The Word is Woman #54
Documenting the erasure of women from language and life.
Sometimes (often) people say to me, “I don’t know how you keep doing this each week, Milli”. And I have to be honest, neither do I.
Having said that, the eagle eyed among you will notice I wasn’t here last week, and that is, in part, because I felt completely overloaded and burnt out and even the gin wasn’t working.
When I messaged my paid subscribers to cancel my writing group, the emails I received in response were just absolutely lovely. So many of you said how important it is to know when you need to take a break. One wrote: “Stop paddling for just a moment and let the river carry you.” How lovely is that?
Anyway, I’m back to paddling again now so let’s go!
First up, what would you like for Christmas?
How about some of that nice Body Milk?
But no, it’s not Anita Roddick’s product plan from 1988 (it would have to be Dewberry Body Milk then, right?), it’s apparently from this book and is presumably newspeak for those who find the word breast offensive. Maybe it IS 1988?!
I think we must still be in the 80s, because the next one is about FLANGES.
Yes, please don’t ask me to explain any of this but there’s an article in the Journal of Human Lactation entitled Flange Size Matters and all you need to know is that it erases women (and the phrase ‘breast milk’) completely, eg:
Moving on… The National Autistic Society erases women, calling us ‘people with a vagina’, in this page about menstruation:
The Anya app, which offers breastfeeding support, wants to know more about you…
And in Dorset, they’ve launched a new maternity unit called The Beach Building, and their web page about it doesn’t mention women or mothers once, only ‘families’ and ‘parents’.
Since they’re in Dorset, maybe they’ll be getting a visit from their colleagues over at the Dorset County Hospital…
Presumably these two members are referred to as ‘women’ and not ‘parents with body milk’ or ‘body milk producers’.
The hospital say they want people to ‘bring their whole selves to work’. This is an interesting concept, isn’t it, and one that, if I hadn’t been a mix of burned out and final FINAL editing etc this week, I might have turned my hand to in a separate post. Work is not a therapy session or an AA meeting. Unless you are a narcissist, you should be able to understand that not having professional boundaries around your workplace behaviour - which involves self-censorship - can have a negative impact on others. It just seemed interesting to me that the post from Dorset Hospital came in the same week as the Gregg Wallace story was breaking. Wasn’t he ‘bringing his whole self to work’? Where is the line? Isn’t this always the explanation men give for inappropriate behaviours? That they were just having a laugh? That you ‘just can’t say anything any more’? And that therefore you have the problem, because you are unable to cope with their authenticity?
Meanwhile the BBC have announced their 100 Women of the Year, and, predictably, yet again there is a male person on the list, this time Brigitte Baptiste, an ecologist from Colombia.
I wrote about the BBC list and why it should be female only last year, and, well, I’m too tired to write about it again to be honest! To summarise, though: how many men on a women only list is too many?
Well this flange operative is off for that G&T now. And this weekend I’ll be putting the tree up. I hope you all have a great one! See you for the Nosebag on Sunday, love Milli x
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The tip-toeing around the word "breast" being too feminine in its association is so funny, because here we are with... "body milk" and "human milk." Great.
I admire you so much. You make me laugh, cry, despair and have hope! You should be woman of the year.