Good article- she’s quite right! ‘Woman’ IS being banned, it is being removed from billboards, adulterated with other letters and alternative spellings... to distance itself from the word woman ‘only’ meaning ‘woman’ 
Because it might hurt someone’s feelings? Not make them feel ‘included’ in language that isn’t theirs to be included in? When they are free to make up their own words for themselves? WTF?! Nobody should be forcing the world to be changed around them like this.
Our collective noun ‘women’ and individual description ‘woman’ is being taken from us without our consent and treated like a politicised, controversial, swear word. A dictionary definition of the word is now controversial and attracts censorship and threats of violence and rape threats to women.
That is a mad and dangerous state of affairs.
What do we think about those other countries that don’t allow people to use their own language and make them talk in the majority state-approved language? (Like Turkey with Kurdish speaking people would be an example). We condemn them because we think they are extreme abusers of human rights and people should be free to speak their own language. And we fear, rightly in that case, that with langauge oppression and censorship also comes many other forms of oppression and violence. Like actual violence. Not ‘literal violence’.
So while we condemn states like that rightly and urge our leaders to urge them to change their ways, we also need to look to our own political discourse and cherish the freedom of speech that we have here in the UK.
Because in the UK in 2018, we have the same principles of freedom of speech and expression under attack for a group (women). The UK government is proposing to make ‘woman’ legally meaningless because they suggest legally anyone should be legally able to decide to be one.
While in a some social settings, and in the party-political sector , government-funded public (nhs and education) sector, and in the charity sector some people seem to have frequently and unilaterally just gone ahead and changed the meaning of this word... erasing ‘woman’.. replacing ‘sex’ with ‘gender’.. to ‘get ahead of the law’.
....while hardly anyone living and working outside of these sectors has even heard about it. Media are in general complicit in silencing or scared to allow debate.
Which is why this is such an important thing for journalists to write about this often and prominently and for mainstream papers to allow discussion on this. All we are risking here is someones’ hurt feelings. Is that really a justification? What about the hurt feelings of women as a class? Why does that justify this silencing of women as a class? robbing us of freedom of speech and use of dictionary-defined language? Orwell must be spinning in his grave to see this.
This is a useful recap of an article and once again not something we’d expect to be able to read in various other media outlets. That article would never be allowed on the BBC or Guardian website for example. Well done Naomi Firsht 
and The Times.