Our Call To Action Reached Penn Med

Your objections to their erasure of women were heard

In November, we published a Call To Action encouraging our readers to contact Penn Med to ask then to stop erasing women.

Their article Pregnancy Complications Tied to Higher Risk of Death as long as 50 Years Later, omits the word “women” and replaces it with “people who have given birth”, “people with complicated pregnancies and deliveries”. Black women are referred to “black pregnant people”.

In our CTA, we asked you all to contact Frank Otto, the communications point person, to object to the misogynistic erasure of women in their fealty to kowtow to a woefully harmful ideology.

We’re absolutely heartened that many of you followed up to let us know you did contact Frank Otto. In fact, one of our readers reached Otto by phone and he admitted he was confused why he was receiving pushback. He further let on that he didn’t even understand the issues and conflicts between gender ideology and women’s rights and its subsequent erasure of women.

We are grateful to our reader for sharing permission to recount her phone call with Otto.

I wanted to let you know, that after I left a message on his voicemail (after reading your post about Penn Medicine's press release) I had a conversation with him.

Having read Kathleen Stock's Material Girls,I had some acquaintance with the arguments against gender ideology which I had listed in my message.  To my shock, within a few minutes, my phone rang with a call from the number I'd just spoken to!

It was Frank Otto, who asked me what this was all about, (as reagards) the emails and phone messages he was getting?  He seemed quite bewildered. We had a 20 minute call where I tried to do my best Kathleen Stock imitation.  She is the most self-composed, bemused person I have ever listened to; she is simply magnificent.

He became testy at points and conciliatory at others. The conversation ended with him thanking me for helping him to understand where women are coming from about this, believe it or not!

I thought you might like to know about my small attempt and the result of it. I suddenly just thought of Holly Near's "The Rock Will Wear Away" which I heard Meg Christian perform in the fall of 1978:

"Can we be like drops of water falling on the stone

Splashing, breaking, dispersing in air

Weaker than the stone by far but be aware

That as time goes by the rock will wear away

And the water comes again"

Thank you Dear Readers for your efforts to voice your objections and concerns. Your voices matter!

What we’ve learned from this phone call, is that many administrators are cluelessly operating like drones, following along with what trans activists and gender ideologues tell them, and without the slightest clue why or how much harm their actions have on women and children.

At Woman: Adult Human Female, we are glad our efforts have raised some awareness. Unfortunately, the Penn Med article has not been edited or changed in anyway. The troublesome disregard for women and the concilliatory “trans” directed language is still online.

Since the recent controversial resignation of UPenn’s president Liz McGill, Penn has appointed Larry Jameson, Dean of Penn Med, as the university’s interim president. This may well consolidate and propogate Penn Med’s erasure of women.

Our Call to Action today: we urge you to contact again contact Frank Otto to express your concern and outrage.

Call him. Email him. You can do so anonymously with a burner account.

Francis.Otto@pennmedicine.upenn.edu or (267) 693-2999

Reach out and share your own language, or, if it’s easier, use our template below. This is similiar to the template we provided in our CTA in November, and with additional statements referencing recent public outrage against Penn’s loss of moral compass.

Thank you all and keep up the good work!

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Email Template:

Mr. Frank Otto,

I am emailing you in regard to the Penn Medicine new’s release entitled “Pregnancy Complications Tied to Higher Risk of Death As Long As 50 Years Later” published March 14, 2023.

Given recent news events, exploding across the nation, reflecting Penn’s loss of moral compass, I am encouraging you to take women’s health and wellbeing seriously and to rethink and rectify your university’s, and Penn Med’s, capitulation to non-scientific gender based ideology over and above sex based guidelines that promote and safeguards women and girls. To erase the word woman from langugae, you erase her very existnece and sex specific needs. How can women benefit from Penn Med’s guidance if they do not read the word woman or mother among your health directives? They can’t. Rather they are and will continue to be harmed by the omission of the word woman and mother.

To read an article about the risks and causes of death that are exclusive to women, without seeing the word “women” or “female” once, is galling. Pregnancy and childbirth are extremely dangerous for women, even in America. This is an issue that only women face. Do not succumb to the Orwellian altering of language to obscure the definition and facts of what a woman is.

By completely omitting sex specific language, and categorizing pregnancy as a risk that happens to some “people”, your article undermines the fact that pregnancy is first and foremost a women's issue. This article about women, erases the word woman in favor of fashionable, yet incoherent, terminology. Penn’s refusal to acknowledge women is not “inclusive”. Rather, it is sexist and discriminatory. The article feigns ignorance when it removes the word women and the fact of mothers from medical issues concerning pregnancy. It reads as Ideological capture of your scientific institution, to curry favor with a tiny percentage of highly outspoken, well funded “transgender” organizations. To do so on issues that only pertain to biological women, is not only disingenuous, but dangerous. You have made it clear to women that they can be deprioritized on a medical issue that impacts them to the point of death.

What you and Penn Med have done is politicize what should be politically neutral. In doing so you sow confusion among the women that may benefit from this information while contributing to the erosion of public trust toward your medical institution. Although the population of women are politically diverse from left to right, Penn Med has chosen to impose a specific political and ideological agenda to the exclusion of all women.

I am asking you to please respect women and our unique medical needs. The word women is already inclusive as it includes half the population the half that face pregnancy and childbirth.  

This article has been on your website for nearly a year. Larry Jameson, Dean of Penn Med, under whose term this erasure of women occurred, is now the interim president of your entire university. Penn is sending a strong signal to women that the institution has lost its way and furthermore subordinated the welfare of all women to the interests of a few non-scientific bullies.

I implore you to stop erasing women as a sex based class of human beings. Please amend and update your materials to include and support women.

Thank you for your time. 

[Signed]