Woman is Not a Dirty Word

By JL

Trans activists often talk of their identity being ‘literally erased’. But it’s women who are being expunged. It’s women who are being robbed of our language. It’s women who are being reduced to mere organs and bodily functions.

Rewire News Group is an organisation whose mission is “Empowering you to own your relationship to sex, abortion, parenthood, and power”. It talks about Endometriosis, a female-specific disease which is frequently underdiagnosed or dismissed, as affecting “people who are born with a uterus”. Who is that supposed to empower?

Forbes Science seems to think that ‘people’ get pregnant, rather than just women.

But it understands what MEN are, obviously.

Friends of the Earth talk about “People who menstruate”. They also insist that “Some men and non-binary folx menstruate”.

How are we supposed to trust their reporting on environmental issues when they sound exactly like climate change deniers?

An NHS sexual health clinic cannot bring itself to use the word ‘woman’. It’s “people with vaginas”. Lord help the women relying on this bunch for their sexual healthcare.

Open Clinic NHS has no problem naming MEN, though, of course.

Even a company which supplies products exclusively bought and used by women pretends that menstruation isn’t a female-only experience. The “people who bleed” should boycott Tampax for this offensive woman-erasing nonsense.

And look at this ludicrous word salad from the USA’s largest breastfeeding charity.

The Vagina Museum, a space dedicated to female reproductive anatomy, describes the devastating attack on women’s rights in Poland as happening to “people with vaginas”. It then compounds this female erasure by insisting that “Not all people who have vaginas are women”.

Amnesty International, up to its usual tricks, also failed to mention women when protesting the abortion ban in Poland.

Whilst Amnesty cannot bear to use the word ‘woman’, you’ll notice that the ‘people’ in these posters all conform to stereotypical femininity with their lipstick, long flowing hair and painted fingernails.

This is not an attack on people’s rights; it is an attack on women’s rights. If we pretend that abortion is an issue which can affect men, we give men yet more power to legislate against it.

The Vagina Museum and Amnesty International are robbing women of the language we need to mandate for our own bodies. They’re not part of the solution, they’re part of the problem.

Sands UK is a stillbirth & neonatal bereavement charity. Horrifyingly, they refer to mothers who have just lost their babies as “birthing parents”. What incredible cruelty, ripping motherhood away from traumatised and grieving women.

FemCare Community Health Initiative is “Canada's trusted leader in menstrual policy consulting, education, entrepreneurship and research”. Even when discussing the serious health conditions or devastating experiences which will only ever affect women, it can’t bring itself to use the word.

Women’s healthcare is frequently under-researched and neglected and our hard-won reproductive rights are still far from perfect and under constant threat. In discussing such issues we must be able to name our sex if we are to make progress and protect our rights.

Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust has a very short memory. Only three years ago they reported that almost half of the women in the UK do not know what a cervix is, still less realise that they have one. But now the charity is using the confusing language they KNOW that not all women understand.

Same goes for the UK’s biggest cancer charity. It talks about “everyone with a cervix” when explaining the need for women to attend cervical screening appointments.

Cervical cancer is a largely preventable disease if it is diagnosed and treated early enough. Proper screening greatly improves the chances of survival. However, 1 in 3 women do not attend for regular screening, resulting in unnecessary deaths.

Do these charities honestly not realise that such confusing language is only making matters worse? Is ‘inclusivity’ more important than saving women’s lives?

Cancer Research UK seem to have no such worries when it comes to discussing MEN’S health, of course.

Because men are never penis-havers or ejaculators or testes-bearers. They are men. Gender identity ideology only requires that women surrender our language, our experience, our reality, our rights.

But maybe that’s been the goal all along.