The Word is Woman #59

Documenting the erasure of women from language and life.

Welcome to the Issue #59 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 four 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 31st January 2024.

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Hi everyone! Welcome to this week when The Guardian themselves proved the very real and urgent need for this newsletter, by coming up with quite possibly the most bonkers news article since a woman in the 18th century was reported to have given birth to rabbits.

Compare and contrast:

Yes, really.

I’m not even going to waste my time trying to explain to you how they arrived at this nonsensical place; it’s something to do with getting very tied up in the wording of his executive order, combined with a very poor understanding of science, all mixed together with a very real desire to prove that there’s no such thing as male or female, presumably because the writer, or the editor, or perhaps both, put their kid on blockers at some point circa 2019 and now they have to decorate the corner they’ve painted themselves into with thought terminating clichés.

It would be funny, I suppose, except it isn’t.

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Moving on.

Medway Maternity tell us that some pregnant people may need Fragmin.

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The Cut are posting about people who have abortions.

And then describing them as ‘abortion storytellers’.

Abortion storytellers. That’s a new one.

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Pregnancy Justice have a vision of people being free to make decisions about their own bodies.

Funny that because I thought ‘people’ always had been free to make decisions about their own bodies, except one type of person, I’m sure there used to be a name for that type of person…Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

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A group called TOM Organic are happily skewing the stats on endometriosis.

Errr….I don’t think it does affect 1 in 9 people actually! Pretty sure it’s 1 in 18 people if you count the men.

A quick glance at their facebook page shows they are all about ‘people’.

They even describe vaginismus as something that affects ‘individuals’

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But let’s end this week on a high note with a letter from Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne to the CEO of the General Medical Council. The letter concerns the case of a nurse in Fife who is objecting to sharing a changing room with a male person who identifies as a woman.

I hope the good Baroness will forgive me when I observe that she and Lady Bracknell have never been seen in the same room.

Have a great weekend everyone! xx

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