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…