The generic "you" is a useful tool for writing inclusively

With reproductive health in the news lately, I'm seeing a lot of people diligently endeavouring to make their statements about bodies and anatomy as inclusive as possible, including inclusive of trans and non-binary people. This leads to phrases like "birthing parent" and "uterus-havers", which sound awkward, and can make the cause of inclusive language seem less credible to people who aren't already on side.

 

This makes me think of the 90s, when adults around me would often express contempt for inclusive language by performatively making it conspicuously unwieldy. "Firemen? No, wait, that isn't politically correct...firewomen? Firepeople??" Making a big noisy fuss of how inclusive language is OMG SO HARD while completely disregarding the perfectly cromulent word "firefighters". 

I think the attempts to use inclusive language for reproductive health might sometimes come across this way. 

 

In the specific case of recent inclusive reproductive health discourse, I can tell that the speakers' intentions are benign and they genuinely want to be inclusive. Sometimes they're deliberately aiming for conspicuousness, but sometimes they can't think of a less awkward way to phrase it, and the awkwardness might distract from or detract from their important point.

 

In these situations, where you want to be inclusive but can't think of a simple way to do so, a useful tool can be the generic "you".

 

Example:

Original: "Masks are mandatory in our birth centre. Mothers can remove their masks while in labour."

Attempt to make it inclusive: "Masks are mandatory in our birth centre. Birthing parents can remove their masks while in labour."

With the generic "you": "Mask are mandatory in our birth centre. You can remove your mask while you are in labour."

This is clear. It's inconspicuous. And it's inclusive - by which I mean not just that it includes anyone who might be in labour and while not being a woman or a mother, but also it specifically includes the reader (and, thereby, includes everyone). 

 

One objection to gender-inclusive language that I hear, most often from cis women, is that they feel that excluded when women are not specifically mentioned. Using the generic "you" helps mitigate this by addressing the reader directly. How could you feel excluded if I'm talking directly to you?

 

Of course, there are cases where the right communication strategy is to be conspicuously inclusive, even if the phrasing is awkward. Sometimes the situation does in fact call for a big showy show of the fact that not everyone who gives birth is a woman.

And sometimes the right communication strategy is to be inconspicuously inclusive, to make it no big deal that someone who is not a woman might be giving birth. The generic "you" can help you do that.