Talk:Pregnancy/Archive 9

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Archive 5

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Archive 7

spontaneous/induced miscarriage/abortion in the lead

'Miscarriage' often has the connotations of spontaneous and 'abortion' of induced, but really they're the same thing: an elective abortion is defined as an induced miscarriage, and a miscarriage is often described as a spontaneous abortion (the body aborts the fetus). So I think we should keep the wording parallel in the lead. I don't know the best wording, but I think it could confuse people not to clarify that both words can have both meanings. — kwami (talk) 05:11, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

I wonder if it would be a good idea to write a few sentences to explain this in the body of the article since it may be confusing to a person other than one who has medical training? Sectionworker (talk) 12:16, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Also, supposedly FIGO and WHO, like Massachusetts and Mexico, define pregnancy from implantation, e.g. the supreme court of Mexico cited WHO for that in their 2019 ruling, but I can't find where FIGO or WHO state that. I've written FIGO, so maybe I'll get a response. And of course you can't have a miscarriage, and thus an abortion, before you're pregnant, so this could play into coverage of the changing situation in the US, if readers come to this article to understand what exactly 'pregnancy' and 'gestation' are. — kwami (talk) 22:12, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

It looks like the CDC and FDA in the US do as well, but rather than an explicit statement, I'm only finding indirect wording such as emergency contraception preventing pregnancy by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting. — kwami (talk) 22:06, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't believe it's generally true that "an elective abortion is defined as an induced miscarriage". Consider, e.g., the legal definitions collected at https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/elective-abortion (which do not mention the word miscarriage at all) and the definition given in Britannica: "An elective abortion is the interruption of a pregnancy before the 20th week of gestation at the woman’s request for reasons other than maternal health or fetal disease." Or this one from the NCI: "An abortion performed due to individual choice, in the absence of a harmful medical condition caused by pregnancy."

I suggest that we should be cautious of definitions that have been promoted in response to recent events in the US.

As for the terminology, elective is complicated because it is strange wrt abortion. Elective medical care is normally the opposite of emergency medical care. When we're talking about abortion, however, we contrast elective with therapeutic. Therapeutic is not significantly different from Medically necessary (usually because someone wants to avoid the birth of a disabled child, and only rarely to preserve the life or health of the mother). As a result, it is possible to have an elective therapeutic abortion (e.g., fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome, and surgical abortion is scheduled in advance) or to have an emergency therapeutic abortion (e.g., mother's life in danger and a surgeon is called minutes after her arrival in the emergency room), and an elective elective abortion (e.g., scheduled in advance for non-medical reasons), but not an emergency elective abortion.

As a result, I tend to prefer induced abortion, as it sidesteps the problem with which kind of elective it is. Also, some sources have complained about the "elective" terminology (example). Usually this is either because they disagree with the elective–therapeutic binary, or because it's unclear. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:26, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Timeline section

I'm glad to see this added because it is so confusing for most people. And certainly right now with the new legislation re early "heartbeat", etc., legislation in the U.S. I made a couple of changes. I'm a retired RN and saw plenty of very early babies born. We used to let them peacefully pass when they were horribly deformed, etc., but more recently nurses and doctors are afraid of losing their licenses. Sectionworker (talk) 01:48, 16 May 2022 (UTC) I will list some sources. [1] [2] Sectionworker (talk) 04:22, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

@Sectionworker, I'd love it if you could add some sources, and also double-check the numbers. I'm pretty sure that the math is off in the middle of the last column. Please Wikipedia:Be bold in fixing it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:00, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing I looked for anything that would be useable when I first read your note here and as usual for that sort of info could find nothing. Then I looked at the math until my eyes started to cross and then I put it aside. Thinking about it today I found the the chart is from a gynecology journal from that month's online feature articles. I have no interest in trying to hunt that down. Exactly what do you think might be wrong and what math are you referring to also? Sectionworker (talk) 17:16, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

I created the chart, mostly pulling numbers from existing Wikipedia articles but not grabbing their sources. The sourcing seemed a bit chaotic and I would not be surprised to discover that some articles contradict each other. I should probably look for a textbook on embryology or fetal development.

The last two columns align with each other, but the LMP numbers have three weeks between implantation and heart function, and the others have two weeks. There may be similar discrepancies. The columns should align in lockstep: LMP minus two weeks is Fertilization age; Fertilization age minus six or seven days is Implantation age. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:28, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

As an example: Primitive streak says that it appears at day 17 in the text and day 15 in the infobox. Which is correct? I don't know. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:35, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I know what you are getting at here. I spent quite some time looking for the one true answer and never did find it. Hmmm, so youput it together. Well, in that case I'm going to figure it's as good as we've got till more info comes along. The thing is, it's so important and I do know that people do come here for facts about the situation. Let's keep it on our radar and discuss snything new that may come up, OK? Sectionworker (talk) 02:21, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Here's part of a caption from Langman's Medical Embryology (isbn 9789388696531, page 48, figure 3.12):

"Events during the first week of human development. 1, oocyte immediately after ovulation; 2, fertilization, approximately 12 to 24 hours after ovulation; 3, stage of the male and female pronuclei; 4, spindle of the first mitotic division; 5, two-cell stage [approximately 30 hours of age]; 6, morula containing 12 to 16 blastomeres [approximately 3 days of age]; 7, advanced morula stage reaching the uterine lumen [approximately 4 days of age]; 8, early blastocyst stage [approximately 4.5 days of age; the zona pellucida has disappeared]; 9, early phase of implantation [blastocyst approximately 6 days of age]."

Except: Implantation seems to be a bit of a process, rather than a specific moment. So it typically starts 6 days after fertilization (or 7 days after having sex), but it doesn't really finish for several days:

"Day 8 At the eighth day of development, the blastocyst is partially embedded in the endometrial stroma" (p. 51)
"Day 9 The blastocyst is more deeply embedded in the endometrium, and the penetration defect in the surface epithelium is closed by a fibrin coagulum" (p. 52)
"Days 11 and 12 By the 11th to the 12th day of development, the blastocyst is completely embedded in the endometrial stroma, and the surface epithelium almost entirely covers the original defect in the uterine wall.... maternal blood begins to flow through the trophoblastic system, establishing the uteroplacental circulation" (p. 53)
"Fully implanted 12-day human blastocyst..." (p. 54, Figure 4.5)
"Day 13 By the 13th day of development, the surface defect in the endometrium has usually healed" [but you could still see implantation bleeding, which can be mistaken menstrual bleeding] (p. 54)
"At the beginning of the second week, the blastocyst is partially embedded....By the end of the second week, the blastocyst is completely embedded" (p. 58)

If you look at the three-vs-four stages named at Implantation (embryology), then Langman's is in the three-stage camp (i.e., hatching is a necessary precondition rather than part of implantation itself).

This seems to be a general theme. Consider the primitive streak:

The primitive streak first appears at about the same time as implantation (begins), day 6 (p 46).
"Initially, the streak is vaguely defined, but in a 15- to 16-day embryo, it is clearly visible as a narrow groove" (p. 60)

This makes it a bit difficult to say "____ happens exactly on Day 7", even if you ignore the normal variations (e.g., someone having sex right after ovulation instead of in the days before it, which will slow down fertilization by a day or so). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:59, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

I should make a note here: I think they're on a "counting from zero" system, so what I've written as "Day 7" in the article is "Day 6" in these quotations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:13, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

The next textbook was clearer about their counting system, and they were counting from 1, so ignore what I wrote here about counting from zero. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:45, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't like that periviability source. For one thing I get a "buy this book" after a sentence or two. Plus, how did you make that choice? Also, at 22 to 24 weeks it is actually only 30 percent that survive. Then, there is the very high rate of serious problems that the infant faces, (an aside...to say nothing of the hell that parents may go through to get financial help). I would prefer to say something like sources are not in agreement. This is a better source. [3] Sectionworker (talk) 05:05, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

I started in Google Books and looked for a textbook published in the last few years, by a reputable publisher.

It looks like ACOG is defining periviability as being 20 to 26 weeks. This is a sensible range, because periviability is the time around viability rather than the point at which 50% survive, but I'm not sure that we really want periviability in the table.

The world record for actually surviving is 21 weeks, 1 day (LMP dating). Early in the 21st week, the survival rate is not usefully expressed as a percentage; the survival rate is best expressed as "in the last half century, Curtis, Richard, and Frieda survived". Maybe the world record should be in the table instead.

Or maybe we should have 50% survival lines. That would actually require two lines: one for what you can accomplish with unlimited resources in the most advanced medical facilities (23 weeks LMP per the JAMA study I added to Fetal viability), and another one for what happens in most of the world (probably around 30 to 32 weeks LMP). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure we want "periviability" either. Of the sensible things I read it gets harder and harder to find numbers for the chart. Here is Guttmacher saying that the final decision is for the attending physician to decide. [4] Of course it was easy enough to use compassion and medical knowledge before old, male politicians were put in charge of a woman's body and her life. I don't know the level of fear these days, meaning the fear of losing one's license to practice medicine and even getting put in jail. Here is a 2021 survey done in the UK with 22 wks usually replied. [5] Thanks for all the marvelous work you are doing here. Sometimes being so persnickety just makes me yawn, but not here... Sectionworker (talk) 23:56, 23 July 2022 (UTC)u. Sectionworker (talk) 01:37, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I've removed that line. If anyone needs the ref, it was Denney-Koelsch, Erin M.; Côté-Arsenault, Denise (2020-02-05). Perinatal Palliative Care: A Clinical Guide. Springer Nature. p. 42. ISBN 978-3-030-34751-2.

The Guttmacher source doesn't seem to be talking about viability on average. Of course the healthcare professional (who might not be a physician, and who frequently isn't what the US med students call an Attending physician) will have to make a decision on individual cases. It's the same as the difference between "the average lifespan" and "your own lifespan". WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Re Guttmacher, I was doing research for something else I'm working on and this line struck me re this discussion: "Viability cannot be presumed based on gestational age, fetal weight or any other single factor; it must be determined by a patient's doctor on a case-by-case basis." I was not suggesting it had any place in the article but merely to add to our discussion. Same for the other site I linked to. At any rate I think you made the wise decision here. I am happy with it, are you? Sectionworker (talk) 02:14, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think I'm "happy" with the decision; instead, my feelings are closer to "good enough for now" and "better than what we had".

Guttmacher is correct that viability isn't a bright line that's the same in every case. Some birth defects are not survivable even at full term. OTOH, the fact that individual cases vary from the median doesn't make the median stop existing. Wikipedia articles should generally care more about the median than about exceptions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:36, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

One of the things that feels off about this table is that there are a lot of "events" in the first few weeks, but the last few lines cover six months. What do you think about adding Quickening? It'd have to be a range (probably 15–20 weeks LMP). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:32, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 April 2022

This edit request to Pregnancy has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

‹ The template Edit semi-protected is being considered for merging. ›

change woman to person and use more genderless language to be more accurate to the reality that it is not only people who identify as women who experience pregnancies (trans men, transmasculine people, intersex people with uteruses, nonbinary and genderqueer people with uteruses, ect.) Coochied (talk) 03:01, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 13:31, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

@Coochied, it sounds like you would like to have this Wikipedia article not use the word women to refer to the group of people who are physically capable of being pregnant. Keeping in mind that the "bodies with body parts" model is frequently considered an offensively reductionist approach because it reduces the whole of a human experience to something like a mindless machine made of parts,[6][7] what language would you suggest? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:46, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

@Coochied talk maybe a compromise could be explicitly saying people with uteruses but then adding a non-exhaustive list of those kinds of people or saying that historically it has been people identifying as women? I still think the language of people with uteruses though potentially reductive is more inclusive in general than "women." Beatswithbea (talk) 17:27, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Comments re lead nutrition edit

I am removing this wording from the lead and bringing it here for discussion:

Nothing is more important during pregnancy than the health of both the baby and its mother. There are many ways in which a woman nourishes<ref>Basak S, Mallick R, Duttaroy AK (November 2020). "Maternal Docosahexaenoic Acid Status during Pregnancy and Its Impact on Infant Neurodevelopment". Nutrients. 12 (12): 3615. doi:10.3390/nu12123615. PMC 7759779. PMID 33255561.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)</ref her body while she is pregnant. The range of diets and supplementation<ref>de Seymour JV, Beck KL, Conlon CA (August 2019). "Nutrition in pregnancy". Obstetrics, Gynaecology & Reproductive Medicine. 29 (8): 219–224. doi:10.1016/j.ogrm.2019.04.009. ISSN 1751-7214.</ref a woman consumes whilst pregnant can change the outcome of the whole pregnancy.

Here is something re the medical site that is offered above:

Despite this evidence, absolute compliance with DHA supplementation of baby food has not been established yet. The Scientific Opinion of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Panel (2014) expressed that “…there is no convincing evidence that the addition of DHA to infant and follow-on formulae has benefits beyond infancy on any functional outcomes”. The panel’s proposal about DHA supplementation of infant formula is based on DHA’s structural and functional roles in nervous tissue and retina and its exclusive presence in the brain and retina’s normal development.

This was a student's first edit and it was done in the lead of the article. I would have thought that their instructor would have warned them against this. Thoughts? Sectionworker (talk) 18:59, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. "Nothing is more important" is an inappropriate construct for an encyclopedia. One could write "Nothing is more important during pregnancy than that the sun not go supernova" and it would be equally true. Not appropriately worded, not appropriate to the lede. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 19:19, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Could someone help me repair this editor's editing at Complications of pregnancy. Is there a way to ask the instructor to help us out as well? Sectionworker (talk) 00:46, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

This section is becoming a mess. I've moved my comment back to it's previous position, because that is who I was replying to, not to PreslyS123. According to the timestamps, PreslyS123 posted their comment at 15:38 on 27 september UTC, before the initial comment in this section. However, it is 'part' of this section inherently. I think it should be chronological order. I don't think comments should be refactored such that it looks like a person was replying to someone other than whom they replied to. I think it is less confusing than dropping it in the middle, but I will not refactor again. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 22:57, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

I added less strictly factual information to this article but more about the feeling of doctors and professionals when it comes to the importance of the first trimester and the nutrition that a mother consumes within that time as well as throughout the whole of the pregnancy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PresleyS123 (talk • contribs) 15:38, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

User:Ian (Wiki Ed) is working with this class. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:34, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Zefr (talk · contribs) is helping out at the Nutrition and pregnancy article. Sectionworker (talk) 01:22, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Changing pronouns and gendered language

Anyone with a uterus can get pregnant so it could be useful to clarify that in the article by removing words such as "woman" or she/her/hers pronouns and replacing them with gender neutral language Beatswithbea (talk) 17:22, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Let's discuss this before we make a decision. From my understanding trans women can't get pregnant but trans men can since they have a female body (unless they've had surgery). How often that happens I have no idea. I don't know much about what gay partners call themself or each other except for the way TV personalities refer to their partner and so far I've heard women refer to their partner as "my wife" and men as "my husband". Anyway, I am wondering how often "men" become pregnant? Sectionworker (talk) 17:57, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Exceedingly rarely, because transgender people are already a small minority, and the proportion of trans men who get pregnant is also smaller than for women because it would likely be a dysphoric experience in most cases.

This matter is already covered in this article under Pregnancy#Capacity and Pregnancy#Intersex and transgender people. However, replacing other text such that the article says little or nothing about women is not WP:DUE, nor does it follow WP:Reliable sources - the vast majority of which, both generally and in this article, refer simply to women. Indeed, in almost all cases only women were studied, and we must WP:STICKTOSOURCE. Most importantly, Wikipedia community consensus is that the terminology in articles, especially medical articles, is dependent upon the support of reliable sources and it is expected that editors would use the same terminology presented in said sources. Crossroads ^-talk- 20:41, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

You seem to have offered good, sound advise and I hope this will settle it. I believe that some students are using gender neutral language which perhaps fits in with their class instructions. Sectionworker (talk) 00:12, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

One of the proposals in the past has been to define terms towards the top of the article. Imagine a box, perhaps similar to {{Contains special characters}}, that says something like "This article uses the word woman to refer to any biological female human who has reached reproductive maturity, regardless of age, gender identity, gender expression, or gender role."

I don't know that it is a good proposal, but it might address the concerns about "anyone with a uterus can get pregnant" (...which claim is not strictly true, by the way). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:54, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

This seems like it would just attract more of those types of comments because it goes down that road by mentioning gender identity, but still doesn't change definitions entirely. (Also, gender expression and roles as distinct from identity are entirely irrelevant here.) As it is it's really no different from Human body#Anatomy saying The human body has four limbs (two arms and two legs) even though some people are amputees. It's clear from context that we mean as a biological standard, even though some people might be exceptions. This matter is already acknowledged in the article text well. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:21, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Imagine that you believe words like woman and mother should only be used to refer to a person with a particular gender identity. Imagine that you read this article, and it uses what you're accustomed to thinking of as an exclusively gender-specific term to describe pregnancy. You might assume that the previous editors had accidentally overlooked this and would be grateful to have someone (e.g., you) remove all of the gender-specific terms and replace them with gender-neutral terms.

But if you saw a box at the top that said something like "In this article, pregnant woman refers to anyone who's pregnant, including trans men", then you would probably not think it was just accidentally overlooked. You would stop assuming that other editors would be grateful for your corrections. You might disagree, but you would have a somewhat more accurate picture of the situation.

I do not think that this is like saying that the human body has four limbs. We're talking about a word that has historically had multiple definitions, except one (sub)culture now declares only one definition to be truly valid. We don't have people telling us that there are multiple definitions of "human body" but only one can be used from here out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:04, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

I diverged from your thought experiment at the 3rd sentence. If that was my belief and I read this article, my conclusion would be informed by the fact that texts which cut "women" out of female reproduction tend to be unpopular and controversial, and that most texts on the matter still use "woman" as a sex term, so that is probably what they did here. With a footnote, particularly zealous individuals of that sort would see that we've already made terminological concessions in that way, see an opening to push further, and could say, "they acknowledge trans men and enbies but still call them "biological female" and still use the word woman!? That is super problematic; they need to make it entirely degendered."

I've seen this time and time and time again with people who try to please such activists without fully submitting - activists are inflamed, not placated, by such moves, because doing even a little signals agreement with their premises and worldview that language must follow certain new rules, and hence vulnerability to further pressing on this point. And in general, it sets a bad precedent. Sources typically just use their terms without comment and so should we. If rando newbies or WP:Student editors make a fuss, we revert if necessary and inform them of how we do things around here. Crossroads ^-talk- 17:25, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Re: the fact that texts which cut "women" out of female reproduction tend to be unpopular and controversial - this "fact" is unsubstantiated, and is not true of all places and times - as has been pointed out to you before.

Otherwise, I have seldom if ever seen such a collection of straw persons (and slipperies slope) assembled in one Talk page comment (completely devoid of supporting evidence), and by someone who has insisted in other contexts that WP:OR policy applies to Talk pages. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Newimpartial (talk) 20:07, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Imagine that you believe words like woman and mother should only be used to refer to a person with a particular gender identity. Imagine that you read this article, and it uses what you're accustomed to thinking of as an exclusively gender-specific term to describe pregnancy. You might assume that the previous editors had accidentally overlooked this and would be grateful to have someone (e.g., you) remove all of the gender-specific terms and replace them with gender-neutral terms.

If you're a troll. Lot of trolls don't think of themselves as trolls, but it's actions that counts. Anybody reading this article knows what is meant. So what's the problem we're trying to solve here? Nobody is going to be like "Wait... what? It says women get pregnant... I don't understand... now I'm all confused about what pregnancy is... I thought it had something to do with uterus and stuff, and lot of men have uteri, so now I don't know what it is? Maybe humans clone...???" Come on. Anybody putting in gender-neutral terms to "fix" this "mistake" is just woke virtue signalling and pushing a political point. We get this a lot -- people globally changing "color" to "colour" to "fix the spelling mistake" and pretend they can't understand why you're objecting, or whatever. Somebody could go thru this article and change "fetus" to "preborn baby" or "offspring" to "child" (which after all that article says "Human offspring are referred to as children") or whatever. This is common enough thing, and the procedure well established: revert and warn. Revert and warn. There's a limit to how much we can stop people from being like this. Revert and warn.

It's not really our job to gruntle some small number of woke scolds, regardless of how virtuous it makes us feel. Our readers are not the same demographic as our editors. We're trying to connect with the reader, not gaze into our own navels. Hmph.

(And FWIW If you've spent any time around actual real life transexual persons, you will find that they overwhelmingly are not professional victims or professional scolds and are not concerned with social justice warfare and are just trying to fix their gender dysphoria (which is hard work) and fit in in the regular world, and are not represented by people who go around making issues of stuff like this. So anybody who does is doing it on their own dime.) Herostratus (talk) 05:02, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm starting to go through this and the Childbirth article to trim student additions that they and their instructors felt we needed so they could get a good grade for their class work. However, since they didn't bother to read linked articles or other literture they tend to bloat their area of limited knowledge. A few days ago, I trimmed something way back and wanted to change person to woman when I did my changes: "If a pregnant person enters preterm labor, delivery can be delayed by giving medications called tocolytics." I'd still like it changed but am not comfortable doing it. However, if the article did have a boxed message per Waid's suggestion I could change it to "woman" and feel perfectly comfortable about it. Without the box, how would I defend my change to woman if it was challenged? Sectionworker (talk) 14:37, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Do you think some sort of WP:Editnotice would be useful here? I mean something like the note that shows up when you try to edit Fascism, or the one on Keiynan Lonsdale telling people not to change all the pronouns to "tree". gnu 57 16:02, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Sectionworker: All is now handled at the Childbirth article :). There are numerous ways to defend such a change, including (1) consistency with the rest of the article, (2) consistency with the cited sources (WP:STICKTOSOURCE), (3) consistency with MEDRS on the topic in general, (4) obeying Wikipedia community consensus at the Village Pump, (5) use of other points raised in the Village Pump discussion, or (6) we don't use politically charged phrases that are not mainstream and widely accepted per WP:IMPARTIAL. Any of these can be used as needed. This often is a result of WP:Student editing, so don't be afraid to link that student editing page to show that cleanup from such newbies is necessary (often it is not obvious that they are newbies because all their user pages are created).

And Herostratus: yes. FWIW I've seen numerous trans men complain online that they hate being reminded of any capacity for menstruation and pregnancy they have. Not surprising by my perspective. The push comes in large part from self-proclaimed cisgender "allies" and from professional faultfinders like parts of the multibillion dollar DEI industry. Crossroads ^-talk- 16:17, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Nice work and thanks at the Childbirth article. :) From now on it will be "stylistic and other fixes to match sources and rest of article" for me. However, we will need one or more page watchers to keep up with this catch as catch can method. Right? Sectionworker (talk) 20:02, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

@Herostratus, I don't think you're right. Certainly at "the encyclopedia anyone can edit", there will be a few trolls and a few scolds (both "woke" and "anti-woke" types) and many other types of contributors whose contributions might be less than optimally helpful.

But imagine that your actual, real-world non-binary friend is pregnant, and you want that real human to be able to read an article about pregnancy that doesn't feel like it's blaring "you're a real woman now!!!!!!1!!!" in every other paragraph. An article, in fact, that would really connect with that particular reader – exactly what you said was the goal.

Trolls try to stir up conflict for the fun of it. That's why the advice in Troll Management 101 is Wikipedia:Deny recognition: Do not let them see your reaction. Be utterly, boringly bot-like while you revert, block, and ignore them. Do not let them have fun.

By contrast, making an article help a real person (or a real group of people) who might actually read this article is not the same as stirring up conflict for the fun of it. The result might be conflict, but that's an unwanted, accidental side effect. Nobody's laughing about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes User:WhatamIdoing I get your point. But clever trolls are not penis vandals and they know all the tricks for pretending to be sincere people trying to "fix errors" or whatever. You cannot tell them apart. If we have five people come here and change everything to nongendered, at least one of them is a troll, probably. They know what buttons to push and how to to annoy the most people and how to make it last longer. Can't tell, don't know, don't care -- effect is the same. When you are sincerely doing stuff that is indistinguishable from trolling, you might want to reconsider your path. But it's semantics, terms don't matter that much.

And also, I mean anyone who is truly and genuinely troubled or hurt or confused by gendered language should probably not read the Wikipedia or other mainstream works. There's a limit to how much we can help people who for ideological or religious or cultural or personal reasons are going to be genuinely outraged or traumatized by reading our encyclopedia.

But as to "By contrast, making an article help a real person (or a real group of people)..." Well as to effect on the real world, I'm a Social Democrat, and I'm concerned with trying to prevent America from becoming a fascist dictatorship. And this stuff is killing us. People are kinda sorta OK with gay people (which is a big win for decency). Beyond that, nonbinary or genderqueer whatever, not so much, and it is a major point that people talk about when they decide to vote for fascists. We have to hold the suburbs of Milwaukee, Detroit, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and this stuff isn't helping. Is that right or fair? No, it isn't. But believe me, if America goes fascist, nonbinary people will be worrying less about gendered language and more about where to find an attic to hide in. Herostratus (talk) 20:01, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Just what are you trying to argue? That we should remove or gendered language from the article? Because that's not going to happen. Also, WP:SOAPBOX (and I propose closing tis discussion) --SinoDevonian (talk) 11:11, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

I can't imagine why we'd like to close an excellent discussion. Right now I'm tending towards using "woman" language as usual and put an information box at the beginning of the article per Waid's suggestion. Sectionworker (talk) 15:48, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Notwithstanding my rant above, How about a note pointer in the text -- you know, like [A] -- pointing to a brief footnote that says "Woman should be taken to include anyone capable of getting pregnant, regardless of gender identification" or something. I'd be OK with this as a compromise. Herostratus (talk) 20:17, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

No, this would be WP:UNDUE emphasis on gender identity. This matter is already in the article but lower where it belongs. Given the large agreement here to keep the terminology the same I don't see any reason to add in such a note - it is making concessions for no reason. It will not stop trolls and crusaders from saying it's still inappropriate and trying "degender" the article - as I already explained, it has a high likelihood of spurring them on more because they already see this concession and they'll call it misgendering or something to leverage it further. Activists are inflamed, not placated, by such moves, because doing even a little signals agreement with their premises and worldview of what words mean, and hence vulnerability to further pressing on this point. And it creates a very concerning precedent - if this is put here, it will be seized on and used to argue that we need to add similar undue gender identity acknowledgements across up to thousands of articles that discuss sexed anatomy. The vast majority of sources do not do this and this is poor writing.

It could also constitute WP:OR as most of the sources cited lower in the article for specific facts about pregnancy did not study trans men etc. and mention things that could plausibly be affected by the hormones they usually take.

With regard to WAID's thought experiment above, frankly it's an appeal to emotion. And it cuts other ways. Suppose I have a friend who's a devout Christian and is deeply offended by those articles of ours that contain sexually explicit illustrations. She feels that it's blaring immorality and impure thoughts to everyone, even children! And another friend is a devout Muslim, who is deeply hurt by our lack of Islamic honorifics when referring to Allah, Muhammad, and so on. She's already a member of a marginalized minority by being Muslim in the West, and now this disrespect to her sacred beliefs when it would be such a small thing! Maybe we should add a footnote to every article related to Islam explaining our writing style? Of course we don't do that. And we don't add footnotes justifying explicit pictures either. We do not mar articles with such obvious ideological concessions to every religious and philosophical POV out there. We just write, in normal English, like the sources we're citing do.

As Herostratus said earlier, it's not our job to please a small number of scolds; we just revert and warn. There are numerous ways people can push POVs with language. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:26, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, this was added to the childbirth last June: " where one or more babies exits the birthing parent by passing through the vagina". Can you believe it? Have we turned into robots or what? And yet I've always been a very strong supporter of group consensus and with no one else objecting I left what I felt was objectionable language. I am elderly and I thought perhaps it was just me. I really would like to see Waid's box at the top of that article even though I also really do appreciate all of the excellent feedback for not including it. Sectionworker (talk) 02:09, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi everyone. Sectionworker asked me on my talk page if I'd like to comment here. As WhatamIdoing has said somewhere (I can't remember where), all the ways of solving the gender-inclusiveness problem have problems. Beatswithbea correctly noted that you don't have to be a woman to get pregnant, however erasing the word "woman" everywhere has the problem of erasing women, and many people find "person with a uterus" to be dehumanizing. WhatamIdoing's idea of a box at the top of the article addresses the problem that some people are uncomfortable with the term "woman", but as Crossroads points out, Wikipedia articles have a long tradition of being free of this kind of statement even when we know an article will make some people uncomfortable.

Some very smart people at Wikipedia have spent hours and hours trying to solve this problem by drafting style guidance for gender inclusivity, and (sorry to sound like a broken record but) no great solution has been found. FWIW, luckily for us the Pregnancy article has a Terminology section in which WhatamIdoing's proposed text could fit nicely, and that could be a good compromise. As for edits that give the reader the impression that the article is trying to avoid saying "woman", I'd strenuously object to that. Take care, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:05, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the great summary Clayoquot. I've spent a lot of time over the years ( user:Gandydancer ) working on these and the breastfeeding article and of late I've seen a lot of students come and go (and never to return). (Note that the above student that I quoted felt that she should link baby three quarters of the way into the childbirth article. And then her instructor did not read her work before grading it...I guess...) So that is the level of what we can expect to be working with as these articles tend to be targeted more and more by students. Anyway, thinking about our reader's feelings is all fine and dandy but an easy way for our editors to handle this problem is just as important. Since Wikipedia uses consensus to handle controversial editing problems and it appears that no consensus is expected to be reached in the for-seeable future, I'd like to see a note put in these three articles that shows that until consensus has been reached we will use "woman", etc., in our articles. That gives our editors something that they can use when they change "person", for example, to woman without arguing about it. I would have preferred it at the top of the page but in an article terms section would do if that is the group decision. Sectionworker (talk) 19:00, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate your work on these articles. Regarding consensus, though, we do already have explicit consensus here, as well as implicit consensus across our numerous articles that discuss sex differences. When these odd turns of phrase enter articles, it's almost always student editors or other random newbies with less than 10 edits. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:28, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

We do not have any consensus that the choice of wording can't be made transparent to readers and editors.

We make similar statements in other articles, e.g., "All dates in this article are in the New Style Gregorian calendar", "Unless otherwise noted, dates in this article follow the Julian calendar", "The term email address in this article refers to...", "The figure used in this article does not include...", "In this article, both family name and surname mean the patrilineal surname...", "in this article, feeling is used as a technical term which means...", "In this article, the series will be referred to as...". Although gender-related content is a hot-button political issue for some people, I don't really see any policy-related difference between writing that "The term email address in this article refers to..." and writing that "The term woman in this article refers to...". WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:13, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Contrary to the claim made multiple times by one editor above, we are not required to use the words, terminology or language of our sources. We are in fact required by policy and copyright law to very much write in our own words. Doing so is not original research. The so-called "Wikipedia consensus" quoted above was a proposal by newbie editor that all sex-specific articles should be entirely gender neutral, which received a snowball "no" response from a handful of editors before being closed by an admin who wrote something about terminology that isn't true. Mistakes happen. It is best if things that aren't true don't keep getting repeated as though they are, especially when this has been pointed out many times already. Wikipedia editors routinely use words that are different to our sources, and explain things to our general readers that some of our sources assume their expert audience already knows. In medical articles we routinely avoid jargon terms or explain such terms in simpler language that did not appear in the source. We routinely avoid calling people with medical conditions, or who are pregnant, say, "patients", unlike our sources. If our sources are in a foreign language, we don't suddenly start writing in French. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch exists because we want to avoid words that are biased or editorialising or cliched or vague, even if our sources do.

This issue is an area of ongoing culture wars and there is as much a lack of consensus on Wikipedia as there is a lack of consensus in the real world.

Please note that this area is subject to discretionary sanctions and using this talk page to soapbox (as multiple posts above do) is ill advised. -- Colin°^Talk 11:46, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Crossroads, you state, "we do already have explicit consensus" but looking at that AfC it is obviously not adequate for one to come to a conclusion, based on that, that there is a WP consensus on what we are discussing here. As responsible editors I see no reason to hesitate to add an info box at these three articles. It would be fair to our hard-working editors and to our readers of all genders because it would show our cisgender readers that times they are a-changin', and show our transgender readers that we take their needs seriously as well. Sectionworker (talk) 16:41, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

I think the text (in green) proposed by WAID at 23:54, 18 September 2022, could be helpful. I think there is a danger it solidifies the cisnormative language used throughout the article (that someone who is pregnant but is not a "woman" is abnormal and less valid and that it is fine to write as though you don't exist). Furthermore, it puts into Wikipedia's voice the gender critical view that trans men and non-binary people who were assigned female at birth, are actually "women", and that's the word we are going to use to describe you. But it does at least document the status quo in the article text right now. I have my doubts that editors who want to "fix" these flaws will notice a little comment tagged onto the end of the info box. Whereas other readers will read that comment and might be provoked to do something they wouldn't otherwise.

Maybe it would be better to have an edit notice. The advantage of that is we can mention Wikipedia. We can say just what WAID proposed but we can also say that many editors are not happy about this but have so far failed to reach a consensus on how to fix it. And it could then suggest editors discuss rather than leap in with their own fixes that are only going to get reverted. -- Colin°^Talk 18:27, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

I'd like to see what Waid has to say about this. BTW, I just spoke with my daughter a few minutes ago and she said that she has two transgender friends--one wants to be called "woman", etc., and the other is adamant that they want to be called "they", etc. In other words, even in the community things are still in flux. Sectionworker (talk) 20:02, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

I prefer the idea of putting this (type of) sentence in an edit notice instead of putting it in the article. I would rather start with the smallest option.

Another sentence I think nearly all editors could agree on is this: "The word woman should neither be excised completely from the article, nor forced into every paragraph." WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:52, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

BTW, you say, "And it could then suggest editors discuss rather than leap in with their own fixes that are only going to get reverted". Oh Goody, we get to talk about it forever and forever until everybody goes crazy. Is that right? Sectionworker (talk) 22:19, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

And this is a perfect illustration of why the proposed note will not satisfy anyone who thinks using "woman" in the sense of female sex is "cisnormative" and acts like trans people "don't exist". That we don't plagiarize our sources and obviously don't write in foreign languages is a total red herring to the fact that there is no policy-based justification whatsoever for taking sources about "women" and changing them to be about "people with uteruses", nor for writing about a topic which sources speak about overwhelmingly with "women" and instead using terminology found in only a tiny minority of sources. As for any edit notice, it is not true that "many editors are not happy about this"; such is POV in favor of changing wording. Since we're not really having much of a problem with people trying to change the terminology, I don't see a need for an edit notice at all, but if done it would need to be neutrally written.

If editors read the comments in this discussion, it will become clear that many commenters were against this terminology in general, not merely a proposal to make it the only one. The closure was accurate, and represents what happened when such wording was presented to the wider Wikipedia community. There is no counter-consensus anywhere. As for "culture wars", it's pretty obvious that was started by those seeking to overthrow existing standard language used by sources; let's not have a false balance here. As for "lack of consensus in the real world", if one looks at WP:MEDRS about pregnancy, there actually is what we on Wikipedia would call a strong consensus about what terminology to use - it's just not a consensus that language revolutionaries will like.

As for "it would show our cisgender readers that times they are a-changin'", that is not what Wikipedia is for, per WP:NOTADVOCACY and WP:RGW.

Editors sympathetic to "people with uteruses" and the like are unable to explain why we shouldn't allow articles to be rewritten with "womxn" in whole or in part, or why we can't allow people to put "(PBUH)" after mentioning Muhammad, without arguing against the very turns of phrase they seek to introduce. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:38, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

That last paragraph, Crossroads, represents the same mixture of caricature and unsubstantiated (WP:OR) assertion that I have come to expect from you on GENSEX topics. Please don't do that. Newimpartial (talk) 23:21, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

This is part of "Woman's Health" so it would be very odd to try to change the common and obvious term (woman) to something else to reflect the very small percentage of transgender men who get pregnant. Additionally, Wikipedia should trail the crowd, not try to push the crowd forward. We are not the engine of change, we are the caboose. Springee (talk) 22:41, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Crossroads does not aspire to be the caboose; he aspires to be a kind of ontological anchor that will prevent the train from moving forward, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 23:20, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Newimpartial, please do not attack the motives of other editors even if it's just your opinion. Springee (talk) 23:47, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

~~When an editor still sees that AfC and the closing as a good foundation for this discussion after all this time I have to agree.~~ Sectionworker (talk) 23:43, 26 September 2022 (UTC) strike per above edit.Sectionworker (talk) 23:53, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Springee, I see this "Wikipedia should trail" argument from time to time, though usually more assertively than that. I wish editors would just write "I am a conservative when it comes to language change, and wish Wikipedia was too", rather than try to assert their conservatism as though there was something fundamental about Wikipedia which meant language conservatism was a core policy. The fact that Wikipedia is the encyclopaedia anyone can edit means Wikipedia articles will naturally express a variety of contemporary writing styles. The population of actual and potential, old and new editors will include some who naturally wish to write in a manner that is trans-inclusive. That you may be old-school, shall we say, is just you, not actually Wikipedia. We don't sit waiting for the Daily Mail and Tucker Carlson to adopt language.

There are many people (and indeed the law in some countries) who regard midwifery as a "Women's job". In the UK only 0.4% of midwives are men[8]. At yet midwife uses gender neutral language rather than, as you put it, "the common and obvious term". Our articles on the US President consider the position gender neutral when evidence shows it has always been a man. Does anyone rant that this is activist nonsense by those who campaign for midwifery gender equality or for a female president? So, percentages and perceptions of historical sex/gender roles only takes us so far. On the other hand, the strong association of pregnancy with womanhood (unlike, say, at cervical cancer) means this article has a tighter bond with that word. I think actually, the article is overly medical and could do with more on social aspects of pregnancy which would naturally touch on gender roles and perceptions, etc.

While I don't think the proposal, which would appear to want women/she/her to be replaced with a neutral/inclusive term, is going to be accepted any time soon, at the moment the article treats transgender and non-binary people as an exceptional abnormal case. I think somewhere in the lead explaining that not everyone who can get pregnant has the gender "woman" would help not only in documenting reality but may relieve the pressure somewhat to make a more radical change.

Earlier someone wrote "If rando newbies or WP:Student editors make a fuss, we revert if necessary and inform them of how we do things around here". This is one of the most hostile and bullying statements I've read in a while. Consider that the proposing editor, a student, made two short suggestions for change, appears to have accepted it isn't going to happen, didn't edit the article, certainly didn't edit war. But the subsequent discussion above is filled with conservatist activist soapboxing and misleading claims about so called consensus or policy. I wonder, quite, who are making the fuss and whether this student is more an example to some here than we are to them. -- Colin°^Talk 09:17, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

The fact that people may try to write in a variety of styles does not imply that we should allow that. If it did, we would have no need of the MOS. When people want to write with PBUH or womxn, we would just have to shrug and say, 'well, we accept a variety of contemporary writing styles because anyone can edit'.

There's a huge difference between conservatism - advocating to keep a past style when the general language and most sources have moved on - and a free-for-all where we allow people to write with all sorts of neologistic words and phrases that have very little presence in reliable sources. Wikipedia is most certainly not in the "progressive" vanguard of language change, and as noted, consistent style is part of our rules already. Sticking to the style found in the overwhelming majority of RS can in no way be compared to holding out for Tucker Carlson. Trying to change articles to write like a tiny minority of sources do and unlike the sources being cited, no matter how much someone sincerely thinks this is an improvement, does constitute an attempt to change the language, and hence advocacy. And like it or not, WP:NOTADVOCACY is policy. I find it ironic you complain about "conservatist activists" in this discussion, yet seemingly don't think basically arguing 'anything goes' for style and making a political argument - equating mainstream sources and standard English with the political term "conservatism" - is itself a form of activism.

Midwifery and the position of the President of the United States is not a relevant comparison here because neither of those things are inherently linked to sex. Moreover, when reliable sources talk about those things, they almost always do use gender-neutral terms.

As for the quote you are mischaracterizing: yes, if someone makes a bad edit, they get reverted. And we would of course explain why - it would be "hostile" to revert without explanation. The discussion above isn't people ganging up on the OP; it's between experienced editors. It is completely inappropriate for you to make multiple long comments but declare replies to be "soapboxing". Others have every right to reply to comments made. Crossroads ^-talk- 16:01, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Re: if someone makes a bad edit, they get reverted. And we would of course explain why - Crossroads, the fact is that you have not restricted your reverts in this domain to "bad edits" nor have you limited your comments to explaining actual consensus. Need I remind you of the times when you reverted to restore BOLD edits by now topic-banned editor Maneesh, including edits that were not supported by the actual sources in use in the articles in question (though they were supported by your own impressions - largely unsupported by evidence - about what you believe to be generalizable from a corpus of sources that seems to exist only in your own mind).

You have explained in previous discussions why you believe that advocacy on behalf of an imagined (past) status quo of language use isn't advocacy while accurate depiction of how recent, reliable sources discuss specific topics is advocacy, but said argument didn't make sense to me the first time and still doesn't make sense to me now. What does seem clear is that said argument does not actually have consensus, and your pointing back to one vanishingly brief discussion in which an extreme proposal (to remove all gendered language) was rejected, doesn't document any consensus against the more localized and moderate proposals that editors are actually discussing now. Newimpartial (talk) 17:22, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

This is personal opinion and attempts to poison the well with guilt by association tactics (among others). WP:FOC please. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:45, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Pointing out that another editor has implied that consensus exists, when it does not, is in the first instance about content not the contributor. Only if presented to a forum dealing with behavioral issues would it begin to concern the contributor as such. Newimpartial (talk) 22:46, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

I think, Newimpartial, you strayed a bit too much in to talking about comments made elsewhere. By all means respond to what Crossroads said here (though please bear in mind Brandolini's law and restrain yourself), but it is best to keep remembering we're on an article talk page, not a general forum about language on Wikipedia. Crossroads, you haven't been commenting on the content (actual article text or suggestions to change it) for quite some time now, in this discussion, and have made a number of attacks on "editors" you disagree with, rather than actually proposing something. Like your many accusations of advocacy, despite being the biggest loudest advocate on this page, I caution you to read your own words to see if they apply to yourself. -- Colin°^Talk 07:30, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Crossroads, I think you have conflated Conservatism (slow change with respect for traditions) with Reactionary (trying to go back to the past when the world has moved on). "Advocating to keep a past style when the general language and most sources have moved on" is an example of being reactionary, not an example of being conservative. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

"Advocating to keep a past style when the general language and most sources have moved on" - are you suggesting that the general language and most sources no longer use the word "woman", except extremely rarely? That appears to be what you are suggesting, but you'll have to provide some evidence to support that remarkable claim. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 21:30, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I suggest here only that Crossroads shouldn't define the word conservatism as "advocating to keep a past style when the general language and most sources have moved on". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:50, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

About the kind of thinking reflected in comments like this one: those things are inherently linked to sex

I've been thinking recently that these discussions might be helped by a clear statement at the start that says something like "Science can't prove that the One True™ Word for biological female is spelled w-o-m-a-n. Science also can't prove whether the One True™ Meaning of the word woman is – or isn't – based exclusively on gender identity. The meanings of words are ever-changing, culturally dependent social constructs. The meanings of words are not immutable or objective scientific facts."

Yes, pregnancy is inherently linked to anatomical sex.

No, the word woman is not inherently linked to anatomical sex. The word woman has multiple meanings. Only one of those meanings aligns with biological sex. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:23, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

And what word, overwhelmingly - culturally, historically, biologically, colloquially, in science and medical sources, is used to describe that anatomical sex that is capable of pregnancy? Does the contention that the word woman has multiple meanings (this is debateable) change the biological fact that only females - again, overwhelmingly referred to as women - can experience pregnancy? Please provide specific examples of how the word woman means something other than those of the biological female sex. And explain how those meanings directly dispute or negate the use of 'woman' to describe a person who is pregnant? cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 23:01, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

wikt:woman#Noun and Merriam–Webster have six definitions for woman. OED has eight for woman and girl and seven for mother, counting only those uses that are not completely irrelevant (such as Pre-ferment, which is called mother) – including definitions such as "An effeminate homosexual man; one who acts as a mentor to a younger man".

The word woman is routinely used to describe people who are biologically incapable of pregnancy, e.g., post-menopausal women, women who have had a hysterectomy, genetic males with Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome and other intersex people, people who look female regardless of whether they are, etc.

I agree that woman is a common name for the subset of humans who are capable of being pregnant. Can you agree that it is not a precise and specific name for this group, as it includes people who aren't? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:21, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the examples. But suggesting that the word woman describes a "subset" is a serious mischaracterization. The word woman describes a superset of people. Certainly, one can't argue that there are not nuances involved, but they are inclusive meanings - indeed, just as you wrote, perhaps inadvertently while describing this - post-menopausal women, women who have had a hysterectomy. Why would you write it this way? Because it is overtly common parlance, understood around the world, and describes the majority of those we call...well, obviously, women.

I support the article acknowledging that there are women who cannot conceive, either due to normal biological processes, disease, etc. as it is relevant to the subject matter - and the article already does that, at Pregnancy#Capacity. I have no problem with acknowledgement of the extraordinarily small human population who have male or female biology but believe they are, or identify as the opposite sex, or however you wish to address it. And the article does so, also at Pregnancy#Capacity, wherein there are links to articles here on wikipedia specifically addressing this matter, at trans people and pregnancy, and at Pregnancy#Intersex and transgender people. Because the vast majority of those people who experience Pregnancy are women, it is not just unsupported by sources, it goes against simplicity and common use to minimize the characterization women with gender neutral terms or overstate the frequency with which non-women experience pregnancy.

A good example of this proportionality can be found at Eye color. There is coverage of the small number of people who have rare eye colors or Heterochromia iridum. But the article does not go out of its way to address these rarities in the lead, or go into great detail about these outliers -which are not diseases - instead directing readers to the articles that address them in more detail, which is as it should be.

I should not have to say this, but because this is such a contentious and politicized topic: I respect and have empathy for transgender people. I respect and have empathy for everyone, regardless of who they are or how they their life, so long as it doesn't harm how other people live their lives, and transgender people do not harm other people by who they are or their way of life. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 22:01, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

I just want to raise the question here of what counts as extraordinarily small. The most recent Canadian census, for example, recorded 0.3% of the total Canadian population as transgender, 0.7% of the population 15-34 years of age. The latter proportion is more than one-third the number of Inuit that census recorded as a proportion of population, and more than one-half the proportion of Canadians living in Canada's Yukon territory - neither of these would be regarded as an "extraordinarily small" proportion here, I don't believe. So I'm not sure exactly where that "extraordinary" line comes in.

As far as hysterectomies are concerned, women get them and non-women also get them. And we can expect that even if the proportion of the latter is currently "extraordinarily small", it is likely to increase at least in jurisdictions where rates of transgender identity are increasing and where gender-affirming surgery is available. I'm not suggesting that Wikipedia should write for the future, but writing based on the recent, reliable sources is much to be desired. Newimpartial (talk) 22:36, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Percentages of population that are less than 1% I think can reasonably be characterized colloquially as extraordinarily small. Even in densely populated San Francisco, the transgender population is still estimated at less than 1%, notwithstanding the real difficulties inherent in trying to count subpopulations that are known to be 'under-reported' for lack of a better term [9](and that figure is four years out of date, a not-insignificant lag on this matter). Beyond that, the proportion of transgender persons who become pregnant within that cohort is unknown, but certainly represents yet another smaller subset. One can parse populations down to countless subsets, but it's not a reasonable mechanism, particularly since this article is about pregnancy in se, we are discussing the broadest aspect inherently. That said, I think it (the Canadian figures) would be noteworthy/of interest in the Transgender pregnancy article. And again, transgender pregnancy is described and linked to in this article, certainly proportional to the prevalence of the phenomenon (again, for lack of a better characterization). cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 23:38, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

This is WP:OR on my part, but the percentage of AFAB trans and nonbinary people in the US who have had at least one child by their early 30s appears to be a little less than one-third the percentage of cis women at the same age who have done so. Newimpartial (talk) 00:01, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

No, reactionism would be wanting to revert our style to an earlier time from which we have moved on. Conservatism would still be wanting to keep a style that most sources have moved away from. But really, these political concepts do not map well to editing Wikipedia. Calling a position 'conservative' could - whether intentional or not - serve as a gambit to discredit it in the face of Wikipedia's mostly liberal editor base. It's not any more conservative than our WP:NOTADVOCACY, MOS:CAPS, and WP:V policies. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:53, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I think we've got a little bogged down because of some of the untrue things said about consensus or policy or what Wikipedia is, and we could argue about those endlessly and get nowhere. What limited consensus exists is that attempting to make the article entirely gender neutral and entirely remove the word "woman" was rejected and would require a new RFC proposal, and there's really no evidence that the response would be any different. So I wonder if it would be useful if editors could briefly explain in their own words and opinions whether the article as it stands is OK and why or why not. And (I'm looking at Crossroads in particular) nobody is allowed to say "The article uses these words because our sources do". Own the words on this page. Imagine that they were words you chose and wrote last year and are now re-reading today. I'm asking if you are happy about them? You, not the authors of our sources, and not your imagination of what other people might think. Are you happy with them, or not. And why.

For background I'll give some definitions and history:

Sexist Prejudice or discrimination based on sex, especially discrimination against women. Behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex.
Heteronormativity - A discourse based on assumption that heterosexuality is the norm and privileges this over any other form of sexual orientation.
Cisnormativity - A discourse based on assumption that cisgender is the norm and privileges this over any other form of gender identity.

In the past (and in many countries today) deviance from heterosexuality was viewed as illegal, immoral, perverted, and those who do so considered a danger to children and feared for sexual assault. Medically, those who deviated from heterosexuality were considered to be mentally ill and treatment focused on conversion to "normal healthy sexuality" and was sometimes forcibly applied. Writing and teaching supporting deviance from heterosexuality has been banned, remains banned and is rumoured to once again be banned in some countries. And we are all aware of shifts in language concerning sexism.

Ok. I'll go first.

I'm not happy with the language used in this article. I think pregnancy as written today is cisnormative, and that is a problem. We no longer write assuming we can call midwives "she" or assuming US presidents will be a "he", even though there are virtually no exceptions to the former and zero exceptions to the later. Yet this article assumes that everyone who can get pregnant identifies as "woman". We can't just excuse it: idea that one could post a banner/footnote saying "This article uses "he" to refer to all people, regardless of sex or gender" sounds ridiculous. The assumption that "woman" is entirely congruous with "has two X chromosomes and a uterus" aligns Wikipedia with the views of gender critical activists, who believe that trans men are actually women and non-binary people who are were assigned female at birth are still actually women. However, there is more to "pregnancy" than just a set of bodily processes. It is the means of producing new life and tightly bound in society with ideas of what it means to be a woman or female. I think this social aspect of pregnancy is neglected in the article. I don't think the article can or should be entirely gender neutral, but I do think we should acknowledge trans pregnancy in the lead. And we should be conscious that "woman" excludes some people who can become, or are or who have been pregnant, and so continue to endeavour to find ways to resolve that problem (which isn't easy). -- Colin°^Talk 08:43, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

I find it ironic that you earlier accused others of activist WP:SOAPBOXING, but are now going on at length about heteronormativity, saying the article is "cisnormative", and accusing a use of "woman" that matches the vast majority of MEDRS, dictionaries, and medical dictionaries of "aligning" with gender critical activists. Are these sources also aligning themselves with gender critical activists? These are clearly WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS arguments. The wording on this page has been explained at great length already; nobody is obligated to WP:SATISFY you. The problem you have is with the English language and the vast majority of reliable sources. If and when 'woman is only a word for a gender identity, and the female sex should only be described as body parts or as "people"' catches on as the norm, feel free to raise it again. Here in 2022, even though some are clearly unhappy about it, that clearly has not happened.

Again, I see no evidence or reason to think we ever wrote about midwives or hypothetical US presidents with only she or he respectively, and in any case those are not inherently sex-linked and the vast majority of sources do not do that, so it makes sense that we wouldn't either. This comparison is irrelevant. If a few sources started using a neopronoun for hypothetical non-specific persons, we wouldn't do that either. And no, this is not WP:DUE in the lead. Based on the arguments above this would clearly end up as a foot in the door enabling more language-change activism down the road. We do not add shout-outs to specific exceptional subgroups to leads of articles. Human body describes humans as having "arms and legs, hands and feet". Leads of articles on hand and foot do not contain asides about how some people lack part or all of these appendages. Is this ableist or able-normative? When I've asked you this question before all I got was a claim that such a comparison is offensive, even though there is nothing wrong with being disabled - the point here is about bodies that differ from what is biologically typical. This obviously does not actually answer the question. Crossroads ^-talk- 16:52, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

So now, according to your chosen comparison, the relevant fact about trans people is that our bodies lack part or all of certain appendages? No, there is nothing wrong with people lacking appendages, but this is a terrible frame for you to choose in discussing the relationship between anatomy and gender identity, IMO. What is relevant to this article is that many people who are not women in terms of their identity and everyday language can and do become pregnant, and many recent, reliable sources do acknowledge this in spite of your protestations to the contrary.Newimpartial (talk) 17:02, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Colin, you say "However, there is more to "pregnancy" than just a set of bodily processes. It is the means of producing new life and tightly bound in society with ideas of what it means to be a woman or female. I think this social aspect of pregnancy is neglected in the article." Could you explain what you mean here? To avoid getting too much off track for this section you could start a new heading for your thoughts. Sectionworker (talk) 21:42, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

I've started a section below. I'm really not the best person to take that further than just an observation. -- Colin°^Talk 09:35, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm not clear why Crossroads thinks it is not allowed to describe the problems with the article (that it is cisnormative) and to give an analogy with our changed attitudes wrt sexuality and sexism. When I wrote "We no longer write [in a sexist manner]" I hope it was astoundingly clear I was referring to a shift in language that hugely predates Wikipedia's existence, indeed predates the Web. And this really is the problem I'm having here. That your responses exponentially increase the amount of wrong stuff on this page. And like Newimpartial, I'm tired of the offensive analogy with people missing body parts, or your continued statements that people who are trans are mentally ill. Crossroads, I'm going to avoid responding to you because I don't actually think you are here to find a consensus solution to the problem. -- Colin°^Talk 09:48, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

There's not even consensus that there is a "problem". Stop falsely representing my comments, such as by claiming I've called trans people "mentally ill". Both that and calling other viewpoints "cisnormative" and 'aligning with gender critical activists' has a chilling effect on editors of other viewpoints and equates them with hateful bigotry. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:39, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't see why we wouldn't follow the volume of sources that talk about pregnancy using female and women as synonyms. I can certainly see how females who have identify as women might feel that removing "women" from the article would be taking away something that was a serious part of their identity. Women who have had fertility issues are often say as much. But beyond that, it seems we are doing this not because we are following the sources but because a some editors are pushing for this sort of change. Again, Wikipedia is supposed to follow the sources and that includes in changes like this. Britannica seems fine talking about pregnancy in terms of women, why wouldn't we follow that lead? Springee (talk) 02:31, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Springee, to be clear, the discussion has moved on from anyone seriously suggesting 'removing "women" from the article' and frankly, continued claims that this is what the argument is about are deeply unhelpful. There is no policy or practice, and never has been, that "Wikipedia is supposed to follow the sources" in terms of what words we use to describe things. I was attempting, with my post, to move us all beyond having to keep getting dragged back to untruths like this. Please can you move on from arguing on that basis, because repeating it won't make it so. -- Colin°^Talk 09:07, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Has the discussion moved on? I've seen arguments against using "woman" for the female sex in very recent comments.

And actually, there has long been both policy and practice that Wikipedia follows the sources in stylistic matters. For example, at MOS:CAPS: Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. And MOS:SLASH: to indicate regular defined yearly periods that do not coincide with calendar years...if that is the convention used in reliable sources. And MOS:DIACRITICS: The use of diacritics (such as accent marks) for foreign words is neither encouraged nor discouraged; their usage depends on whether they appear in verifiable reliable sources in English, and on the constraints imposed by specialized Wikipedia guidelines....For a foreign name, phrase, or word, adopt the spelling most commonly used in English-language reliable sources, including but not limited to those already cited in the article. These were easily found by me. I've been involved in recent MOS discussions, and what RS do in a given situation is a constant mention.

The only other logical possibilities are it's a free-for-all (why even have a MOS in that case?) and adopt a style found in a small minority of reliable sources - which immediately raises the question of why Wikipedia thinks it knows better than all those other sources. So it's clear why we do in fact regularly go with the majority of reliable sources. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:39, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I'll respond to this, because it is a misconception that you are not alone in sharing. Did you notice, Crossroads, that none of the things you mentioned were "what words we used to describe things". They are all spelling or punctuation or accent marks. In other words, superficial arbitrary noise that aren't important in the grand scheme of things. On other hand, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Writing for the wrong audience has a whole section on how our sources, writing for health professionals or to patients, use words and language that we do not want to use, writing for our general audience. Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable reminds us that our sources are written for and assume an expert audience that already knows a lot of stuff. Whereas our lead, for example, should be written assuming the reader is not acquainted with the subject and avoids terminology that isn't understandable on sight to general readers. Even the body is encouraged to be written "one level down". So, for technical subjects, we are doing a continued paraphrase of, for example, undergraduate-level source material into secondary-school level article text. For medical subjects, the jump can be even higher, where our source audience is specialist professionals, and our target audience is any random mum and dad. And I've already mentioned Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch which discourages/forbids words that are absolutely typical in those reliable sources we call newspapers. Our sources are not required to be neutral, when we are. We may wish to describe some politicians as "clueless fools", but our policies require us to refrain from sticking to our sources on that front.

Yes, I'm aware some editors make similar claims at MOS discussions. Strangely they do so only when it suits their case, which is usually language conservatism as it is here. When it doesn't suit their case, they usually reach for Wikipedia:Specialized-style fallacy and Wikipedia:Common-style fallacy. Those essays are overlong and a bit ranty and overly dismissive of the value our sources and specialist writers can play in helping us use appropriate language. Between them, they've been linked to over two thousand times, in discussions. So I guess someone thinks it worth repeating that our sources and their authors do not compel us to write like them. -- Colin°^Talk 12:54, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

For words it's even more important than for punctuation and the like that we consider what the bulk of reliable sources say. The exceptions you link are the exceptions that prove the rule. "Woman" is most certainly not technical language, but constructions like "people with uteruses" arguably are. "Woman" is also not a "word to watch" either, nor is using it the way so many neutrally-written sources do anything like media outlets writing an opinionated article calling someone a fool.

As for MEDMOS, I'd say the relevant bits are these signs of writing for the wrong audience (and hence to be avoided): You use jargon when there are suitable plain English words (for example, consider using "kidney" rather than "renal"). We have a suitable plain English word for the female sex. You emphasize or de-emphasize verifiable facts so that readers will make the "right" choice in the real world. We do not add extra emphasis to certain aspects in an effort to encourage desired outcomes.

That in these few carefully laid out and justified cases we don't follow the wording of sources does not justify ignoring that wording in other situations in favor of one only found rarely in sources. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:37, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Not really? WP:TONE says to follow the language styles seen in FAs. It does not say to follow the words used in sources.

Some sources use language that is too technical to be appropriate – so we don't follow the sources' language. Some sources use language that is too slangy to be appropriate – so we don't follow the sources' language. Some sources use language that violates MOS:GENDERID – so we don't follow the sources' language.

Editors are supposed to use good judgement when writing articles. They are not supposed to follow the sources mindlessly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Too medical

This article as written, is too medical in its approach and point of view. For an article in a general encyclopaedia, it needs to consider pregnancy from a different viewpoint to that of healthcare professionals, and instead from the viewpoint of the general reader. And it needs to include significant aspects of pregnancy other than the bodily processes in the mother and baby.

The heading "signs and symptoms" makes it sound like a disease. I know some other general-public websites do this too, but is there another way to express that? The heading "management" reads to me that this pregnancy and the mother are being considered as a patient to be managed through their illness. (Separately, I'm not sure why miscarriage and foetal death aren't sections). The culture section is small. The "Legal and social aspects" focuses on legal problems, racial disparities and trans/intersex discrimination. All problems, in other words. Where's the social (and legal) aspects that are normal, healthy and desirable?

I'm sure other people have written more about this than me. I'm not really the best person to document the areas it could be improved. -- Colin°^Talk 09:34, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

"Where's the social (and legal) aspects that are normal, healthy and desirable?" I am approaching middle age, and grew up with several female relatives. Not a single one of them mentioned anything positive or desirable about their pregnancies. I am not certain such a thing exists. Dimadick (talk) 13:46, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

OK, well here goes... I'm now old enough to be a grandmother and the 18 months that I spent pregnant and giving birth to two daughters were some of the best years of my life. I felt so special... A few hours of pain when the babies came out was well worth it and I'd do it ten times over and still say that. And then I went on to nurse them (even though nobody nursed back in those days)...More months of joy and feeling special. I could go on mentioning my daughter's similar experiences, etc., but you get the idea... Sectionworker (talk) 16:02, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for both your observations and I suspect both would fit under the "normal" that I was asking for. I mean "what it is/was like to be pregnant" isn't exactly an undiscussed topic in literature. -- Colin°^Talk 17:29, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I just had a long talk with my daughter. It is good to talk with her because I can get both a middle age opinion and her knowledge about what her two kids would think about what they expect from Wikipedia. My daughter said that she does not come to WP to learn about the current social aspects of pregnancy unless she would perhaps want to find out if there is anything to the latest information going around. She prefers to use it as a medical source based on the research and viewpoint of healthcare professionals. I agree with her. Colin, other than a few cosmetic changes that would be easy enough to do I'm still not sure of what you'd like to see. Perhaps you could offer a few refs that you would use for the changes you'd like and that would help me to understand what you want. Sectionworker (talk) 19:01, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I suspect we could find some good sources about the "community property" aspect of pregnancy. I'm not sure what the scholarly term would be, but this manifests as strangers touching pregnant women without their consent and scolding them for everyday choices (e.g., to drink coffee). This can manifest as protection and assistance (e.g., I've seen people holding doors open or offering to carry things), but it might also lead to some workplace discrimination ("That assignment is much too stressful for a pregnant woman").

There are also privacy issues. If your social group drinks a lot of alcohol, then not drinking at even one event can result in speculation about pregnancy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Great idea on the belly touching. Here's a good CNN read on that [10] Sectionworker (talk) 20:00, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

At least the medical aspects are more or less global. Any attempt to get into the social or cultural aspects would be almost bound to be US/UK dominated, and wildly incorrect for most of the world. Johnbod (talk) 19:12, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I think I should not have brushed my feelings off on changes to the article calling them only "cosmetic". Actually I have no problem with adding something to the lead and expanding the section on transgender issues and about anything else that has good RS. I am very flexible. But I do want Waid's suggestions in the article because I DO NOT want to go on arguing every time we get a new batch of students and everybody here (except Waid) has gone home and are no longer around to help. Sectionworker (talk) 23:32, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I was going to improve and expand the trans section but it is so complicated I didn't know where to begin with it and perhaps it is best to leave it short but linked to the main article as it is now. Sectionworker (talk) 16:42, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Colin, it has been several days since you made your post and no one has objected to any of your ideas. It would be good to do a little work with what we've got so that our editors don't feel like they've been wasting their time without anything to show for it. Let's see what we can do at this time.

You can add something to the lead as you suggested.
Somebody can improve the trans section that I said I decided to leave as is if they feel it needs it.
Nobody has come up with any new ideas for headings such as "Signs and symptoms" or "Management". You can present some ideas that we can discus or you may boldly change them too, perhaps...
You can write up Waid's suggestion and add that. You can make any further suggestions to meet your idea that the article needs more than just medical stuff.
You say: "(Separately, I'm not sure why miscarriage and foetal death aren't sections)." I'm not sure what you mean here but I will see if there is anything I can do.

Hopefully we can get this done so that we can move on. Sectionworker (talk) 13:29, 4 October 2022 (UTC) OK, yes I see what you mean. I'm going to work on those two and add them to the article. I will get this done today. Sectionworker (talk) 13:38, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Sectionworker, I was really just throwing this idea out to see if someone was able and encouraged to work with it. Maybe the lack of response is that this page is dominated by WP:MED editors and could do with editors focusing on social articles? The miscarriage and foetal death aspects seem to me to be large enough to warrant more than just mentioning the words in a couple of places. But I haven't looked at the literature and this isn't a topic I know well. Wrt the trans issues, that's probably best dealt with in the other section, with a proposal that gets consensus. -- Colin°^Talk 14:21, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

It is very frustrating for me to think that I have spent a lot of time here while thinking that you were working on the changes that you wanted and now you say, "And it needs to include significant aspects of pregnancy other than the bodily processes in the mother and baby" and yet you are not willing to even come up with article headings that you feel would improve the article. I am so discouraged with all this. You withhold your approval of Waid's info box, etc., until your expectations are met, and yet you are not willing to add any of your own work to get them done and instead suggest that there are some other editors, somewhere else, that can meet your expectations. I'm not even going to try to work with you any longer. Sectionworker (talk) 15:03, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Sectionworker, the last thing I want to do is discourage you. Thank you for adding the section on miscarriage. I'm not blocking Waid's info box, and Waid agreed with my suggestion it might be better as an edit notice. But agreement on wording has stalled at the moment and any changes to the lead seem likely to be reverted by the activist in our midst.

I'm sorry I haven't lived up to your expectations wrt article contribution. Don't let my shortcomings put you off. Please. You are the only person on this page who has gone from "Hmm, I'm not sure about this" to "Let's do it". The only person on this page who has listened and researched. Honestly, you have no idea how encouraging that is, and I wish there were more editors like that. Best wishes. -- Colin°^Talk 20:59, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Info box or edit note?

I don't know if I got those terms right. Anyway, I feel very strongly about having a note right out in the open for all of our readers to see, whether trans or not, rather than hidden in a note that only editors would see. I believe that Wikipedia needs to show our readers that we understand that the terms father, mother, family, and even man and woman are social constructs and we are using those terms in this article while being aware that there are multiple ways of seeing and reporting what is accurate for today's "truth". I know that I've already been criticized for suggesting that it is not our place to consider the "feelings" of our readers and yet when I consider the absolute hell that trans people have gone through to find acceptance of who they are, something that I, for one, never had to spend any emotional energy on, I feel I need to consider other's feelings. I have, however, had to go through what it means to be an assertive woman living in a man's world and that has taught me enough to almost cry in gratitude for those first women who marched for both bread and roses, as just one example. Words matter and I want all of our readers to know that Wikipedia is aware of that. Thoughts? Sectionworker (talk) 22:41, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

I know you mean well, but to be frank, these are clearly advocacy arguments that are explicitly to right great wrongs. Wikipedia should not contain any sort of ideological disclaimers. No Wikipedia policy supports using such. Per the WP:NOTCENSORED policy, Attempting to ensure that articles and images will be acceptable to all readers, or will adhere to general social or religious norms, is incompatible with the purposes of an encyclopedia. We contain only one centralized Wikipedia:Content disclaimer; not additional disclaimers of those types in individual articles. No disclaimer here will do anything to make any trans person's life easier, but it will make many readers think Wikipedia is biased and caving to language-change activism or a general politicized mentality as in the progressive stack. And going back to an earlier example, Muslims may go through "absolute hell" in the West, but we don't add statements to articles explaining our writing style to acknowledge their faith. This sort of statement is not a Wikipedia practice. Also, trans pregnancy is already mentioned anyway. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:56, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Just so that you know that I am not a newbie, I've been here over 15 years and have made thousands of edits, so I'm aware of my problems here, though you are right to point out the way you see things. ~~As for your edit, I see a lot of bias in your comments, as has been mentioned already.~~ I am willing to wait to see what others think and I have a strong belief in the process we use for decision making here. Sectionworker (talk) 01:41, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I'd like to add a few words to clear something up. I can see why Crossroads might say that I'm trying to right great wrongs. However if one looks at my user page (user:Gandydancer) you will see how happy I was when I, for the first time, looked up "sleepy sickness" which was about all I knew about what my mother had had when she was a young girl. Mom was left with progressive parkinsonism and after all those years of feeling alone, someone put ~a name to my life experience and that of my mother's as well. Wikipedia didn't write that article for me but for me it did right a great wrong and I felt thankful to WP for doing that. That's why I say that my mother had a forgotten disease but Wikipedia remembered. To right great wrongs may not be a good reason to write an article, but plenty of our articles do just that by getting the facts in print on our pages.Sectionworker (talk) 13:59, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Sectionworker, I wouldn't over-analyse the accusations made. There are a lot of WP:UPPERCASE links that are irrelevant and just there to scare and make it look like there's some authority to what's being said. None of them stand up to any scrutiny. -- Colin°^Talk 15:02, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I know you are experienced, and I am glad that Wikipedia has helped you. Even so - as you no doubt know - experienced editors still point to policies and guidelines when discussing things with each other (and only one of them was in uppercase). That Wikipedia may 'right wrongs' of lack of knowledge, in a sense, as a result of fulfilling its mission to be an encyclopedia according to our policies and guidelines, is a very different matter from altering our content to 'right wrongs' of some other sort. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:40, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I think all of us here are aware there is a culture war about trans issues and anti-trans advocacy coming from right-wing politicians and also from so-called gender critical feminists of either political side. For them, their "RIGHTGREATWRONGS" is the problem that mainstream science and mainstream politics has already accepted trans people, that real actual doctors agree that an affirmative approach is appropriate vs conversion therapy, and the public agrees that trans men are men and trans women are women. This is what they are upset about and why conservative/reactionary advocates want to ensure Wikipedia's voice aligns with their views, that only sex matters, that, as Crossroads keeps saying and insisting, there is no other acceptable definition of "woman" than "biological adult female with XX chromosomes".

Editors will continue to come here to try to align this article's words with the shift in thinking that has already occurred in science, in healthcare, in society. Websites facing the general public are already shifting towards more trans inclusive language ([11], [12], [13], [14]). They are facing the same backlash from right-wing and gender critical advocates that we see here, and progress is slow, but come on, the NHS under a right-wing Conservative openly trans-hostile government is further along than Wikipedia is. I think it is time we stopped allowing our pages to be a platform for right-wing / gender-critical advocacy and trans-hostile comments that trans people are as irrelevant as people with limbs missing and claims that they don't get pregnant due to their mental illness. Editors who are not here to find a solution to the problem, should stop using talk pages as a forum for their advocacy. -- Colin°^Talk 10:11, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

as Crossroads keeps saying and insisting - I did not say that whatsoever, and you should strike it and stop setting up strawmen. You also need to cease implying that any pushback to your preferred changes is right-wing/gender critical advocacy per WP:ASPERSIONS. If anything, it is certain persons on the other side who insist there is no other acceptable definition of "woman" than "person with a gender identity as a woman". All the stuff about conversion therapy etc. is a red herring, and the framing of a culture "war" is odd in that only one side is depicted. Fighting to make it so that "woman" can no longer be used to refer to sex is apparently not 'waging a culture war' in this view. Your comment also implies that people with limbs missing are "irrelevant", ironically enough.

As for the "shift in thinking", no shift in terminology has been completed or is even anywhere close to prevailing - any search on PubMed for articles about pregnancy will make it very clear that "woman" is still used to refer to sex. All 4 links to the NHS above are written in the second person (as to a "you"), but we do not write that way. More to the point, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a health service. One of those links is about LGBT reproduction, which we too have an article on. We also have transgender pregnancy and mentions in this article. So these matters are already mentioned.

Phrases like "already shifting towards" and "further along" implies that a language shift is already inevitable. This is not so; see WP:CRYSTAL. Latinx was somewhat common in the US for several years, coming from organizations keen to portray themselves as "progressive", but as evidence built up that most Hispanic people did not like it, it has been fading in use somewhat of late, rather than continuing to rise to saturation. It is by no means inevitable that sources in the future will all refer to "people with uteruses" or whatever. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:40, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

(((Apologies in advance; I'm nearly incapable of writing in less than 600 words that which could probably be communicated in 60)))

User Colin's commentary is highly problematic in several ways, and I'd like to ask that we follow policy and not engage in casting aspersions, expressing our assumptions about the background, politics, or motives of those we disagree with, particularly when they are gross mischaracterizations (notwithstanding that we are never supposed to impute editor motive whether a gross mischaracterization or not). There are people across the political spectrum, not just "right-wing", not just "activists" or "advocates" who disagree with the "activist" or "advocate" moves to push gender-neutral ideology and language everywhere.

We are all prone to confirmation bias, all of us. What we choose to read, who we engage in conversation with, where we live, all tend to filter our point of view. But none of it changes the bog-obvious: Those who are capable of experiencing pregnancy overwhelmingly identify as "women". Transgender people who experience pregnancy are rare. This is patent, and supported by the overwhelming majority of reliable sources. The use of gender-neutral terminology in reliable sources is a relatively recent phenomenon - with aspects that resemble a 'fad' in my opinion - but simultaneous to that usage, the majority of sources still simply use what is again the bog-obvious - 'woman' is a broad term that covers nearly all those who experience pregnancy, so simplicity demands we defer to the obvious.

But more importantly than those points, much more importantly, this article does address transgender people, in Pregnancy#Physiology#Capacity and Pregnancy#Legal and social aspects#Transgender people (looks like I'm not formatting those correctly, sorry), with pointers to an article that specifically addresses the matter. And it is done neutrally, and in proportion to prevalence. It is pointless and disruptive to insist on gender-neutral language where it will apply or be relevant to less than 1% of those who read this article. It is also bog-obvious to transgender people whether they are capable of experiencing pregnancy. Nobody will be shocked to see this article refer to women when discussing the matter.

I absolutely agree - perhaps some people will have their feelings hurt, or be distressed in some measure, by seeing 'woman' used throughout the article, and I empathize. But Wikipedia is filled with articles about topics that may cause adverse emotional reactions in the reader. A reader chooses what they read. If they are too traumatized when they begin to read Pregnancy with 'woman' used to refer to those who most frequently experience it, the Internet is filled with other sources for information that may be less traumatic, and confirmation bias would suggest that they are already aware of those resources. I am not minimizing these feelings. I have my own pains and trigger points about various things (unrelated to this subject matter), that make me hurt when I read about them or talk about them. But it's not for me or our editor peers here to decide for others how an encyclopedia may affect any given person's feelings, and attempt to neutralize the possibility of hurt.

If this article had no mention of transgender people or their experiences, that would be inappropriate. We document what the reliable sources document. But we must do so in proportion to their prevalence and relevance to the subject matter. I believe that we already do so, in appropriate detail, as I detailed above.

However, as an attempt to address the ostensible 'problem' in this article, I will toss out here another possible 'solution', in good faith: At the top of the article - before any of the article itself - is the 'about' portion:

If this must be addressed at the top, then what about this:

Would that be agreeable? We may be at a point of requiring an Rfc, or some other mechanism (I don't keep up on all the TLA's used for dealing with content disputes) to either gain a consensus or resolve the dispute adequately and amicably. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 23:38, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

User:Anastrophe thank you for your reasoned arguments, which are welcome.

I disagree with Crossroads description of me claiming "pushback to [my] preferred changes is right-wing/gender critical advocacy", which you seem to have taken at face value. Firstly, I'm not clear what concrete changes we would make to this article, and would like an environment to discuss that that wasn't quite so trans hostile and full of made-up stories about policies. I do think there are editors here who are uncomfortable with and have rejected proposals made over the years who are open to finding compromise and consensus with others who may think differently. Surely that is what is vital on Wiki, that we accept editors will have a mix of opinions and still try to find consensus, rather than demand the other side must reject their core values and strongly held opinions and align with theirs. Is that advocacy?

I don't think I accused any editor here of a particular label. But Crossroads is imo guilty of using this page for advocacy and blocking consensus-forming. And the claims and arguments used by them align exactly (as far as I can see, and we've had a very long discussion elsewhere) with those made by gender-critical advocates who are willing to own that label. Anastrophe, Crossroads is trying to claim that preserving the status-quo cannot be advocacy, and that any and all editors who come here asking for it to be written differently are all advocates, and by that rule alone can be dismissed. That's not helping us make progress towards a consensus, and is becoming disruptive imo. My point in referencing the real-world advocates is to show that in reality there are many on both sides who engage in quite strident advocacy, whether on social media, in news media or as politicians and pressure groups. When we have health secretaries giving interviews on how they plan to clamp down on "gender ideology" in the NHS, and remove "woke language", that is advocacy. When we have politicians claim that the trans women are not women and must now use the men's bathroom, that is advocacy. When we have "sex matters" pressure groups insisting that schools should ignore the wishes of trans children, and misgender them, that is advocacy. We can have conservative activists as much as we can have progressive activists.

You've characterised one side as 'the "activist" or "advocate" moves to push gender-neutral ideology and language everywhere.' The original proposer made that request, of this article (not "everywhere"), and has not actually engaged further in the discussion. I don't think anyone else in this discussion is proposing that or thinks it is a good idea or at all likely. So who, exactly, are Crossroads, and perhaps yourself, arguing against? If nobody actually discussing the matter thinks the language should be gender neutral everywhere, why set that up as "the other side's position". This has been a problem throughout these discussions on language, that it keeps getting framed as though one side wants to "erase women" from the article and turn them all into "people with uteruses". In fact, those who think our sex-related articles could be better are more reasonable and more accepting of the difficulties than is frequently claimed.

On a point of terminology, I don't think there is such a thing as "gender-neutral ideology". There is a term "gender ideology" and it is a bit of a shibboleth for gender-critical writing. In other words, it isn't a term used by neutral writers, as it suggests that the mainstream acceptance of gender and sex and transgender people is some kind of cult or religion or extreme political belief. See this article for more. Using it is a bit like insisting that climate change should always be put in scare quotes.

You make a number of other points, and it wouldn't be practical to address them all in one go. I'm not sure anyone is claiming that readers might become distressed or traumatised by the article. Let's deal with the "1%" issue. I posted further up some definitions of Sexist, Heteronormativity and Cisnormativity. In these, the group that was "othered" gets progressively smaller, from 50:50 to, I don't know, around 5%, to around 1% trans in younger people. Does that reduction in group-size change the moral argument? Being sexist, writing as though only men did things and the idea of women doing things was exceptional and not worth mentioning, was wrong even if the thing they were doing really was almost always done by men (being doctors, say, or politicians). A schoolchild writing about the role of the US president would be pulled up by their teacher for using "he", even though every single US president has been a man. We seem to mind that the US president could be a woman and that's what matters, not the number of US presidents who have ever been women, or the odds of a future one being female. Some of our readers, especially younger ones and those who know someone who is trans, think that being cisnormative is similarly problematic. (And the way the article deals with trans people, is cisnormative). An argument that there are very few trans people, so they can be dismissed, doesn't shift the moral argument for these readers. We build specialist toilets for people who needs hoists into public areas even though the number of visitors who use or need them is tiny.

I don't think the 1% figure is a valid reason to dismiss trans readers and accept that a cisnormative article is just fine. No more than a 5% figure is a valid reason for our articles to be heternormative, or a 0% figure to be a valid reason for our articles on presidents to assume they are always male. -- Colin°^Talk 10:03, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't think your proposal about a hatnote that groups transgender pregnancy at the same level of "otherness" as pregnancy in animals or in fish would be accepted: it is still cisnormative. Would you think that midwife could have a similar hatnote and use "she" to describe these health professionals (only 0.4% of UK midwives are male)? Or marriage have a hatnote that the article describes only a lifelong union between a man and woman, and that readers should go to Same-sex marriage to read about that deviance? We do have a section in marriage about same-sex marriage and we do have a dedicated article about it, but we don't write the main body of marriage as though that form is abnormal, weird, wrong, etc. And what percentages of marriages are same sex? It's 3% in 2019 in the UK according to this. But globally, it must be very very much smaller. -- Colin°^Talk 10:18, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Anastrophe, thanks for your edit - it gave me a lot to think about. I am beginning to see that my idea for an info box would not work and have come to think that Waid's edit note idea would be the way to go. The suggestion about mentioning it at the top with a ref to fish, etc., would not work. Unlike fish, etc., this article if for all people who are pregnant regardless of the social way they are identified. The linked article is about social considerations for the most part. Sectionworker (talk) 11:44, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Colin, can you please provide quotes that support "an environment to discuss that wasn't quite so trans hostile"? I see no "trans hostility" here, only disagreements - perhaps blunt - on the matter. Blunt speaking is not synonymous with hostility.

You wrote that You've characterised one side as 'the "activist" or "advocate" moves to push gender-neutral ideology and language everywhere.' I'm afraid you missed my point, which admittedly was awfully subtle. What I wrote, top to bottom, was There are people across the political spectrum, not just "right-wing", not just "activists" or "advocates" who disagree with the "activist" or "advocate" moves to push gender-neutral ideology and language everywhere. I put "activist" and "advocates" in quotes to try to illustrate that both sides are guilty of conflation. Disagreeing with a point of view is most certainly not 'activist' or 'advocacy' full-stop. It is little more than having strong feelings about an issue. I've never acted in the capacity of an 'activist' or 'advocate' for or against these issues. Entrenched ideology cleaves towards the mindset of a hammer: Everything looks like a nail. The exaggerations of editor intent are simply not helpful. Crossroads may write more bluntly or stridently than I tend to, but that doesn't reflect hostility - only strong feelings. In many respects, I agree with Crossroads's point of view. But I also agree to a more limited extent with some of the arguments from the "other side". But as I keep "hammering on" (see what I did there?) we have to address matters in an article in proportion to their prevalence and in proportion to their relevance to the overriding topic of the article. Writing in proportion to prevalence and relevance is most certainly not "[...]dismiss[ing] trans readers" - that's an unhelpful exaggeration. This article as it is now does not dismiss trans people or readers at all. It acknowledges them in proportion to their prevalence and relevance to this article. And that is what we are here for. But you make this claim of 'dismissing' several times in your response, when that isn't supported by the state of the article as it is now, in which it addresses transgender pregnancy.

Colin, I would ask that you reflect on this, in terms of perceptions, in terms of claims made about 'the other side', etc.:

You wrote We build specialist toilets for people who needs hoists into public areas even though the number of visitors who use or need them is tiny.

Editor Crossroads has been chastised aggressively by mischaracterizing his mention of the Human Body article and how it doesn't overtly acknowledge amputees, for example "right-wing / gender-critical advocacy and trans-hostile comments that trans people are as irrelevant as people with limbs missing". It's not right to throw things about as if lobbing bombs in hopes of damaging the other party's argument, when a similar mischaracterization could be tossed out that you're 'equating' trans people to 'crippled' people. This is the damage that's done when we convince ourselves that those we disagree with simply must be malefactors of one stripe or another - in a word, 'othering' those who have a different point of view.

I can see how the 'juxtaposition' of transgender pregnancy with pregnancy in fish is...well, unfortunate, certainly. We could I suppose eliminate the initial statement and simply use this?

maybe? It's a less 'abrupt' format, but I'm resigned to it, too, being rejected - even though it would be the very first words on the page below its title acknowledging transgender pregnancy. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 21:41, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't like it because it says one more time ...this place is not for you...you belong in this other place..as though they need to hear that again? Their physical experience of pregnancy and birth is the same as the people that this article calls woman, mothers, etc. I did add something to the section in the body to make that clear and perhaps that helps... Sectionworker (talk) 00:46, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

It does not say "this place is not for you", it says "For pregnancy in transgender people see Transgender pregnancy". It does not force the reader elsewhere. What you've described is an inference; you're imposing a restriction on the change that is only a guess at how some unnamed person might interpret it. Again, we do not write this encyclopedia based upon assumption about our audience other than it is written for the general reader.

If the wording is insufficient, what wording would you suggest? I'm trying to reach a compromise here. How about "For issues related to pregnancy in transgender people see Transgender pregnancy". Or something else?

I think we have reached a point where we require clear statements of what specific changes to the article need to be made. No meandering discussions (I include myself entirely within that characterization) on all of the various matters brought up in the sphere of this discussion. Direct statement that "X needs to be changed to Y at Z place in the article, and these are the reasons". Then we can go through one by one and open Rfc's, find consensus, and either make or reject the request. We are not moving forward in the existing discussions. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 01:03, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I believe that "For issues related to pregnancy in transgender people see Transgender pregnancy" would be excellent. But I will be surprised if we get an agreement on it. Sectionworker (talk) 01:34, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the positive feedback :) But yes, I agree it probably won't pass muster. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 02:03, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

This isn't really what hatnotes are for - per WP:RELATED - but of similar prominence is the existence of the "transgender people" heading in the article's table of contents. Anyone looking to see what the article covers or if it covers such an aspect will know to look there. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:53, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Admittedly this is the first time I've ever looked into hatnotes; never added one to an article, never cared about them, so I'm not in my element. Most of my editing is wikignomish, but with intermittent engagement in article issues. If it's not the appropriate use that's fine. But I do think we need to move into what I mentioned above - state the change one feels is needed, and the rationale, and we do an Rfc. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 07:15, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Anastrophe, I haven't forgotten your request about "trans hostile" environment or about analogies. I was busy yesterday and I'm concerned we are being dragged into discussing meta-issues on this page when we should be focusing more on proposals for changes to the article and seeking consensus on that. I disagree with you that this debate is in any way about "Writing in proportion to prevalence and relevance". That's what some here may be arguing, and it doesn't surprise me at all to see irrelevant and misleading arguments being made in this discussion. But it isn't correct. A solution to this problem does not, for example, require mentioning trans people every time we say "woman". Nobody still in this discussion is saying the article must explicitly talk about trans people as often as it does about women. We are talking about word-choice and whether there is something we can do to improve and address the issues with the article. That's not a WP:WEIGHT issue any more than sexist prose at midwifery could be, and I hope the 1% comments I made above have made this clear. -- Colin°^Talk 10:18, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

To address a point way up in this thread, "the public agrees that trans men are men and trans women are women", this deserves a fact check. This source shows complex, conflicting views on trans issues depending on what question is asked, but on the question of whether a person being a man or woman can be different from sex assigned at birth, 60 percent of Americans surveyed in May 2022 said that a person's sex is determined at birth and cannot change. This number is moving upward from similar surveys in earlier years. In the UK, polls show similarly divided views depending on specific questions, but clear majorities against such things as trans women participating in women's sports. *Dan T.* (talk) 17:30, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I think it is important to note the comments in the YouGov survey that nearly everyone admits they haven't really thought about it, and that they are much more likely to be trans supportive in their views if the know someone who is trans. In the YouGov survey, only 25% think you cannot identify as a gender that is different to what you were assigned at birth. I think much of the poll data reflects that the respondents haven't thought about it, are quite liable to be affected by how the question is worded, and because there is so much politics in the US/UK about it. It is questionable to put too much weight on a survey of the openly admittedly ignorant. For example, a lot of people don't really know or understand if the words sex and gender have different meanings.

Consider two examples.

Let's say you have an office job, I don't know, working in the finance department of a big electronic company. A new person joins the team. They are a trans man who introduces themselves as "John". Do you (a) accept them as a man, using their male name and male pronouns and be totally cool when they go to the men's toilet or (b) ask them what their real name is, use female pronouns, stick a "penis required" poster on the door of the men's toilet.
An editor goes to the Shon Faye article and edits it to male pronouns and creates request for rename back to their deadname. Do you and others (a) join the debate to support those edits and justify them with the view that "a person being a man or woman can't be different from sex assigned at birth" or do you (b) think that someone expressing that view on Wikipedia probably earns what's coming their way.

I think with many social issues, it helps to view examples with a single individual and how you might react to them or how you think others might or should react to them. When we view people as just a "named people group" of which most of us have no experience, it is really quite hard to know what's right, and all too easy to be dismissive. -- Colin°^Talk 10:00, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Being willing to be polite to an individual is not the same as actually believing they are truly the opposite sex. One possible cause of the decline in support for pro-trans positions in recent years (as shown in these surveys) is the activist insistence that it's not just a polite fiction (or legal fiction, like calling a corporation a "person") but actual reality; that's a step too far for most people. *Dan T.* (talk) 13:33, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Dan, your post sounds like "a polite fiction" is the bit grounded in reliable sources and widespread professional practice, and the "we accept you as a man" is the bit only crazy activists insist on. Maybe you want to reconsider what you wrote? -- Colin°^Talk 13:46, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Dan, thanks for the Pew Research Center current and extensive polls. I did not look at the U.K. report. I find polling helpful when it is done properly. Sectionworker (talk) 15:01, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I had been thinking about and drafting some general notes about what makes a discuss trans hostile. However, in the last couple of days I've been coming down with what I suspected was, and have now tested +ve for, COVID-19. My brain is mush right now, so I'm going to take a wikibreak. -- Colin°^Talk 10:06, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

anastrophe, I've documented my thoughts about trans hostile environment at User talk:WhatamIdoing/Sandbox 4#Avoiding a trans hostile environment. I hope putting it there is acceptable to WhatamIdoing, and I don't think it is on-topic enough for here. I've also addressed your concern about analogies. Hopefully, the discussion here can return to ideas on how we might improve the article, or else be left for a bit, and returned to at some future point with fresh ideas. -- Colin°^Talk 17:16, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Calling again for formal resolution

Please everyone. Look at this talk page. Look at the size of it. Look at the arguments, regurgitated ad infinitum. Look at the meta-arguments about how we are arguing, regurgitated ad infinitum. Look at the subtle and not-so subtle aspersions routinely cast by adherents on both sides towards their interlocutors.

A strong argument can be made that this talk page has devolved into forum chatter, most discussion not having to do directly with suggestions or compromise towards article improvement - mostly it is what I described above, arguments without resolution, because of an ideological divide, one as deeply split as in the matters of abortion and guns.

We are getting nowhere with these regurgitations. If we think the (huge) discussion of merely an infobox or hatnote is progress, then this page is going to remain a battleground into the next century.

Please, I beg of everyone here: I don't want to spend a day reading the various 'How to become an expert at navigating Wikipedia's administrative bureaucracy', 'How to wikilawyer like a demon with nobody being the wiser', 'Bridging Ideological Polarization For Dummies'. Perhaps I'm selfish for challenging others to do what I see as imperative at this point, rather than stepping up. Mostly, it's that I'm a lazy-ass, trying to recover from twenty-six years in an industry that burned me out to an empty hull, until I was blessedly "furloughed" during the pandemic, and through both hard work and good fortune, I was able to just retire and begin recovering my soul.

Alternatively, I unwatch this page, and return to pleasant nihilism. Hey, I'm open to a vote!

Should user Anastrophe continue trying to push for formal intervention mechanisms, or should he just STFU and go away?

STFU per all arguments above. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 20:41, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry it's been such a mess, and I hope you don't unwatch it since you made a lot of good points throughout. I think that it's best if we all collectively decide to leave this matter be, as it's pretty clear I think that a consensus to change the wording, to add an edit notice, or what it would say will not be forming, and that an RfC would not be wise. It wouldn't make sense to sink tons of effort into developing an edit notice when whatever edits that it would be meant to pre-empt are so rare they can be addressed one-by-one. Crossroads ^-talk- 20:54, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

What?

@Sectionworker,Why was the section I added to the article earlier today removed from the page? And done so invisibly - as in, there's no page diff that shows it was removed? I'm baffled. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 03:32, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Ah! Never mind. Apparently a strange glitch, and I posted this near simultaneously with your reversion. Whee! cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 03:34, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Ohhhhh...so that's what happened. I wondered if I was losing my mind or what. I tried and tried to fix it and ended up deleting what I thought I had somehow (strangely) done.Sectionworker (talk) 03:55, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

I think this clearly had to be a software or database glitch, because the history doesn't show that you deleted anything at all. That's classic flipped-bit somewhere. Probably a high energy anti-proton spun out from the Hoag's Object, that's my best guess. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 04:00, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Oh dear. Antiprotons are too short-lived to have made it here. Just a regular Proton, certainly. Glad I caught that! cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 04:04, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Teenage pregnancy 'see also's'

"See also: Dating abuse and Teen dating violence" I don't think these are appropriate. They are at least two steps removed from the topic of this article. What's the rationale? cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 21:00, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

As it turned out, this topic is much larger than I thought and I've had to read sooooooooooo much. Sometimes I read something and then later can't find it... I don't remember how it was that I added them, likely as a reminder for later. You are most likely right and I will delete them. Thanks for watching my work and helping with it. This has turned out to be hard because the "pregnant" part is part of such a large problematic thing in our country and the world as well. I am taking such a tiny slice of it. One again, I thank you for help. Sectionworker (talk) 21:09, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

I know we disagreed above but thanks for taking this on. I was looking at the Female infertility article and wondering about getting it into the article as well. I will admit it's a topic with personal significance so I was surprised it had so little coverage here. It almost feels like this topic could be a header topic that then points to the various subtopics. Springee (talk) 21:27, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Indeedy - "pregnancy" is no small topic, without a relationship with a vast number of other topics...you know, as it's responsible for the existence of the entire human race! How broad or narrow the article is to be, is no small question in itself. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 21:33, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Springee, I can well imagine that a person that was interested in fertility problems would come here expecting to find something. I hope that you put something in as it will improve the article, IMO. Sectionworker (talk) 23:12, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

I'll give it a shot. Would you mind if I ask for your take before I put it in the live article? Springee (talk) 23:30, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Please ask for all of the editors to provide feedback, not just me. Anyway, I'm sure you'll do just fine. The hard thing is paring it down to what will fit here. Good luck! Sectionworker (talk) 02:18, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps if you want a sentence or two in the lead they could go in the second para? I't quite short. Sectionworker (talk) 05:36, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Apologies for dumping this in here but since you are working on the lede - your recent edit summary said "these stats are very boring and do not need to be in the lead". I disagree with the first half of the sentence, but agree with the second half of it. The degree to which statistics are "boring" is in the eye of the beholder, I happen to find them very interesting and informative. However, I agree that they have no specific place in the lede. But - what is to become of them? Will they be folded into the article elsewhere? I don't think they should be given the complete heave-ho. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 05:33, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Haha, I forgot about you stats people. I assumed it was from somewhere in the article. If not, I agree it is good and needed. Sectionworker (talk) 05:40, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

I think most or all of it may be in the body, partly under Epidemiology and also Complications. I'm sure you can tuck in anything that is missing. Sectionworker (talk) 05:54, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks much. I'll take a poke at it tomorrow. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 07:27, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the OP. The dating abuse articles are not appropriate see-also links here, being too removed from the subject. This is not a dumping ground for links to every article that relates to women and sexuality. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:08, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Article review

I've already asked this above in the #Transgender in lead section, however it is somewhat lost in the midst of that discussion. This particular issue is also only somewhat related to that section, and this could get lengthy in its own right.

At the moment, the article is fully locked for a week, and no edits can be made to it. Because of this, I would ask if this is perhaps the best time to undertake a comprehensive review of the article, its structure, and look at the numerous sub-articles that we both do and do not use within this article.

As I look at this article from a broad strokes perspective, I see two main problems; structure, and content, though these are interrelated. Pregnancy is a large topic, with numerous facets to it. Accordingly we have a large number of sub-articles about these facets. Thankfully we have guidance on how to handle this; WP:SUMMARYSTYLE, however I suspect that right now we are falling short of that guidance. Presently, the article summarises some but not all of these sub-articles. However for the articles that we do summarise we do so inconsistently. There are some sub-articles that we summarise in a large amount of detail, for example maternal changes has 8 paragraphs of text, and there are some that we summarise in too little detail, for example teenage pregnancy has only a single paragraph. There is information that we could summarise but do not, for example advanced maternal age is linked in a {{see also}} hatnote, but relevant content from it is not included. And there are sub-articles that we do summarise briefly, but only for a single aspect, for example we summarise only the legal and social aspects of teenage pregnancies, despite that also having relevance to other sections like birth control and education.

The outcome of that review would naturally inform our next steps. In the above section, I asked if we might be better served by taking a clean slate approach to this article. Despite the frustrations elaborated above, Sectionworker has been doing some fantastic work re-writing article content. I think we all should commend them for that. However a lot of that work is constrained by the article structure we currently have. A clean slate approach would free us from those potential structural issues, and allow us to take all of the sub-articles holistically to inform and guide a new article structure. This also does not mean that we would be throwing away the work that has already been done. Any well written content that is currently in the article could easily be transferred into a rework, it just might be in a different place, or expanded or trimmed as required. A clean slate just gives us freedom to better address the structure and flow of the article. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:41, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Well, to be clear, I don't think the whole article should necessarily be thought of entirely in SUMMARYSTYLE terms - some aspects yes, but much of it, no. Not everything is or should be covered primarily in a sub-topic spinoff article. And regarding those that do exist, I can't say offhand whether their own lengths are appropriate.

I really don't think it should be framed as a 'clean slate'. Things here or there can be adjusted without need of that; you do say existing content could easily be transferred around, but I don't see a reason to think of that as a clean slate.

The dispute above this spun off from I don't think is really dependent on this other proposal - it is the body of sources which dictate the size of the transgender pregnancy article, and how to summarize that here is governed by SUMMARYSTYLE, and any further summary from there, LEAD and DUE. I don't think a dispute about transgender pregnancy is a good starting point or background for a larger rework - in theory, sure, editors can decide to reorganize an article at any time, but this feels like a massive expansion of scope and added burden of work when a more targeted approach is fine. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:41, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting that the entire article should be thought of entirely in SUMMARYSTYLE. However a substantial amount of it, of the 45 sections and subsections 33 are stubs for other pegnancy sub-articles, and so should be written in SUMMARYSTYLE. But as I said above it's not as straightforward as saying "Trim section X, expand section Y", because there are sub-articles that we don't summarise and maybe should, and there are also sub-articles that we summarise for only a single aspect but contain other relevant content.

How would you prefer it to be framed then? Is there another name for an editorial process that would give us the freedom to holistically analyse the content we do and do not have, without the constraints of the existing structure that might be incorrect?

We are not going to re-tread the ground on that specific section, or how to represent it in the lead. Keep that to its own sections above please.

This is also not an exercise in expanding of scope, or increasing the burden of work on other editors. This is about looking at the content we currently have, and the content we currently have available but don't use, and figuring out what is the best way to cover all of the core topics with regards to pregnancy. The core question is, "where are we saying too much about one topic that is already covered in a dedicated article, and where are we saying too little or nothing at all about another". Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:59, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

While I've stated I have no objection to such a proposal, neither do I have the bandwidth (or expertise in the material) to contribute much. I do think the article could benefit from it - it feels like some sections have fallen down scope-creep slopes over time. Try saying "scope-creep slope" fast five times. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 21:45, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

I can see why one might think a TNT approach would work but I also think Sectionworker's concerns are important. I think fixing what we have would probably work better. I'm currently working on a summary type section so we can add the female infertility topic to the article. Springee (talk) 17:16, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Springee, I don't think infertility belongs in this article, other than a brief mention as to the reason why some go through assisted methods to achieve pregnancy. Infertility belongs within the larger concept of fertility and reproduction. But pregnancy is about being pregnant, not not being pregnant. To return to our UNDUE concerns that started this whole edit warring, I don't think sources that discuss pregnancy itself will spend much attention on infertility, though there are plenty resources within the whole domain of fertility and healthcare addressing that. I'm reminded of an old joke where someone revised for their Geography exam by studying all about France. The Geography question asked them to talk about Germany. Their response... "Germany is not like France. France..." -- Colin°^Talk 20:14, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

For those working on the article, I found a bunch of resources at Leeds University: Trans Pregnancy Resources. This is part of their bigger project on Trans Pregnancy. -- Colin°^Talk 14:06, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Edit note wording

The discussion about a choice of hatnote or edit note has moved along and it has become obvious that there is not strong support for a hatnote. Waid has made some suggestions for editor's box wording and knowing that she is one of our most seasoned editors some of us might like to get her response here, and of course the responses of others as well. Sectionworker (talk) 15:12, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

As a practical matter, before an edit notice can be created, we have to agree on the wording. Two sentences that I have suggested are:

"This article uses the word woman to refer to any biological female human who has reached reproductive maturity, regardless of age, gender identity, gender expression, or gender role."
"The word woman should neither be excised completely from the article, nor forced into every paragraph."

I think there were other suggestions as well. The first sentence is more explanatory, but the second might be more relevant for editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:48, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

I'd support the first sentence, and almost support the second one. IMO, while there is a rough consensus for the use of the word "woman" on this article, I think an edit notice that says what the wording should be would be too strongly worded for an edit notice. It's not exactly unreasonable to disagree with our choice of language here (e.g. fascism has an edit notice that bluntly states that fascism is a right-wing ideology and so the article ought to be worded as such, which is sensible because it's basically an unreasonable thing to disagree with).

Would there be a way to reword it from "... should [not] be excised completely from the article" to something more like "there's consensus not to excise it completely from the article" or "do not excise it completely from the article without obtaining consensus"? Endwise (talk) 06:32, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

If the first bullet point means what it says—that 'woman' is inclusive of all listed—then the second sentence is superfluous. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 07:50, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't like how the second sentence relies on an action from -> to, rather than assessing whatever text an editor has written without a care of what was there before. I don't think our content guidelines are written like that, making this more of a behavioural enforcement, about something that AFAIK nobody has ever done (i.e. remove all 100 "woman"/"women" from the article, nor inserted "woman/women" into a paragraph that didn't need it).

The first sentence may be accurate but I don't think it is sufficient. Left on its own, it suggests Wikipedia and the consensus of editors, endorses the view that this is and only is what "woman" means to readers of the article, and any reader taking a different meaning is simply wrong. I get that it is matter-of-fact like the British English edit notice, but nobody has ever had their twitter account disabled nor has left twitter after receiving death threats and hate because they spelled colour wrongly. Clearly editors and readers do come to this page unhappy with this usage of the word "woman", and so a basic notice like this says "We have all decided this is how it is and that it isn't going to change". Which is fine for British English but posting a notice like this all over our sex-related articles is declaring that Wikipedia aligns with gender critical feminists and conservative politicians.

I think it needs something a lot humbler. Perhaps a few here are very happy with a notice saying "You are wrong, go away, we aren't going to let you fix it", but I'm not. We do want editors to realise that if you think you can just dive in and fix it all with some simple edits, then you are being naive. But beyond that, there are more important principles such as being the encyclopaedia anyone can edit and that consensus can change. -- Colin°^Talk 10:47, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

declaring that Wikipedia aligns with gender critical feminists and conservative politicians. Not this again. By this logic the vast majority of MEDRS sources are in thrall to the supposed gender-critical lobby and conservatives. Meanwhile here in the US where this isn't mere language games but we have right-wing politicians pandering to fundamentalists actively trying and succeeding to flat-out ban abortion, and upcoming elections, there's tons of ads in my area by liberal politicians promising to protect "a woman's right to choose" - their words. I guess they're all actually conservative transphobes or something.

Using "woman" in the sense of "female sex" is standard English even now; please stop falsely claiming it is not and casting aspersions like this. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:35, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

The first sentence reads too much like a manifesto commitment to me. I'd rather see something like:

"In line with the sources it cites, this article uses the word woman, as appropriate, to refer to any biological female human who has reached reproductive maturity. No significant change to this terminology should be made without obtaining prior consensus at this article's Talk page." Newimpartial (talk) 10:55, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Goodness me no. No a thousand times. We are not ever, anywhere on Wikipedia, required to pick words "in line with the sources [we] cite". And please, you have adopted Crossroad's misuse of the word "terminology" to refer to ordinary words. Words that may freely come and go as editors naturally write normal English sentences. We can's go making editors nervous that if they write new text or replace text and the word-count of woman/women changes, then they might get hauled off to AN/I and told off for not obtaining prior consensus. Let's please not regulate. Anyone can edit this article. And if someone writes a new paragraph or revises a section and says "pregnant person", there is no consensus here that should stop them. -- Colin°^Talk 11:22, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

My suggestion doesn't say that we have to use the same words as the sources an article cites, it says this article (currently) uses the terms it does to follow the sources it cites: the first clause is essentially descriptive, not normative, and on that it differs from WAID's proposal, above. I don't think my proposal would encourage any word-counting, either, and whatever flowers you might want to see blooming, my sense is that on the whole, editors of this page do not want to see any big terminological shifts without prior consensus, and I think it would be appropriate to warn editors new to the page of what the LOCALCONSENSUS actually is. Newimpartial (talk) 17:26, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

I'd be happy with Newimpartial's suggestion. Regarding Colin above, if someone went and changed every instance of woman to pregnant person, they're going to get reverted regardless, so I think that concern is kind of moot -- the language on this article is going to get 'regulated' either way. Endwise (talk) 16:23, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Editors can't declare things that aren't true, no matter how much they may wish it was true. We frankly have no idea what our sources use the word "woman" to mean, as they don't have a habit of attaching definitions when they use ordinary everyday words. The idea of text being "in line with the sources" is a myth. Look at the Timeline section, which has two sources. I can't read #33 but #32 is accessible to my Google Books search. Our article uses the word "woman" twice but the source does not at all. It isn't "person centred" in its writing style at all. So whoever wrote that section, has chosen to take a person centred approach, to refer to the human being carrying the fertilised egg, and chosen to use the everyday word "woman" to refer to them, likely because that's what popped into their head. They didn't consult a medical dictionary to find out what "terminology" to use when referring to the "biological female human who has reached reproductive maturity". Nor did the use "terminology" in line with our sources. We really need to stop inventing editing rules because we hope they might magically align with our prejudices. -- Colin°^Talk 16:52, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Are you disputing that a significant proportion of the sources used in this article refer to (biologically) female people who have reached reproductive maturity as "women"? And do you not think this is how WP uses that word in this article? I don't see any magic or any prejudice in those two statements. And note that I am *not* making the argument you straw-goated earlier that we have to use the same terms our sources do; one of the reasons that doesn't work is that, in the context of a single article, it is better wiki-style to use the same terms to mean the same things, which may not be true of the sources of the individual sections. Rather, I am making the much more general statement that this article relies on its corpus of sources in (often) referring to potentially fertile people as "women", much as I personally sympathize more with the minority of sources that don't employ this usage. Is there really any question about this? Not all sources on this topic use "women" to refer to all potentially fertile people, but it seems obvious to me that many do so. Newimpartial (talk) 17:34, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Might I suggest that if it has taken you this number of words to explain you didn't mean what you wrote, that perhaps the problem is with what you wrote. Honestly, Newimpartial, I thought your account had got hacked.

Anyway trying to rationalise why editors over the years have chosen to use or not use (which is much harder to identify) ordinary everyday words, by referring to a "corpus of sources" is I think over thinking how articles get written. The article uses the word women/woman because that's still natural writing for many but not all editors. I don't think editors can invent consensus of editing practice that goes against Wikipedia practice and policy.

I suspect that if I had reworded the Timeline section to be gender neutral and said as much in my edit summary, I'd have been reverted and lectured about "WP:STICKTOSOURCES", and indeed pointed at an edit notice that says "In line with the sources it cites, this article uses the word woman". Which of course would be ironic since the sources cited there don't use the word woman. This is why it is nonsense.

Are you, Newimpartial, really suggesting that if an editor writes or revises a major section in this article, and happens, even once, to write "pregnant people", that you would support it being changed to "pregnant woman" per "the corpus of sources". If so, we might as well give up. -- Colin°^Talk 17:50, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

No, of course not. For one thing, usage depends on context, which is why "as appropriate" is specified in my proposal. Now back to the straw goat theme, your bolded excerpt doesn't include what "woman" is used to mean, or that it is to be used "as appropriate", and you also aren't grokking that it refers to changing terminology in the article. If a section were to be added about public health guidance about vaccines and pregnancy in Canada - which is niche, but is an example where the RS consistently use "pregnant person" - the use of "pregnant person" there wouldn't be a change and wouldn't trigger the prior consensus practice proposed in the notice.

And just to be clear, I am not inventing a consensus of editing practice; I am reflecting what many editors of this and related pages say they are actually doing. IMO one isn't inappropriately "conceding" anything to a local consensus by recognizing that it exists, at least not when it is staring one in the face. Newimpartial (talk) 18:02, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Newimpartial, I am "grokking" what you wrote. There are several ways to read what you wrote. There's the meaning you intended, which only you know and we can guess. There's also a meaning most people might take from it if you published it, and to gauge that, you need to listen to what other people say about it, even if you think they are wrong. And there's a meaning your opponents will take from it, which could be evidenced from support by editors who strongly disagree with you. What you wrote is IMO very unlikely to be interpreted to your liking, and can be, like I deliberately did, taken out of context to force the word "women" into a paragraph. I don't know what a "straw goat" is. The word "as appropriate" helps nobody as the whole question of whether "woman" or "person" or some other variant is "appropriate" is the problem itself. -- Colin°^Talk 11:07, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Well, Colin, it is the nature of relatively neutral, less normative language that it can be deployed for different purposes by people with differing POV; that isn't necessarily a "bug". But your argument that, essentially, editors can quote it selectively for their own purposes while leaving key text out - well, that isn't really a relevant critique of an edit notice IMO. (The idea that editors should only create notices none of the text of which can be quoted out of context by bad actors seems to be an excessively high bar.)

As far as listening to different voices concerning my draft text: I hear you objecting to it for one reason, I hear Crossroads objecting for a diametrically opposed reason, and I hear a few editors supporting it. Do you think I have missed anything material in that quick precis? (And FYI,

Straw goats are constructed, and burn, just like straw men.) Newimpartial (talk) 12:38, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

You can of course choose to ignore the advice of people who are on your side if you wish. Your notice will be cited as evidence of consensus that (a) our article words are compelled to be kept "in line" with our sources (b) the word "woman" is "terminology" (c) that editors must use the word "women" in this article and cannot deviate from that without first seeking consensus and (d) all use and meaning of the word "women" currently in the article is appropriate (because you just said it was used "as appropriate", thus confirming your entire acceptance of the status quo) You might disagree with all four of those but then everyone will point out that it is your wording, and it is a rather weak argument to claim you didn't mean what you wrote. I can only repeat that if you want that as an edit notice, I wonder why you or I have been wasting our time suggesting Crossroads was incorrect to assume the status quo was "good enough" and "finally settled". -- Colin°^Talk 15:05, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

I haven't seen any other editor interpret my draft note the way you have, so it feels like you havw constructed a straw goat even of that was not your ontention. I understand that you feel people would interptet my proposed text in ancertain way, but that really does seem to be "just a feeling". Newimpartial (talk) 00:28, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Colin's prediction that "as appropriate" would be misunderstood as meaning "as is appropriate". If you meant "when appropriate", changing the first word would be clearer. (But that will set us up for discussions about when it's appropriate, with some trans-inclusive editors suggesting that it isn't usually appropriate.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:33, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

since the sources cited there don't use the word woman - nope, incorrect on both counts. This source uses "women" right in the first paragraph (to appropriately counsel women). And this, when I click on preview and scroll to page 48, it is involved in highly-technical cellular-level discussion, but a mere two pages later on page 50, it states as problems to solve, What are the primary causes of infertility in men and women? and A woman has had several bouts of pelvic inflammatory disease...she has been having difficulty becoming pregnant.

We also expect articles to be consistent within themselves in matters of style, per MOS:CONSISTENT. Of course, if a specific bit is talking about transgender people, or is a special case like text attributed to Canadian public health authorities on Covid-19 vaccines and pregnancy, that's one thing, but there is no justification to jump around within an article from "woman" to "pregnant person" when talking about female-sexed individuals in general. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:53, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

You are seriously suggesting that if a source happens to use the word "woman" once entirely elsewhere on the page, and not actually in the sentences supporting our article text, that this compels us to use the word. Perhaps next you might suggest we need to include the words "Section 2 Chapter 4" on our article, because those appear on the page. MOS:CONSISTENT is nothing to do with the choice of everyday words, but thanks for another addition to my collection of WP:UPPERCASE that get cited in the hope that the abbreviation alone might settle an argument. This isn't a regional variety of English nor a matter of mere spelling. The article currently uses fetus/baby uterus/womb gestate/develop viable/survive outside, etc, etc. These are all "terms" where editors will make choices about what is best to use and often are likely to quite interchangeable. Someone copyediting the article, who doesn't even read any of the sources, might switch one for another. This is entirely normal. Crossroads, please can you stick to arguing for your personal opinion on language choices, rather than inventing all sorts of supposed policy/guideline reasons that just happen to support your preference. I repeat that it is disruptive and not conducive to consensus-forming. -- Colin°^Talk 11:31, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Strawmen much? And "pregnant people", "person with a uterus", and so on as general terms is indeed part of a particular style of writing and is not an interchangeable word in the language in general - as evidenced by all authorities on the language and lack of use in RS. My arguments are not any more disruptive than a persistent ultra-libertarian 'anything-goes' attitude toward writing in which people can write however they want, simply because they want to, sources and standard English and consistency be damned. Crossroads ^-talk- 19:43, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

And I should add that I'm totally cool with the fact that the editor took a person-centred general-reader friendly approach to writing that section. Wikipedia is not a dictionary for medical professionals nor an embryology textbook for medical students. We are going to write differently to our sources and that is a good thing. The concept that our sources dictate our words is a myth invented by people arguing about what words to use who pluck arguments out of their heads without first testing them against reality. -- Colin°^Talk 17:00, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Once again, we are in the midst of massive amounts of verbiage as different POV's spar. This isn't a knock on it per se, as—when I do participate on these rare occasions—my bloviations know few boundaries. However, I'm going to quote myself in this rare instance, from a comment I wrote not too long ago which is now shockingly a third of the way up this page: "We may be at a point of requiring an Rfc, or some other mechanism (I don't keep up on all the TLA's used for dealing with content disputes) to either gain a consensus or resolve the dispute adequately and amicably."

Consensus, for better or worse, is how things stand or fall on Wikipedia. This is as close to canon as exists on wikipedia, I think few would disagree. While I'm in no position to 'put my foot' down and insist on this, as we're peers here, It seems eminently obvious that consensus is not being found in endless discussions on this matter, that stretch back into the archives.

I am the least qualified person here to manage, monitor, and tally Rfc's or whatever formal mechanism is used on a regular basis. I prefer to edit, not manage, monitor, and tally. So I'll be the non-anonymous-coward who hopes someone else will "step up to the plate".

Consensus requires compromise. Compromise requires compassion. Compassion requires empathy. Without empathy, all is lost (as the arc of human history demonstrates). I, personally, strongly disagree with much of the modern gender-based ideology in current discourse (I'm likely describing it in terms others will dispute - that's fine, but you understand what I'm getting at, I presume). That, plus five bucks, buys me a pumpkin spice latte, or some such. We may disagree in good faith as good people. Let's keep that foremost in mind as we try to find compromises.

I strongly urge us to move in the direction of formal consensus building. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 19:11, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Whyyyyyy did people resurrect this again? Everything was perfectly fine and stable and this discussion had ended. This is an (attempted) solution in search of a problem; there are hardly any edits making such attempts anyway, and in the rare case they do, it is easy enough to revert and explain why. We have already spent many, many times more effort on this hypothetical edit notice than it would take to simply explain in such cases.

Statements like Let's please not regulate. Anyone can edit this article. are non sequiturs; that anyone can click "edit" has absolutely nothing to do with what happens to their edit after the fact. In fact, there are lots of regulations on Wikipedia - as there needs to be so articles don't become a bizarre incoherent mess. Anyone can propose anything, but not 'anything goes'. Not at all. And this is as true of "pregnant person" and "gestational parent" as it is of "PBUH", "womxn", and "Latinx".

More succinctly: the article does not need an edit notice and attempting to write one is obviously futile and a waste of time. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:25, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

To answer the question, "Whyyyyy did I resurrect this again?, well you clearly believe that I must be some sort of a morrrron. I'm not. You don't work on this article. I do. I've been here since 1910. I remember when the pregnant naked lady lead photo was deleted by none other than our fearless leader. I like to use my head and my heart for my edits to my pregnancy and related articles but I try to not have my heart push my head aside. I want some rules to follow that will guide me. A ways up someone commented about what our readers want to find in this article. I don't agree with their guess. I say guess because that's what it is. I think our readers come here for what they think is an encyclopedia version of pregnancy, not a forum where they can discuss their morning sickness, etc. We've all seen that on the talk pages--a person will ask a question and we will explain that they need to ask elsewhere because we are an encyclopedia, not a help site. So far Newimpartial seems to make the most sense to me here. Sectionworker (talk) 23:31, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

To be clear I wasn't referring to you - your comment at the top of this section is quite a bit older. Rather, there had been no commentary here for days and I thought it was finally settled that the status quo was good enough, and that we couldn't all agree on an edit notice anyway, and then it all erupts again today with more attempts to beat this dead horse (as I see it). Sorry, but it feels frustrating. I appreciate your work on this article, and I do watchlist it just so I can help a little with vandalism or formatting-type stuff, and small edits and checks. I think we so far largely agree on terminology in general and not removing "woman" so I hope we can get along again even if we don't agree on everything. Crossroads ^-talk- 23:38, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

I realize that you are attempting to be kind and understanding of my position but you are not...not at all... This was all settled for you, I understand that: just change any stray "person" terminology and explain using the rationale that you have used. It's not a dead horse for me. I accept your position but you seem unable to accept mine. I believe that we are moving towards a AfC. It needs to be set up with care. Sectionworker (talk) 00:06, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Crossroads, I get that you are more comfortable simply making reverts justified by your own unilateral declarations of "consensus"/"community practices"/"strong feelings of rectitude". Others of us would like to communicate an actually existing consensus (even if fragile) to new editors, rather than taking an "agent orange in the morning" approach to proposed changes with which we disagree. Newimpartial (talk) 00:34, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

I think that "I thought it was finally settled that the status quo was good enough" entirely sums up the lack of will by some editors to seek a consensus solution and a determination that conservative advocacy shall prevail. I'm pessimistic however, that we will reach a decisive consensus, nor would we be wise to launch some big RFC, because this matter is political culture war and we'd only bring that culture war here. I'm not against an edit notice but not sure how to word one. I don't want a notice that declares a fait accompli. Further up, Crossroads took issue with me saying this was "declaring that Wikipedia aligns with gender critical feminists and conservative politicians". I'm not for a moment suggesting that the authors of this article and the authors of our sources, over the years, are all gender critical or conservative. The way of writing in this article is quite normal. The problem is if we declare that this way of writing is faultless, justifiable, and will not and should not change, we are aligning with activists and advocates of gender critical feminism and right wing conservative politics. And that is neither neutral nor does it reflect that Wikipedia is written by a variety of editors with a variety of beliefs on this matter. That, over the years, good faith editors have demonstrated in their edits and requests that they would like it to change, is evidence enough that the "status quo" is not "good enough". Fixing it is a hard problem, however.

I'm very pleased to see the edits today by Sectionworker, that includes transgender men in the lead paragraph. I think that is a useful help. -- Colin°^Talk 11:51, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm glad you like it. I think it's good in the lead because the two groups of people that hold an interest in transgender pregnancy are the ones who read or heard about it and are coming here for more information and those trans people who are wondering about pregnancy for transgender people. The statement that the actual pregnancy is similar to that of cisgender people shows that this article is for them as well as cisgender people. I am feeling positive that we may come to an agreement on the edit note wording. with the new lead wording I think we may have just as good or better chance than a AfC to come to a good decision for all or most of us. Sectionworker (talk) 15:20, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

The problem is if we declare that this way of writing is faultless, justifiable, and will not and should not change, we are aligning with activists and advocates of gender critical feminism and right wing conservative politics. So we can write a certain way, but nobody can support it lest they be tarred as a transphobe, apparently. This remains aspersions and guilt-by-association. And the fact that a few people occasionally try to change it or have different "beliefs" is entirely immaterial to this matter, just as it is for Islamic honorifics and so on - or anything that goes against house style or sources. We will never, ever please everyone, so any argument premised on 'people would like to change it so the status quo isn't good enough' needs to go. Crossroads ^-talk- 19:32, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

The editor who just called me an "ultra-libertarian" (I suppose if you are going to repeatedly say things that are untrue on this page, might as well go for it big time, like some washed-up politician's twitter claim tonight that "I got 102 supporters and would have won it") just reverted you per WP:UNDUE. Once again repeating the offensive remark that we should ignore trans people for the same reason we ignore people with missing anatomy. Wikipedia:Activist is worth reading ("Activists will routinely cite UNDUE WEIGHT to remove views as too minority... Only the activists' views will be sufficiently weighty."), or my own comments at User talk:WhatamIdoing/Sandbox 4#Avoiding a trans hostile environment. -- Colin°^Talk 22:32, 23 October 2022 (UTC)