We are now being called bodies with vaginas by one of the top medical journals in the land

[JustcameoutGC]

YANBU the word is woman
YABU shut up VAGINA haver

This will probably get shunted back to the naughty corner. But this is something women need to know. Coming soon to a GP surgery near you. As a vagina haver you may be invited for a cervical smear.

This is what the erasure of women looks like. Splayed on the front cover of the journal read by every medic in the land.

Can’t they say “women, trans and non-binary people”?

Manly dress wearer. Body with a penis. Male disguised as a lady. Lady with a willy. Penis having lady person.

Non of these would be acceptable so why is body with vagina acceptable???

There are three "bodies with vaginas" in my house. Only one of whom is human.

@Rno3gfr

Can’t they say “women, trans and non-binary people”?

Transmen are still adult human females (aka women). Non-binary people who have vaginas and uteruses are human females (aka girls / women)

Adult human female. There is no other meaningful definition of 'woman'. I am tired of pretending that 'woman' means anything else.

If I accept a definition of woman apart from a statement of biological fact, what am I defining myself as? Someone who loves pink and cries at romcoms? Someone who is great at listening and terrible at parking?

It's the Emperor's New Clothes and it's time we recognised it for what it is.

@amijustparanoidorjuststoned

Here we go with the trans bashing again.

Nobody is trying to erase women. They are trying to be inclusive of women who are trapped in men's bodies, and men who are trapped in women's bodies. It is also fine to not know which gender you fit in to and to be non-binary.

There, fixed it for you.

If this was the case, why don't we see it about men's services etc. Like articles about prostrate cancer, they are never people with a prospect' or 'testicle haver'

Can they say women, and men with vaginas?

@deplorabelle

For fucks sake have you read the article? It says women and girls in every paragraph. The function of the sentence used as a pull quote is to highlight that even in pure anatomical terms (when you would not expect there to be a difference because hey it's just body parts) women's bodies are less well described.

It's about ''Periods on display' [ - an exhibition in the Vagina Museum - which has since closed] and the cultural movement against menstrual shame and #PeriodPoverty.'

In which case, in purely anatomical terms, why would we not be 'bodies with uteruses'?

The 'bodies with vaginas' is a political term. The article itself is fairly interesting, but the decision to use this on the cover is a slap in the face to any woman who doesn't agree that it's okay to reduce females to their bodily parts and functions.

Ach, italics fail. That ugly bugger of a half formatted sentence is my note within the quote from the article.

The word female is inclusive of everyone who is biologically female. No other word is necessary.

Under his fucking eye 🙄

It really is extreme and has been pushed for for years. Bit by bit. Shift language. Get it used around the place. Shift a bit more. Etc.

And it's only women's language.

I know that the start of this societal shift around trans people was carried out by a fairly small group of people. Who had a strategy.

There are links and comments and iirc some stuff in a book which is quite clear about this.

To get into conversation with various govt depts/ people. Do it quietly. Get things moving. Convince of the need. Get policies tweaked. Out of sight of the public.

That's how come when it started to come to the attention of the public, so many things were done deals.
Eg Police record crime etc on gender not sex. When FOI the forces that responded said they had no records of when was changed or why.
Prisons. Already in place.
NHS. Back when single sex wards were big news. 90s? It was single gender. There's a document with NHS saying gender are you sure. Govt saying yes but everyone is to say sex so as not to confuse the public.

So that's some background.

Now? Don't know. Same group pulling strings? Suggesting next thing? Or all just a coincidence?

The fact though as someone pointed out.

Trans women are women. The very popular mantra repeated by political leaders and so many others, over and over.

Women to mean female is exclusionary.
Use women and non binary females. Women and trans men. Etc.
Quickly it was moved to things like.
Transwomen and women.
Menstruators. Etc.

And now?
Trans women are women.
The word woman may not be used, even if trans females are mentioned as well.
There is no logical reason to not like that it's inclusive. (Except trans males don't like it)

So.

Trans women are women
Women must be referred to by our reproductive parts. The parts that until very recently were not mentioned in polite company. The parts that are the reason for our global oppression for millennia.

Trans women are women.
We are bodies with vaginas.

And done in what. With the topic getting some attention more generally. 5 years?

I mean it's very impressive in an appalling kind of way.

I just have one question. Are these living bodies with vaginas, or dead bodies with vaginas?

Do fish which give birth to live young have vaginas? I’m worried I might have flushed a ‘body with a vagina’ down the toilet!

@aloris

I just have one question. Are these living bodies with vaginas, or dead bodies with vaginas?

Well in general body is used to mean dead. A corpse.

I mean a body with a vagina though. Dead or living. If living though it doesn't imply having any sort of.. higher functions. Thinking, feeling etc.

Just a body. One with a vagina.

The word vagina comes from the Latin for 'sheath'. And for many esp men is mostly equated with sex- being penetrated.

So I mentioned earlier.

Meat bag with dick-hole.
That's pretty catchy!

Also the time when women really are just bodies with vaginas. And that's it. Is in porn. If the viewer wants to see a woman (barely legal teen, slut etc) porn, they want a body with a vagina.

If porn is a bastion of respectful inclusive language than we really are fucked. ( Poor choice of word?).

I am not a "vagina haver". I am not body parts. I am a woman.

This shit is so offensive it's unreal. Especially for those of us who have experienced abuse directly because of our female SEX. We are women. Abused women. I am so sick of being patronised and erased.

@IHateCoronavirus

Do fish which give birth to live young have vaginas? I’m worried I might have flushed a ‘body with a vagina’ down the toilet!

Fish lay eggs! They would have an organ of some sort to push them out I assume.

I'm assuming it was dead obv!

Just googled my pet.

It has a vagina.

It's a reptile for fucks sake!

Also-

Had to go to page 2 for info. Do these have vaginas? First page was all about penises FFS.

@amijustparanoidorjuststoned

Here we go with the trans bashing again.

Nobody is trying to erase women. They are trying to be inclusive of women who are trapped in men's bodies, and men who are trapped in women's bodies. It is also fine to not know which gender you fit in to and to be non-binary.

There, fixed it for you.

How can a woman be "trapped in a man's body"? Please explain. Women find that we are all trapped in women's bodies and all of the disadvantage and sexism and in many cases being threatened/ hurt/ abused by men.

Someone who has a man's body is a man, that is literally the definition of it. How can you be trapped in a body any more than any other human is? Surely that's just part of being a mortal being, we are the species and sex we are born. You are your physical self, what else could you possibly be? I don't understand. You can wear what you like, behave how you like and you'd have the absolute support of almost everyone but to try to deny reality is a bit mad.

YADNBU.

Well quite.

We are one unit. Brain any body together. The idea of innate essences that are invisible and represent your 'true' self and seemingly can't be explained or satisfactorily described in terms of how they manifest. And indeed there are plenty of people with essences that do not result in dysphoria or any desire to change the body apart from trivially or not at all.

But nevertheless this inner knowledge must be respected in all situations.

I mean it's a soul isn't it. Basically.

The problems with this are never answered though:

1. It's assumed that pretty much everyone has this inner essence, this knowledge of their true gender. Problem is that's never been studied in any kind of large scale serious way.

I would put money on in a study it would turn out that loads of people have no such inner feeling, knowledge etc.

1. Some people's inner essence changes on a regular, even daily basis. The really strange thing is the most well known people with that type of gender seem to always be told to present as a man when it is useful for them. Handy eh? If your inner essence is just saying ok heels and a short skirt today then I find seeing them as 100% woman on those days a pretty big ask really.

1. And why even if you have an inner essence does it mean to need to use sex specific facilities. When they are about bodies and risks and needs and privacy and nothing to do with inner essences.

It's all very mysterious.

Additionally

I find the born in the wrong body narrative. When the bodies are in fact perfectly healthy. A bit insensitive to those born with various disabilities that mean things like being visibly different, unable to join in with lots of totally everyday things, many go through years of really difficult emotions about it, maybe lots of painful operations etc.

It took me 30 years to come to peace with the limitations I had from birth. And all the stuff that comes with not being able to do xyz at school. And I'm not even terribly disabled in the scheme of things. But I spent years as a child really hating the bits that didn't work.

You know what though I never once conceptualised it as born in the wrong body. Because that's not how things work.

So yeah not keen. It's out of fashion now anyway as loads of trans people are happy with their bodies.

I've been reduced to sexual apparatus.

No words really just anger and an increasing sense of hopelessness.

Hmmm.
.bodies with a vagina ?
But surely ONLY those of us born with a vagina need smears etc.... as we also have the inner workings to go with said vagina!

Perhaps those of us with vaginas would like a say in the words used to describe us. I'm going for 'woman'. Any better offers?

When they start talking about ‘people with penises’ all the time and crowding them out of all the locations within society that matter to them, then we can go with ‘people with vaginas’. However I don’t know what we are going to do about unusual people that have vestigial versions of both though. Maybe we will be expected to call them ‘people with vestigial penises and vaginas’. And those without either, ‘people with neither penis nor vagina’.

Or we could just tell the lunatic fringe to fuck off, of course, and say there are basically two genders, women and men, and the 0.001% or whatever of the population that experiences otherwise can pick what they prefer to be or stay blissfully ungendered instead of bullying women in an ironically highly masculine way to make some kind of point.