What would actually happen if we stopped calling ourselves women?

[WhoWants2Know]

I've been wondering this for a little while and I have trouble putting it into words, but I guess JK Rowling has brought it to the front of my mind.

What would logically happen if we really did follow the example of woke tampon advertisers and identified ourselves based on our anatomy? Would that really make TRAs happy? Or MRAs?

If we went through products, articles, books, etc and replaced the word woman with a biologically based word to reflect the people who it actually meant, would it change anything? Would it be clearer that what we have in common isn't based on clothes or hair or make up?

If uterus-havers, menstruators, former uterus owners, and XX chromosome owners are at a disadvantage because of our biology, and are a protected group, then could we have places and opportunities to be together based on shared biology?

Or would would people suddenly develop an "emotional uterus" or something and insist that they share the same spaces and receive the same services because of that?

Or would would people suddenly develop an "emotional uterus" or something and insist that they share the same spaces and receive the same services because of that?

Of course they would. Some of them already claim they can have periods.

It doesn't matter what we try and do to claim womanhood. The point is the taking of it from us.

It makes no difference, because I'm the eyes of a transwoman there can be nothing to separate them and us. I've seen transwomen online who say they have periods.

Warriors obviously.

Warrioresses for girls.

It depresses me hugely. Reading the backlash against JKR actually made me stop and think, if I had known that this was the state of the world I would be bringing daughters in to, I couldn't have gone through with having kids.

20 years ago I tried to kill myself, and spent a month in the hospital recovering. Now I can't help but think that trying to end it then was actually the right call. If a woman means nothing and there's no place to just be women, and separate yourself from people who want to either ignore you or hurt you for who you are, then why bother?

Oh WhoWants2Know, please don't despair. The world does seem overwhelming at times, especially the ways men find to oppress women. They made great advances very suddenly in the past few years.

But women and our allies are fighting back; sanity is starting to re-establish itself. Only yesterday The Sunday Times reported that the government is dropping plans to allow self-ID, which would have allowed any man to enter any single-sex women's space unchallenged.

And always, we have the support of other feminists, and so many other people who do not hate women. On these Mumsnet pages, for a start!

I have though from the beginning that the misogynists goal is to drive women and girls out of the public sphere and return us to total dependence on men for survival.

You can never placate abusers.

They will keep coming at you, even if you give them everything.

TRA's are just abusers, spinning a new line.

If we run and hide in another word, they'll come for that. We have to draw a line and fight for it.

I was wondering the other day about taking AFAB and going with it. I know it doesn't make sense (I get a mental picture of a midwife saying "we've had four boys today, better make this one a girl"), but if I were ever to endow a scholarship, saying it was only for those AFAB would at least mean it was the people I wanted who were considered...

They would absolutely come for that "biologically based word". Just like if every woman called herself a "ciswoman".

There is a current tendency to open events which were originally intended to benefit females to "women-and-non-binary-people" Reducing us to "non men" as a category with men the default (which ridiculously includes FTM trans people with all their massive male privilege) and letting in a hell of a lot of males (male trans people including male non binary).

Yes, there is a women's writing competition here which I thought about having one of my students enter - until I read that it is open to all those who identify as women ie it's not a woman's competition at all. It's just bog-standard open to men.

If you used AFAB then the usual suspects would say they were AFAB.

India Willoughby now says she's Cis. And the Stonewall list of Newspeak includes Person of Trans Experience to include people who feel that now they have transitioned they have become female and are no longer trans.

All is fair game for appropriation.

Given that very few people are fully identifying with the gender that matches their sex, I think it would be much more sensible for us all to accept that we are in fact none binary transgendered. We must face this fact head on.

As none binary transgendered people we note that we are the most marginalised with people trying to remove the distinction we make between our gender and our sex, trying to force us into a binary genre containment

There is a word already that is not woman(which can be argued if wrongly that it includes trans women)

The other word is based on biology. They have already taken that too, once they realised us women started using it to distinguish our biology.

The Word was Female.

what ever word, new or old we use. They will claim it. We are not allowed to have our own demographic.ever.it.is.transphobic.