@EnidSpyton
Women are always being asked to accommodate the needs of others before their own. To be quiet and listen. To stand aside and make space. To be kind. To be inclusive.
This is how the erasure of women from society has always happened and will continue to happen. The same demands are not made of men.
The current push to make the world inclusive for the tiny number of people who choose to live their lives as the opposite gender (not sex, because biological sex cannot be changed) is fuelled by misogyny, and the fact that many women don’t recognise this is disturbing.
Sex and gender are not the same thing.
Women are discriminated against in society due to our sex.
We bear children.
We can be penetrated by a penis.
We have periods.
We are physically lighter and smaller than men.
These sex based biological differences are the cornerstone of why we are ‘the second sex’ despite the fact that we’re the majority of the world population.
Erasing sex based language and focusing on our identities being based on gender (social construct) rather than sex (biology) is dangerous because it is our biology that is the root of our oppression as women. Downplaying that by suggesting we can all choose to be whoever we want to be opens the door for the realities of women’s sex based oppression to be dismissed, denied and erased.
Trans women are not women. They can never be women, because you cannot change your biological sex. Claiming that you are a woman because you have changed your gender identity is misogyny because it suggests that the experience of being a woman is nothing but a social construct. It isn’t. Transwomen should have every right to live their lives as they wish safely and without discrimination. I am
not suggesting anything otherwise. But this right does not give them the right to erase women and our sex based rights and needs in the process.
So many women have internalised the patriarchy to the point where they genuinely believe that this issue doesn’t threaten them, and this is truly worrying. We need to stand up, speak out and protect ourselves. If the word woman becomes erased, the legal protections designed to protect women are erased. And if you think this is dramatic or illogical or ridiculous, I suggest you wake up and take a good look around you. I received a cervical screening leaflet yesterday where more space was spent explaining how trans people could access services than how women could. And yet women are over 50% of the population...and trans? I can’t imagine it’s more than 1%. The erasure is already happening and I’m afraid this is just the beginning.
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Copied this whole piece as it’s so elegantly put it should be read it again, in my opinion, as a woman.