The Word is Woman #41
Documenting the erasure of women from language and life.
Welcome to the Issue #41 of The Word is Woman, a weekly section of my substack where I document examples of the erasure of women from both language and public life.
For the past three years, ever since I spoke out about language changes in maternity such as ‘birthing people’, I have been sent hundreds of examples of convolutions of language in which the word woman is erased and replaced in the name of so-called ‘inclusivity’. Uterus owners, menstruators, non-men, bleeders, birthers, and even bodies with vaginas…the list of names we have been called and continue to be called is a seemingly endless catalogue of offence.
At the same time, we are seeing male people taking the place of women on sporting podiums and in public roles, and also being applauded as the ‘first woman’ to achieve a certain award or accomplishment, or the ‘best female’ or ‘woman of the year’ in their field.
The Word is Woman is a place to keep track.
So here is this week’s The Word is Woman for the week ending 14th June 2024.
Well the good news of the week, for me at least, was that my instagram account got reinstated, and today I learned that Sex Matters are also back up and running. Who knows how this all happened - perhaps a rogue algorithm or a rogue employee - whatever it was, it goes to show what power these big platforms wield, and slightly puts you off bothering lining their pockets with your awesome content, only for them to crush you, wanton boy style, for their sport. At least here on substack I have some ‘ownership’ over my list of subscribers (apparently your email addresses all belong to me not the platform) but one wonders if even that could be changed on a whim.
In online life as in off, all we can really be sure of is the present moment, so while we’re all still here let’s just be glad I’ve got the gifs working again and dive in to some of the atrocious muppetry of the past seven days of woman erasure. YEAH!
First up, the Lancet. Remember the Lancet?
This was their cover back in September 2020, lest we forget.
This week they published a new series on pregnancy and rheumatic diseases, but there was a word missing…
One person on twitter asked them if there were any women involved in the study, and one of the researchers replied, following which some good points were made worth preserving:
The trade union Community want to talk about the MENopause at work, but there’s a word they don’t want to say.
Decoupling the concept of ‘woman’ from female biology is entirely the agenda of male people who want to be seen as women but for whom periods, breastfeeding, pregnancy and menopause are a very vivid, visceral barrier to that impossible goal. Once these experiences are rebranded as thing that happen to ‘people’, rather than those pesky ‘women’, their claim that they actually ARE women becomes that little bit easier to make. Organisations performing linguistic erasure think they are serving females who want to be seen as male and who may be hurt by seeing the word ‘woman’. But in reality, the only thing they are serving is male entitlement.
I made points along these lines on a podcast this week. (It’s a shame the sound quality my end wasn’t very good, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. They introduce me about 12 minutes in.)
So keen are these women to pander to the desires of men that they will even erase the herculean efforts of women who breastfeed from the record, and pretend this work is done by ‘families’.
And I bet you’re wondering what La Leche League are up to? Oh well, therein lies a tale, still to come in a future edition, but for now, I bring you the new cover of their classic text, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding.
Not only have they changed the title, but they’ve also got a man on the cover. And yes I know, men / dads help with breastfeeding, are in the background supporting, it takes a village yes yes yada yada. But given the backstory with LLL, and their absolute determination to include men, even the ones who want to try and lactate, plus the removal of the word ‘womanly’ from the cover, it jars a bit. Plus it’s a missed opportunity to show another woman breastfeeding, which ought to be their entire raison d’etre, but clearly isn’t.
Men can’t breastfeed, but try telling that to the folx at Breastfeeding Buddies.
According to the caption, “All bodies come equipped with milk making tissue which - when given the right circumstances & stimulation - can produce a full supply of milk or a partial supply complimented by combination feeding.” This is absolutely untrue by the way - no male has ever been able to produce more than a tiny amount of white fluid from his nipple even with pharmacological support and extensive effort. Only women can keep a child alive with tailor-made milk from the breast. But you know all this.
This one from World Midwives was a chin scratcher.
The midwife is female. But the person on the bed, who looks like they might be just about to get a pelvic exam?
I leave you this week with this little girl from tiktok, who I think speaks for all of us…
Have a wonderful weekend and see you next week!
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This substack is the ‘lite’ version at the moment because I’m working flat out on a book. It’s all about ultra processed food and women. It’s out next February but you can preorder it already!
“ Organisations performing linguistic erasure think they are serving females who want to be seen as male and who may be hurt by seeing the word ‘woman’. But in reality, the only thing they are serving is male entitlement.” Yes! This can’t be said often enough. It has no effect on those women who claim to be not-women….they *all* know they’re women anyway.
It harms women, and benefits men, who can then be outraged and even abusive at the women who don’t obey these new rules. Lovely for them.
What a bloody deranged mess! The very last thing men need is to have their misplaced envy and resentment of women for our reproductive capacity pandered to in this way. A lot of transwidows report that their pregnancy triggered this resentment in their crossdressing partners, and people researching in the domestic violence field similarly report that pregnancy and childbirth often triggers male violence against their partners with the attention shifted off them and onto the woman. So it's a disaster - and often a danger - for the women involved too, of course. But what is this now comical level of pandering to the increasingly fragile and distorted male ego teaching our young men? That's the social disaster unfolding, along with abusive porn and Incel culture, that I fear is going to be the end of us all if we can't expose it for what it is and work to STOP IT ALREADY!