The Darlington Nurses have forced our sexist world to listen to women
We won't be redefined, gaslit, and ignored - thanks to their courage
Friday is usually the day that I publish The Word is Woman, a section of this substack where I document examples of changes to language that erase the word ‘woman’ in an attempt to redefine it and make it into a label that can apply to anyone. You can find hundreds of examples of this in the Word is Woman archive, which has 83 editions and goes all the way back to the summer of 2023.
And here’s a hot off the press example I’ve been sent only today. Humber College in Toronto are running a course to become in IBCLC (breastfeeding consultant). Here’s their first assignment, in which the word woman is replaced with ‘human milk feeding person’.
The reason I’ve devoted so much time to documenting this is because a) there was / is a lot of denial that this erasure is happening and b) language matters, and you cannot protect what you cannot define.
Each one of the hundreds of examples in The Word is Woman has had the same slow drip effect, eroding the meaning of ‘woman’ one cervix owner, birthing person or menstruator at at time. The claim is that these linguistic changes protect the feelings of women with gender confusion who don’t want to be confronted with reality when reading a smear test information leaflet or a tampon website. Anyone with half a brain can quickly work out this is nonsense, and that the people these changes are really serving are the men who want to change the definition of woman so that it includes them.
Men like Rose.
