I am increasingly worried about the sudden trend to erase women and women's needs from public services in favour of using 'desexed' and gender-neutral language to refer to both women and transgender men. I notice that the trend to 'desex' public information applies largely to information about women to make it more inclusive for transgender men, but the same changes are not applied to information about men to make it more inclusive for transgender women.

Whilst most people recognise the need for more inclusive language and fair access public services, I believe that the disparity between how these changes appear to be affecting women versus men and the solution to desex language is causing more harm than good.  

The recent Times article "NHS drops the word ‘women’ from online health guidance" (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bdfde88a-e5b6-11ec-aa87-2eea7c6e5b01?shareToken=708c82fded7aa452b7d963da082a7ba4 offers a damaging example of the erasure of women's needs in practice. The words 'women', 'female', and other sexed language like 'the female reproductive system' are being removed from health information in favour of words of identification such as "anyone with ovaries". The same changes are not being made to desex sex-specific information for men, with NHS webpages  continuing to refer to 'men' and 'parts of the male reproductive system' instead of using language like 'people with prostates'. 

In terms of health guidance, as the article above and thousands of commentors point out, removing the word 'women' from health information causes confusion and makes the UK less safe for women by making health information less clear. For example:

• less literate people, including those without English as a first language, may not realise that the health messages apply to them unless they see the word 'women' in the text.
• additionally, we cannot assume that everyone knows the names for female anatomy. Words of identification like "anyone with ovaries" may mean women do not realise that the health messages apply to them. Already we know that thousands of women fail to get important health screenings every year that could detect early stage illnesses - these changes will do further disservice to those women.
• Conflating gender and biological sex in health information causes confusion for the majority, but likely not for transgender men (who have had gender reassignment surgery) who probably understand their biological anatomy better than most women. 
• removing or reducing the use of the word 'women' from the primary pages for online health information will cause NHS web results on common women's health problems (like ovarian / breast / cervical cancer) to be pushed  down the list of results of online search engines. This may mean searching with words such as "womens cancer" or "cancer risks for women" would not bring up NHS webpages. Men's health information on NHS web pages however will remain at the top of results - that is surely discrimination against women.

Women have a right to clear information about their access to public services, in particular their health information.  Whilst I hate to use the dreaded word, women are being 'cancelled' and, in terms of health messaging, this is unsafe. 

The NHS and other public services are tax funded - they exist for the people and are funded by the people. Women (by that I mean individuals who are both biologically female and identify as of the female gender) make up around half the population, whilst transgender men are a comparative minority. These changes therefore confuse a significantly larger majority than they help. Please sign this petition to ask that the government stops erasing women and instead designs inclusive language that provides clarity for all users of its public services whatever their gender.