my rule of thumb with gender-neutral body language is to try to make as few claims as possible about the people whose bodies you’re discussing. So “cancer screenings for women” < “cancer screenings for people with cervixes” < “cervical cancer screenings”.
This 1) helps prevent over-specifying as in “people with vaginas who can get pregnant” and 2) generally leaves you with the simplest, clearest, and most concise version of what you were trying to say. I’m sure I could also come up with a social justicey way to explain the preference but seriously don’t you just want your language to be efficient and precise?
Of course there are times when you need to make claims about a person (eg. “anyone who has a cervix can develop cervical cancer”) but you can still make things easier by asking yourself ‘am I specifying anything here that I don’t need to?’
There are other reasons why this kind of concise language is beneficial, and it benefits EVERYONE.
Okay so… cancer screenings for women. Cervical? Breast? Something else? There are very different screenings involved here, so “cervical cancer screenings” is also just plain a lot more clear about what you’re doing.
“anyone who has a cervix can develop cervical cancer” - the alternative gendered version would be, presumably, that “every woman can get cervical cancer” but I am a woman by most people’s assumptions irl, so misunderstandings about my gender aside I assume they are talking about me given my general anatomy, but I do not have a cervix anymore. So again, this is… a lot clearer. Something that may be obvious to me, but there is other advice that… often doesn’t specify beyond vague gendered expressions and it actually makes a difference to me whether the issue is anatomical, hormonal, or other because some of those components are more relevant to me than others.
By the same token, “people who menstruate” makes sense when we are talking specifically about menstrual products, “people who can get pregnant” is relevant when talking about pregnancy-related issues, but if you use that to, say, talk about something going on with the ovaries then that’s a problem. Because I cannot get pregnant nor can I menstruate, but I DO have ovaries so I need to know if the condition you are talking about relates to the having of ovaries or to one of those other things (incidentally, I have since found out that as most ovarian cancer starts in the fallopian tubes, now that I do not have those I am, in fact, at lower risk for ovarian cancer so many thanks to whoever it was that informed me of that!)
…idk how much sense my additions are making because I am sick right now but tldr this kind of clarity of language is good for both trans AND cis people so even if you don’t give a damn about trans folks (although if you don’t why are you on my blog?) using this kind of language is actually better.