The Word is Woman #68

The boundaries are reinforced; the tantrums continue

Here at The Word is Woman it feels like something has shifted. For 67 issues of this newsletter, which began on August 24th 2023, I have painstakingly documented example after example of the erasure of women from language and life, and most weeks, I’ve found and been sent far too many examples to include.

Since the Supreme Court judgement much has changed. Sure, there are still a few examples knocking around out there, but most of them seem to be coming from outside the UK, here’s a few examples…

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I did find this from UK based Abuela Doulas - on the very serious subject of maternity cuts, but containing this slide which is somewhat breathtaking…

But overall, in the UK in particular, organisations have been too busy vying for the next round of my newly launched Hodge Awards, kindly sponsored by Jolyon himself.

There are so many of the ‘We stand with the Menfolk’ posts doing the rounds that I could never include them all, but here’s a few peaches to give you a flavour…

How do you like your coffee?

If you drink too much of it at the Tyneside venue of Hive Coffee Company, you’ll be pleased to know that their toilet facilities are “not governed by the ideology of the far right”.

Also amusing, who’d’ve thought a period company would be first in the queue to prioritise the blokes?

In the caption, Bloody Good Period use some of the classic tropes of the genre, including the well-worn “don’t these silly, easily distracted women know there are other much more important issues that need attention?”

While women face alarming levels of violence, poverty and the continued dismantling of the welfare state, a small but loud lobby has chosen to use the language of feminism to punch down - pouring time, money, and energy into harming trans people - while real crises go ignored.

Small but loud - reminds me of the Shakespeare quote: “though she be but little, she is fierce”. Anyway, we are also facists.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t feminism, it’s fascism.

Making it ‘all about toilets’ is quite convenient, isn’t it. It’s playing into the idea that the women behind this are all pearl clutching Mary Whitehouse style meanies who don’t want to share a hand basin with anyone who looks a bit different. In fact, on one recent podcast Sex Matters were accused of saying, “We’ve sorted the gender wars, now let’s go after the brown people”. For anyone trying to style those of us fighting for women’s rights as racist bigots who are all in a state about who we pee next to, the current global headlines about fairness in sports must be quite inconvenient, mustn’t they?

Let’s face it, the optics of trans identified males in women’s sports have never been particularly good for the biology-deniers cause, have they?

Swimmer ‘Lia’ Thomas poses with the women he beat.

Male Cyclist ‘Veronica’ Ivy took women’s titles and medals

6’2’’’Hannah’ Mouncey played Aussie rules football and handball in the women’s category

More of ‘Hannah’

How anyone could have seen these images and others like them and call the women asking for fairness ‘bigots’ is hard to imagine, but they did - and they still are.

Here’s Dr Nicola Williams, the she-ro behind Fair Play for Women:

All that has changed and continues to change now.

Yesterday the Football Association reluctantly banned trans women from playing in the women’s game, as did England Netball, and today, the England and Wales Cricket Board is expected to follow suit.

How absolutely brilliant this news is - and it just goes to show how much the word ‘woman’ - and what it means - matters!

I do feel disheartened, though, at a deep level when I see, for example, how the decision is framed by the F.A, who write in their statement that the subject is ‘complex’, and that, they, “understand that this will be difficult for people who simply want to play the game they love”, i.e, it will be difficult for males who want to carry on playing in the women’s team.

No mention of how difficult it may have been for women to lose out on opportunities or just feel uncomfortable or unsafe by the presence of a man on the pitch or in the changing rooms.

No apology for women, only for the males.

Not yet, anyway.

Arguments have been made that there were ‘only 20’ trans women playing in women’s football, for example by people like journo Matthew Torbitt, (who is also happily trotting out the trope about all the other things women should have been doing instead.)

Matthew forgets that 20 males in women’s football could mean 20 teams affected.

There are 11 people in a football team. (I don’t give a crap about football so I had to google that).

Potentially 20 teams affected.

That’s 220 women, well, 200 actually, if you don’t count the men in their teams.

At least 20 women who are on the bench or staying home completely because their place on the team has been taken by a male.

Then there are all the women who have to play those teams and possibly lose against them because of their advantage.

And then there is the ‘might-have-been’ future, in which women had obediently done what Matthew suggested and not bothered with this issue. How far would the men have taken it? A man in every goal? A male striker on each women’s team? (see, I know the word striker as well, at least I think that’s what they’re called).

Hopefully, thanks to the women who have fought back, this might-have-been future will never be realised.

Matthew’s not out on a limb though. There’s also George. He/him is Sports Reporter for the ipaper.

George is terribly upset.

He thinks women’s football should be a ‘sanctuary’ for gender non-conforming men.

He thinks we’ve lost what sport is supposed to be.

I wonder what he does George think sport IS supposed to be?

Because last time I checked it was supposed to be all about fairness, competition and prizes. Cheating was kind of off the menu.

Maybe George has a vision for a different kind of sport, a sort of free for all in which there are no winners or losers, except maybe women.

As the incredible Sharron Davies said yesterday on Radio 4 PM, “Men would not put up with this. If all of a sudden we started sticking leopards in the hundred metres, they would not turn around and go, oh, it’s inclusive”.

Listen to Sharron on Radio 4:

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In spite of the pushback against the Supreme Court judgement, I think people are slowly going to have to accept reality. Stonewall has been giving a lot of organisations the wrong legal advice for the best part of a decade - and they continue to do so, see this recent now deleted post on Bluesky (plus clarification from Akua Reindorf KC.

It’s really the adult equivalent of a toddler tantrum when told ‘NO you cannot have those sweeties’ - and as every parent knows, that tantrum can be of epic proportions if you’ve made the fatal parenting error of making a promise you can’t keep. Unfortunately, many people have been offered big bags of sweeties and are now being told they have to leave the party without them, and we all know how that one goes.

Or, as this tweeter put it so beautifully, we are witnessing the ‘last parp of a deflating balloon’.

Let’s end on a high note with probably one of the most classic headlines ever written.

The word is WOMAN!

See you next time, Milli x

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