The Word is Woman #55

Documenting the erasure of women from language and life.

Hello, and welcome back to TWIW, 2025 style!

If you were hoping the world had turned over a new leaf in the past couple of days, I’m afraid I have bad news: it’s very much a same shit, different bucket vibe. Still, we shall retain our sense of humour and stride into the new year like the white individuals with vaginas we’re so proud to be.

To be fair, they do qualify in paragraph two that these aren’t just any old individuals with vaginas, they are ‘women-identifying’ individuals.

Here’s a link to the full study from the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, where they look for racial differences in the vaginas of ‘individuals of reproductive age’. It’s almost as if there’s a word they just can’t say.

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The National Organization for Women is worried about ‘birthing people’s birthing bodies’. For some reason that NOW no longer seems to have the words to explain, these bodies are being ‘villainized’.

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Those of you who know my backstory will remember that I got into a lot of hot water for daring to question the term ‘birthing people’ and say that ‘obstetric violence is violence against women’. In particular it was my response to this social media post that got me into hot water, with the classic statement, ‘birthing people are seen as ‘the fragile sex’.

This next article was therefore particularly funny to me, if funny is the right word for something that makes you spurt your tea out via your nose and then make this face for the next few hours.

Yes, without a shade of irony, these researchers have written an entire piece stating that the whole key to fixing a problem is clearly naming it, but at the time time they are not able to name the people obstetric violence happens to. Instead, women are ‘the person giving birth’, ‘patients’, ‘future parents’, ‘those who give birth’, ‘people who give birth’.

Read here in full if your blood pressure has been lowered by too much Christmas cheese.

(PS why did I buy all that cheese? I literally panic-bought cheese. I’ll still be eating it in March.)

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TommeeTippee of sippy cup fame had some festive tips, but absolutely none of them were ‘don’t panic-buy cheese’, unfortunately.

A quick look at their instagram page shows this wasn’t a one off, they are ‘people parents people all the way down’ - the posts that are clearly about the intensity of motherhood but that generalise it out to ‘parents’ are particularly grating…eg…

Or

Time for my first use of my favourite gif in 2025…

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Although there’s plenty here to enrage you, that’s all we’ve got time for this week on TWIW, because I’ve got to take two of my kids for their back-to-school haircuts. Both of them will have hair removed from their head via the use of scissors, but one of them will be twice as expensive than the other, for reasons we simply don’t have the words to explain. It’s all just a mystery. See you next week!

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Please support me to keep documenting the erasure of women from language, with a paid subscription. If you can’t afford it, please do take out a free sub so you never miss a post. And do like this post and share it! It all helps. Thank you.

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Alternatively you can buy me a coffee / wine / gin….

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Or you can pre-order my next book, Ultra Processed Women, which I am now able to say is OUT THIS YEAR!! Woop woop! And Harper Collins currently have 40% off.