Canada’s top public health official Dr. Theresa Tam tweeted on Tuesday advising “pregnant people” and children under 5 to get their flu shots.
Twitter users were quick to criticize Dr. Tam for using the term “pregnant people” instead of simply referring to pregnant women.
“It’s pregnant women. Stop erasing women,” wrote one Twitter user.
“I keep trying to get pregnant but to no avail. What am I doing wrong?” said another commentator.
Tam’s language echoes the Liberal government’s push towards “gender-inclusivity.”
In 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau interrupted a woman during a town hall to correct her for using the common word “mankind.”
During the correction, the prime minister lectured the woman that the politically correct and gender-inclusive term “peoplekind” was more appropriate.
Eventually, the prime minister backtracked on the comment calling it a “dumb joke.”
Similarly, in British Columbia, a recently published coronavirus language guide by the BC Centre for Disease Control (BC CDC) advises people to use “inclusive” language when talking about the virus and other health issues.
In the guide, the BC CDC lectures Canadians to not use terms like “men and women” or “guys” since they are allegedly not “gender inclusive.”
“The phrase ‘men and women’ excludes non-binary people, and it is unclear whether it includes trans men and women. And ‘guys” is not gender inclusive – people, everyone, folks, or folx are gender-neutral and thereby inclusive.”
Furthermore, the guide similarly suggests that people avoid talking about referring to penises or vaginas and to instead say “internal genitals” and “external genitals.”
