Welcome to issue #83 of The Word is Woman, a section of my substack where, for over two years now, I’ve been carefully documenting examples of the erasure of women from both language and public life.
For the past five 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. Added to this, both the UK and international press continue to insist on using the word ‘woman’ to describe convicted violent criminals and rapists, even as they struggle to use ‘woman’ in articles about female health.
In the past few months since the Supreme Court judgment, some of this has begun to shift a little - for example, there has been some restoration of sex based language in some media reports about male criminals. But this issue is still a long way from being ‘fixed’, and, due to a kind of ‘progressive misogyny’, there still seems to be a cluster of people, particularly in the long overlooked field of women’s health, who remain keen to redefine women to include males.
The Word is Woman is a place to keep track.
So here is this week’s The Word is Woman for the week ending 12th December 2025. This part of my substack is never paywalled, but feel free to subscribe (free or paid) to support me and follow my writing.
Look, I know you might be feeling festive, but please put the tinsel down for a second because you’re going to need all your faculties for this one.
This is a post from a very high profile ‘birth worker’ whose names is Flor Cruz but who goes by the business name of Badassmotherbirther.
In the post, she… wait a minute while I breathe in and out of this paper bag…
She…
She actually comes out and says that the reason maternity care is so dire is because birth is something that happens to women… yes, 100% agree with that…
But that the solution for this is…
TO STOP SAYING THAT BIRTH IS A WOMEN’S ISSUE!
Yup, you heard correctly folks, this Badassmotherbirther thinks that the way to solve medical misogyny is to persuade the world that childbirth isn’t just a fluffy wuffy girly thing after all! Once everyone understands that Manly Men can give birth too, they’ll start taking childbirth seriously, ya see!
I mean, imagine how much internalised, unconscious misogyny you’d have to have to write this shit!
To actually think that the solution to the structural, patriarchal sidelining and minimising of women and the female body in healthcare is to start claiming that men give birth as well - and that doing this will somehow finally get maternity taken seriously.
To say that in order for women’s issues to finally be taken seriously we need to DENY THEY ARE WOMEN’S ISSUES AT ALL.
Cruz can see that sexism is to blame. But because she’s swallowed Judith Butler’s Dictionary of Genderwang, she’s got all muddled up about the difference between sex and gender, and decided that you can easily topple patriarchy by just denying biology. Simples!
The rest of the post is just a kind of word salad as she ties herself up in knots, denying basic biology whilst making claims about ‘real science’, wittering on about the ‘two gender binary’ and claiming that it’s THIS entirely fictional idea of two sexes that’s to blame for our lack of respect for women’s power.
I wonder if she thinks that other problems of patriarchy can be solved by such denialism? Maybe if we stop talking about ‘male violence against women’, for example, and start referring to it as ‘human violence against humans’, it will finally get the attention it deserves? Or perhaps FGM needs a rebrand as HGM? Because the “women stuff box” is so last year isn’t it?
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Baroness Amos’s interim report into UK maternity services has highlighted the need for urgent action and investment to address systemic failings across maternity care.
You’ll be delighted to know that the report uses sex-based language throughout. eg:
As does the RCM response.
But wait a minute, here come our old friends at Birthrights…still determined to remain in the BadAss camp…
Also on Birthrights grid this week, this shared post from a Scottish charity called Amma, who claim to support ‘birthing people on their journey to parenthood’.
Bear in mind - this is a charity specifically set up to support, not families, but women. I know this for sure because I looked up their charitable objects, here they are.
And yet, on their website and social media, you would struggle to find the word ‘woman’ anywhere.
If like me you’ve got too much time on your hands, you can do what I did and look on the Wayback Machine to see how their language has evolved.
First snapshot is 2019, two years after they launched…
Then in 2022 it was
Then by 2024 it seems like someone had pointed out the wholesale erasure, and they chucked in a W word on the homepage.
But trust me, from the rest of the website, you wouldn’t really know that this was a charity entirely focused on women. Should charities be ignoring the groups they name in their charitable objects in this way? It certainly hasn’t gone well for Girlguiding or the W.I. Let’s hope this is another area in which sanity is restored - if you name a group in your charitable objects, the language on your website and social media posts should remain entirely focused on them. Otherwise, it’s simply misleading.
And finally, a row over the word ‘woman’ erupted in Warwick District Council this week. Oh and you’ll never guess, the champion of erasure in the piece, was, in fact, a midwife.
Councillor and badassbirthworker Kate Dickson caused controversy when she brought forward a motion about homelessness that included the term, ‘pregnant people’.
One councillor then objected on the grounds that such language could play into the hands of right wing party Reform, whilst another made the more woman-centred point that a woman who was pregnant as the result of a rape may find it objectionable. Another then suggested the ‘middle ground’ might be to change it to ‘pregnant families’.
But the midwife objected to any suggestion of change, stating, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t agree with an amendment that changed the wording of that. I am looking after pregnant people, people identify as different genders so I am afraid I can’t.”
Eventually, the wording was changed to, ‘those who are pregnant’.
Enjoy your weekend everyone! And don’t forget, if Christmas preparations are making you feel structurally oppressed, just remember to degender Santa and start referring to yourself as a human instead of a woman. Then people will start to realise that Christmas isn’t just something meaningless out of the ‘women stuff box’, but instead, a thrusting, towering, phallus of a festival in which everyone can pull their weight.
See you next week!
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A few years ago I realized this was what was going on with the concept of ending period stigma too -- activists apparently thought the way to end the stigma was to "gender neutralize" it.
Flor Cruze’s words are less a ‘salad’ and more a ‘stew’ an overcooked one far less healthy than a stew. My next Substack post may bit a memoir piece about my lunch with Baroness Amos… ☺️