To think that women should not be referred to as menstruators and pregnant people?

[FRETGNIKCUF]

*This is a thread about the impact trans activism is having on women. This is the beginning.

Don't read on if you're going to whine about another trans thread.*

Julian Vigo (@lubelleludotcom on Twitter) wrote the following.

There is a war on women, folks. The transgender lobby has gone down the rabbit hole by refusing to acknowledge that women's lives and bodies not only matter, but that they are real. Instead women's bodies have become the simulacra in an extended theatre of male entitlement (to be women while telling women to STFU) or they are rendered an extension of male subjectivity such that we now see hairy transmen's female bodies breastfeeding, the only form of female body hair that would ever be allowed in Time magazine.

And now for the latest: we are being called "menstruators" by the same right-wing discourse which seeks to remove the mention of woman from women's healthcare across the USA (ie. now many providers have been pressured to remove the term woman and write instead "pregnant person.") It is as if the last 100 years of women's rights had never occured.

The ironies are multiple. Here you have a group which claims its own marginalisation while working steadily to marginalise an already marginalised group, women. Then you have a group of female people who by virtue of the current transgender identity doxa necessitates "gender dysphoria," yet paradoxically adheres to—and even embraces—the real and symbolic thrust of much of what the female body actually is and produces, a complete opposition to gender dysphoria. Therein lies the greatest contradiction which, not surprisingly, once again holds women hostage: woman is symbolic for those who emulate her, woman is only acceptable inasmuch as she recognises males as females, and women are now relegated to "non-males" by political parties, as "pregnant humans" and "menstruators" by females who reject their bodies yet who hold out for the double-bind of gender in this theatre of cruelty where only a [sic] "man" can truly understood pregnancy, breastfeeding, and motherhood.

The only parallel I can think of is if the KKK were to insist that the Black Panthers stop calling themselves "black", demand that their white hoods be viewed as black, assert that only white people know what it is like to experience life as a black person, and then turn around and maintain that black people are just a group of entitled, bio-essentialist racists.

Individual cubicles are a long way off. Some of the trans activists are not satisfied with that even as an option as they want to be thought of and treated as women.

I don't think I'm alone in feeling tired of the hyperbolic hijacking of what feels like the whole site.

I have no wish to be referred to as a bodily function either. But the fact that someone from a US organisation made a rather crass use of a particular term in a tweet does not make me get up in arms with an assumption that that term is suddenly going to pass into general use in the UK

Judy, it would bother you only if it was happening in the UK? The reason you just don't care is because it's happening to women in the US, and not yet here?

the hyperbolic hijacking of what feels like the whole site.

Really? Last time I looked there were plenty of threads about MILs, what to put in my DC's packed lunch and what you shouldn't be putting in yours, parking cars and other such hot topics on mumsnet. Happy to engage with you in my own personal style, but if you don't like it you might be happier hiding this thread? Just a suggestion.

'Hide the thread/ topic' isn't helpful for any of us - if everyone who disagreed with you hid the thread (as posters are often told to) then we'd just end up with posters locked in echo chambers, riling each up even further.

I have no wish to be referred to as a bodily function either. But the fact that someone from a US organisation made a rather crass use of a particular term in a tweet does not make me get up in arms with an assumption that that term is suddenly going to pass into general use in the UK

Judy, it would bother you only if it was happening in the UK? The reason you just don't care is because it's happening to women in the US, and not yet here

This kind of language change is being rolled out in Canada. It's spreading across the US, and there are people lobbying for similar change in language in the UK - in particular for what have historically been called or referred to as "Womens Services". Should we only care after these things have happened to us?

Have a read of the Planned Parenthood website, and you'll see that they really have no problem talking about female anatomy in proper terms. Be worried about the erosion of language and the female identity by all means, but not FFS on the basis of a tweet from a US organisation which is one most of us on here would strongly support.

(In fact, this thread has made me up my donation to it, and the next time I see a demo outside our local branch I will go and walk in and out of it just to piss off the demonstrators and show solidarity with the users of its services)

Whoever referred to FWR as an echo chamber certainly has it about right. The thread could have been interesting counter viewpoint to the trans argument while it was in aibu. Now it's been overrun by posters derailing by talking about toilets and changing rooms AGAIN, or wilfully misunderstanding what the original tweet was about, twisting it to suit themselves to derive even more offence from it.

Nice one

If the use of 'menstruators' and the changing of terminology around pregnancy was limited to one organisation's social media officer making a faux pas then I doubt many people would care Judy.
However, it is just one example in a long list of examples of the language around women's issues being slowly or in some cases not so slowly changed and erased.

And as a PP pointed out, the language around men's issues isn't being appropriated and changed in the same way to ensure it doesn't offend transmen. Hence it starts to seem less about equality for transpeople and more about erasing and changing the definition of women (yet again).

if everyone who disagreed with you hid the thread (as posters are often told to) then we'd just end up with posters locked in echo chambers, riling each up even further.

As I said, I'm perfectly happy to engage with you on trans issues. I am utterly unbothered whether you hide the thread or not. You are the one with the problem with the way people are expressing their views. Hence my generous concern for your comfort.

Winnie - as example of language being twisted and appropriated, the PP tweet is a terrible example.

I'm going to run it past my US friends (when I get a chance), but I doubt any of them will be offended in the same way as people on here. Partly because they are aware of what PP is and its very pro-woman stance, but also because something has been lost in translation across the Atlantic. American English is often much blunter than UK English ("blacks" instead of "black people", for example) which is exacerbated on Twitter, whilst terminology that we find outdated ("handicapped parking space", anyone?) is still in common usage here.

Save the outrage for the stuff that matters

ClaudiaWankleman
I don't think I'm alone in feeling tired of the hyperbolic hijacking of what feels like the whole site.

I got a bit of a kicking for saying something like this yesterday. I was just suggesting something this complex shouldn't be discussed IN SHOUTY CAPITAL STATEMENTS. Oh well

The article was linked in a tweet by Planned Parenthood which referred to women as "menstruators"....

Olenna the way language is being changed does matter to me (perhaps because I'm an English graduate and am very aware how language around women, women's issues and rights has developed and been subverted across generations). I am not asking you to share my concerns but I would appreciate if you didn't label them 'outrage' or belittle them.

SoHairy, I don't believe that term is going to pass into general use in the US either.

I do not understand why you would think Americans less offended. I am American and find women being called "menstruators" horrifically dehumanising. (For the record, other females who identify as transmen shoudl as well.)

What a shite thread.

Can it be moved back to AIBU please, because the whining is getting ridiculous. It needs to move back to the AIBU echo chamber really.

(In fact, this thread has made me up my donation to it, and the next time I see a demo outside our local branch I will go and walk in and out of it just to piss off the demonstrators and show solidarity with the users of its services)

What a brilliant idea.

Olenna the way language is being changed does matter to me (perhaps because I'm an English graduate and am very aware how language around women, women's issues and rights has developed and been subverted across generations). I am not asking you to share my concerns but I would appreciate if you didn't label them 'outrage' or belittle them.

YY. I am also a language graduate who understands how powerful language is.

Please stop saying that what Blistory personally thinks is the only acceptable way of challenging these issues. It's massively irritating and presumptuous. I said on the other thread politely that I took on board what she said and thought she made some good points but didn't agree with all of it.

Here's an example of the consequences of redefining the words "male" and "female" so that they no longer refer to biology:

Caster Semenya, the winner of the women's 800m race at the Rio Olympics, is widely believed to be intersex. (The silver and bronze medalists are also rumoured to be intersex, but I have no idea if it's true.) Obviously, people with these conditions fall into a grey area when it comes to gendered spaces and divisions, and there's no simple answer. But what's relevant here is the apparent reason why Semenya's performance improved so much this year: the IOC recently changed their rules regarding intersex or biologically male athletes who identify as female and wish to compete in the women's division. They are now only required to lower their testosterone levels to the lower end of the male range, which is far higher than the upper range for women (including those with PCOs, for example).

Furthermore, trans athletes are no longer required to have genital surgery. The door has been opened for men to compete against women and win prize money for it. You would have to be very naive to think that there are no men will exploit this loophole, especially if it's a way for them to lift their families out of poverty. They won't have to change their names, their clothes, their hair - just announce that they identify as women. And honestly, what's the point in sending a female athlete to represent your country if she might be competing against men? In the 90s, both Williams sisters were beaten by a male tennis player who was then ranked roughly 203rd worldwide. Men have larger hearts, different bone structures, greater lung capacity, higher levels of testosterone, and various other physical advantages over women.

This is why language is so important. Imagine if the IOC had announced, "Right, we're getting rid of the women's category. We're now going to have one category for men, and one category that's open to both men and women. Women will no longer be allowed their own category." Female athletes would have had a very good case for arguing that this is discriminatory. But instead, the second category is still officially for women only - it's just that they've changed the definition of "woman" so that it now encompasses people who are biologically male.

Just over a year ago, I would have brushed off Planned Parenthood's tweet about "menstruators" as no big deal, just one of those funny instances of political correctness gone mad. I would have felt it was harmless to go along with the idea that men can have periods if it made trans men feel more comfortable. But I don't feel that way anymore. Last year, Tara Hudson was moved to a women's prison after 150,000 people signed a petition. I doubt there would have been so many signatures if the mainstream media had reported that she was an active escort who had bragged online about the size of her functioning penis - I suspect most people assumed she had had genital surgery. And the BBC reported this story as if the defendant were any other woman - in reality, this is "Clare".

Erasing biology from the definitions of "men" and "women" has massive consequences. This isn't hypothetical - it's already happening. We need to think about the impact on women's prisons, refuges, changing rooms... and how the change in language could skew statistics on crimes committed by the men and women, the gender wage gap, etc.

Eek, I didn't realise until I pressed "post" what a massive wall of text I had written. I'll be impressed if anyone gets through the whole thing.

Another language grad here. I completely get the underlying concern: my point (which seems to be being missed) is that the PP tweet is a terrible example of how TRAs are trying to change language.

I have no desire to be called a menstruator, a breeder, a witch or any of the other words that can be used to demonize women. But I won't get worked up about this particular example, because I have no reason to suppose that the word "menstruator" is being used as anything other than shorthand for "women who need to use feminine hygiene products". If someone can show me something to suggest that PP are in fact pandering to the TRA agenda, I'd be happy to revise my position

venus - was your comment about Blistory's approach to me?

I got through it, Valanice. You make some good (albeit worrying) points.

There's a mtt boxer who fights women isnt there? I watched a video of one of her fights and it was horrific. It wasn't a fair fight at all and the oponent was hideously injured. I'm astonished that it's allowed.