 Ugandans. Where did commitment to evidence-based practice go?
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Jan 28
Yay for the sexed language in this successful petition…no rubbish about ‘birthing parents’, but ‘women’ & ‘mothers’ & ‘mums’. Now…let’s hope we see some progress on this.
Jan 28
Huge congratulations to @theodoraclarke and @LouiseAThompson for reaching 110,000 signatures on their petition to appoint a maternity commissioner - and a reminder that this was the lead recommendation in 2024's birth trauma inquiry.
petition.parliament.uk/petit…
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