Guardian eradicates women

[ASmallMovie]

The Guardian, a once fantastic champion of women’s rights, managed to write an entire article about periods without using the words ‘girls’ or ‘women’, presumably lest they offend.

Utterly depressing.

The original speech by Jacinda Ardern talks about ‘girls’ missing school due to period poverty, but this article avoids the apparently now offensive word ‘girl’ and refers to ‘9 to 18-year-olds’.

How the fuck can the Guardian editor and all its reporters be okay with this?

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/26/new-zealand-supermarket-chain-countdown-becomes-first-to-use-period-label-on-menstrual-products

@noblegiraffe

‘Women’ isn’t being avoided because it’s shameful and distressing, it’s being avoided because it’s transphobic.

I agree with noblegiraffe.
The irony of that article referring to euphemisms being abandoned then not mentioning the W or G words...

There was an earlier article in the Guardian this month that mentioned periods and schoolgirls/girls throughout. This was pre-Rowling ‘debate‘. So it is not clear if girls have been edited out of the article due to this case or the editing just happened to not mention them. The contrast is quite striking.

Oh dear god, have we genuinely got to the point where people can’t tell if a woman on the MN feminist section genuinely thinks the word woman is transphobic?

My point was about why the Guardian was avoiding it, in response to the suggestion that biological sex would be seen as shameful. No, not shameful, but transphobic.

The word woman is avoided because if you get it wrong (potentially any time), you invite a pile-on and insistence that you must educate yourself.

How any companies selling products aimed at women have you seen abject apologies from for their use of language (i.e. use of the word woman) or pages about how they are trying to do better?

No, not shameful, but transphobic.

Practically I'm not sure that there is much of a difference if you make a word or a concept taboo.

Look at the difference in the language in this piece in The Guardian 3 weeks before:

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/new-zealand-tackles-period-poverty-with-free-sanitary-products-for-all-schoolgirls

merry I disagree

Not talking about something because it’s embarrassing like I dunno, vaginal discharge and you don’t mention it in polite company is very different to making something bigoted so you don’t want to say it as you’ll get abuse and cancelled.

You end up with Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep.

noblegiraffe
I am new here and still trying to get my head around all of this. I know you were being ironic but I genuinely cannot understand how woman equals bad, but man is okay. It appears that not only women are being erased but that the opinions of Transmen are also sidelined.
Do Transwomen have mothers? Do they consider them to be women?

Ah tea it wasn’t you, it was the person who posted the biscuit who didn’t realise I was being ironic.

genuinely cannot understand how woman equals bad, but man is okay

It all makes sense in the context of the patriarchy.

noblegiraffe, I think that if a word or concept is seen as bigoted, it's use becomes shameful. It's a different kind of shame to shame about bodily functions, but it is still shame.

There are plenty of words that I wouldn't use because I agree that they are wrong and I would be ashamed to use them.

From online articles it seems it’s allowed to mention women and girls when they’re outside of the UK. In the UK though women don’t exist.

Sorry, noble that was me, never done a biscuit before so maybe need more practice ... you get so used to the regular pop-up wokescold comments it can be hard to tell (especially post JKR-gate)

A girl who misses school because of period poverty will not likely recognise herself as a menstruator. The message will be lost.

I’m guessing if she’s reading the Guardian she probably knows what the word means.

And the guardian isn’t ‘eradicating’ women. This is like TRA hyperbole.

No, it's eradicating 'women', and 'girls ' the words, from a piece on an issue about women and girls . Obviously the OP didn't mean they're embarking on genocide of half the worlds population.

@ErrolTheDragon

No, it's eradicating 'women', and 'girls ' the words, from a piece on an issue about women and girls . Obviously the OP didn't mean they're embarking on genocide of half the worlds population.

Praps that's next?

Yes, if we’re being pedantic about it I should have said in the the thread title - guardian eradicates use of the words ‘girls’ and ‘women’...

Either way, it speaks volumes...

It's like a farce, the way they carefully avoid any use of the words "women" or "girls" in an article the whole point of which is to praise New Zealand for doing away with euphemistic language that obscures reality and contributes to a culture of shame.

Because obviously it's absurd that we would use phrases like "sanitary hygiene products" instead of "period products" or "tampons" - but God forbid we refer to the female sex in any way.

The Guardian are such hypocrites. And as always, without fail, there is no comment section on the article, because they're desperately afraid their readers will call them out on it.

Masticators may like to try M&S, new fruit variety. I'm not saying shoppers or anything because, obviously, not all people eat as such.

Just another reason for me not to read the Guardian.

Grumpy old woman here ...

Grumpy old woman here ...

Grumpy ex-menstruator . Solidarity with our younger sisters...oh bugger, menstruator siblings.

Bump

No worries, Pumbaas, on reflection my comment could have been posted entirely seriously, such is the mess we are in.

Here is the almost identical news story in The Independent. Can anyone spot the difference?

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/new-zealand-period-menstrual-products-sanitary-first-a9586571.html