A Harvard University professor has been accused of transphobia after refusing to say "pregnant people".
Carole Hooven, 55, who has worked at Harvard for over two decades, has slammed the move towards more inclusive language among academics including the use of phrases like "pregnant people" in a new interview with Fox News.
Hooven, the author of T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us, said that she is frustrated about how the language around gender has gradually changed over "the last five years or so."
Hooven told Fox News: "This kind of ideology has been infiltrating science. It's infiltrating my classroom, to some extent. I've been feeling pretty frustrated over the last five years or so. It's been gradual.
"Part of that science is teaching the facts. And the facts are that there are in fact two sexes - there are male and female - and those sexes are designated by the kind of gametes we produce.
"Do we make eggs, big sex cells, or little sex cells, sperm? And that's how we know whether someone is male or female."
"And the ideology seems to be that biology really isn't as important as how somebody feels about themselves, or feels their sex to be," she concluded.
Now, Hooven has come under fire for her remarks, which have been deemed transphobic by Laura Simone Lewis, the director of the department's Diversity and Inclusion Task Force.
Taking to Twitter, she said that she was "appalled and dismayed" by Hooven's "transphobic and harmful remarks."
Lewis explained that terms like "pregnant people" are important to use because they are inclusive and show "respect for EVERYONE who has the ability to get pregnant, not just cis women."
She added: "It is vital to teach med students gender-inclusive language, as they will certainly interact with people that identify outside the gender binary."
Lewis said that while she has respect for Hooven "as a colleague and scientist", she said that the "dangerous language" she used in her interview with Fox News "perpetuates a system of discrimination against non-cis people within the med system."
