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I post this letter written to Alberta Health Services regarding the experience one Albertan woman had in the context of the language being used in a letter to her regarding pap testing.  She has given me permission to reprint her letter in hopes that more Albertan women will also write to Alberta Health Services or the Alberta Public Ombudsmen to tell them in no uncertain terms that erasing females from our healthcare system is an unacceptable practice.

   “To Whom It May Concern,

     I hope this finds you well. I am lodging a formal complaint re: the language used in a recent letter from the AHS in regards to pap testing.

      The letter asks, “Who should have a pap test?” and the answer is “women and people with a cervix”. All “people with cervixes” are women so this sub setting of women informs me that AHS is now practicing Gender Ideology as opposed to neutral, clear and scientific language one expects from an institution dealing with medicine. As the AHS now defines women as an identity what the author should have written was “cis women and people with cervixes”. That would clarify for all readers that the AHS has joined the zeitgeist which allows men to identify as women, teaches children they have a “gender identity”, and dehumanizes women by “queering” our language from mothers to “birthing parents”.

      I AM a woman.

     I do not identify as a woman. I do not like the word “woman” being disappeared in order to be more “inclusive”. Inclusive to who? Not to me. Not to women from religions who do not believe in “gender” and/or whose beliefs dictate a separation of men from women in public spaces. Not to women with mental health issues like Dementia or Alzheimer’s. Not to women who have depression and anxiety as girls and women are called dehumanizing/disassociative terms like “bleeders”, “menstruators”, “birthing bodies”, “pregnant people”, “bodies with a vagina”, “cervix owners”, “chest feeders”, “womb carriers” etc. by institutions supposedly serving our health & the health of our children.

     And this adaptation does not serve women and girls for whom English is a second language and who already have far more challenges navigating a medical lingo which is now also “queering language” in the name of equity. I assume that this wording was brought in as a part of a formal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policy. Yet the vast majority of indigenous women generally do not like being called “native womb carriers” and many black women are not overly fond of being called “black birthing bodies”, both terms I have recently seen used by institutions in the medicine and publishing fields.

     Ostensibly this linguistic split is to support the women and girls identifying out of their sex class and into Identitarianism, a belief system which all of society, no matter what reasons they have to resist, are being made to affirm. While this is being framed as a help to women/girls who it really helps is men who now can identify into every sphere of the hard-won sex-based rights of girls and women with no more than a magical declaration: “I am a woman.” It is via this linguistic practice that a woman who was raped in BC was compelled by the court to call the man who raped her by “she” and “her” pronouns while giving her testimony.

     In the same vein, convicted rapists and violent men are now living in women’s prisons throughout Canada where, if we’re interested in Equity, indigenous women are very over represented. So, were putting rapists and violent men into prisons to bunk down with the indigenous women we’re supposed to be practicing reconciliation with? That seems counter intuitive!

    This process of identifying also allows men/boys access to any women/girl’s sex-based space or sport. For example, in the US this weekend a 29-year-old man (ranked 838th in the men’s division) stole a woman’s skateboarding title & prize money from a 13-year-old girl because he identifies as a woman. That couldn’t happen without Gender Ideology, an ideology which the AHS is now promoting in it’s communications. As the AHS serves all women and girls, it would also do well to remember the lesbian population. When the AHS practices Gender Ideology by reframing women as an identity you cement a belief system where men are women on demand.

     So heterosexual men who identify as women now demand sexual relations from lesbians under the auspices of “breaking the cotton ceiling”. When those women have to courage to refuse, they are called bigots and transphobes. Sometimes they lose their jobs and are cancelled. Sometimes, as in the case of Allison Bailey, a black lesbian barrister in the UK, you have to go to court for stating the truth. Finally, did it occur to anyone at the AHS that women with cervix cancer themselves might be upset at the term “people with a cervix”.

     Every girl and women on this planet understands the immense challenges of our sex but to be dehumanized from the material reality of being a woman when fighting for your life because you are a woman is a grotesque charade. Shame on the AHS for adopting and enforcing this de-facto religion which is both misogynistic and anti reality. This belief system is decoupling our youth and mentally ill from reality and turning them into life long medical patients because of a supposed “identity” and forcing all of us, even women fighting cervical cancer, to go along with it.”

We have to act now folks.  This toxic gender ideology will not go away on its on.