The strategy of relinquishing the word "woman"

[GratedExposure]

This is something I wonder about in a number of contexts (I'm not advocating it, just wondering): is anyone thinking that the best strategy here is to leave the word, and begin to label certain awards/events as "natal female" awards/events?

I know there are many arguments against this (first, why should we be having to start fighting anew for things which should never have been taken?). But at what point do we walk away and start again? The most obvious example is sport, because if there were "wom*n's" events (increasingly colonised by males) and "natal female" events, most of the strong female athletes would surely opt into the latter?

Are any organisations working towards this?

It's basically the same as the third space idea, but we'd be having to be the ones moving to a third space (wrong, but maybe better than the alternative...)...?

Is this crazy talk?

@Norma27

The desperation to silence women is astounding.

This. Unrelenting isn't it?

So many deletions. Hmmm.

Of course you're right @testing987654321 that in common use woman means adult human female. The loss I'm referring to is in policies all over the place - sports bodies, prisons, public and private companies, schools and universities - where the word "woman" is used not only for females but for "anyone who identifies as a woman". The fact we have our word "woman" contained in "transwoman" is a form of loss. It says they are one kind of woman. Really it should be the other way round - a trans woman should be a woman who now identifies as a man. But it's too late for that. That's why I say we have, in some ways, already lost the word woman.

@DerryWitch

Of course you're right *@testing987654321* that in common use woman means adult human female. The loss I'm referring to is in policies all over the place - sports bodies, prisons, public and private companies, schools and universities - where the word "woman" is used not only for females but for "anyone who identifies as a woman". The fact we have our word "woman" contained in "transwoman" is a form of loss. It says they are one kind of woman. Really it should be the other way round - a trans woman should be a woman who now identifies as a man. But it's too late for that. That's why I say we have, in some ways, already lost the word woman.

Only in places where women are relentlessly censored.

Everyone I know uses a three letter acronym, banned on here, that does not involve using the wrong sex. I have to mentally change it on here.

Gosh, my first deletion. Or at least I think it is, but seeing as you don't get a message to tell you who knows?

To reiterate my rather dull point in right-think language...
The people who are actively pushing us to cede the word women such as SOME TRAs, academics and general wokesters will not be happy with that as the final result. We have already seen that as the word woman is ceded, those some groups then push for cis-woman, female, natal female etc. It is not the word those some groups are trying to claim, but rather the erasure of the boundaries between women and certain groups of non-women.

agree 100% @moltenlasagne. Whatever we cede is just banked and they move on and demand - take - more.

I've no clue what could possibly have resulted in seventeen deleted posts, as I've only just found this thread.

If there were an entire demographic who could be shown to be doing an Undesirable Thing

There's an entire demographic, all of the opposite sex to me, who are insisting I must not be allowed to distinguish myself from them as the sex I am, the opposite sex to them.
Indeed, they lobby to punish me and women like me for us wanting to differentiate ourselves and be recognised as fundamentally, importantly different from them, the opposite sex.
They so dislike women neutrally using the words of our sex and theirs that they've successfully lobbied the biggest public talk forum for women to censor any woman referencing correctly the words of biological sex in order to distinguish herself from them. I will be deleted or censored for calling any man 'man' if he objects to it. That's an immense power and an obscene abuse of it.

I find this to be an Undesirable Thing.

A point of note to the OP.
Words that women use to distinguish ourselves and our bodies from men and their bodies have fallen like dominoes to men's claims to each and every one. I have seen men claim ownership of all of the following words:
Woman
Female
Biologically female
Born female
Natal women
Vagina
Vulva
Periods
Mother
Grandmother
Breasts/feeding
OVARIES (yes, I've seen references to 'ovary sacks')

I've seen men label us 'cis' when it suited them to differentiate us, and then subsequently claim cis for themselves because they resented the differentiation they had created.

Tell me, what words to differentiate ourselves do you think would survive a takeover bid? Are there any female words that are magically immune to a man claiming "I'm that too"?

If you are optimistic enough to think that there is a permitted word out there that would never be misappropriated to obliterate an unwanted distinction, you haven't been in this madness long enough, and I almost envy you.

It doesn't matter what words we use. There are three principles at work and you must understand them:

1. Men, and only men will control all language
2. Men, and only men will decide when a distinction is allowable, and when it is not.
3. Men, and only men will decide on what basis rights, boundaries and services are allocated or withheld, based upon their naming categories which they control.

Barracker that post was brilliant.

Barracker - excellent post. Thank you xx

(And because I want my partner to see it later on I will have to take a screenshot to do that because we all now live firmly in nineteen fucking eighty four.)

Brilliant, Barracker.

It doesn't matter what words we use. There are three principles at work and you must understand them:

1. Men, and only men will control all language
2. Men, and only men will decide when a distinction is allowable, and when it is not.
3. Men, and only men will decide on what basis rights, boundaries and services are allocated or withheld, based upon their naming categories which they control.

@GratedExposure

This is something I wonder about in a number of contexts (I'm not advocating it, just wondering): is anyone thinking that the best strategy here is to leave the word, and begin to label certain awards/events as "natal female" awards/events?

I know there are many arguments against this (first, why should we be having to start fighting anew for things which should never have been taken?). But at what point do we walk away and start again? The most obvious example is sport, because if there were "wom*n's" events (increasingly colonised by males) and "natal female" events, most of the strong female athletes would surely opt into the latter?

Are any organisations working towards this?

It's basically the same as the third space idea, but we'd be having to be the ones moving to a third space (wrong, but maybe better than the alternative...)...?

Is this crazy talk?

No thanks.

If you are optimistic enough to think that there is a permitted word out there that would never be misappropriated to obliterate an unwanted distinction, you haven't been in this madness long enough, and I almost envy you.

On the now cancelled gc reddit (oh how I miss it) someone once posted that if women said "Okay, you know what, you can have woman, we'll call ourselves fnergyn from now on" it'd take about 5 minutes before SOME group of biologically male people would call themselves more fnergyn than any fnergyn-born fnergyn.

Exactly Barracker, brilliantly put!

@Kettlingur

If you are optimistic enough to think that there is a permitted word out there that would never be misappropriated to obliterate an unwanted distinction, you haven't been in this madness long enough, and I almost envy you.

On the now cancelled gc reddit (oh how I miss it) someone once posted that if women said "Okay, you know what, you can have woman, we'll call ourselves fnergyn from now on" it'd take about 5 minutes before SOME group of biologically male people would call themselves more fnergyn than any fnergyn-born fnergyn.

As my grandmother used to say: "if you were dead, they'd be more dead than you."

Very helpful post, @Barracker - thank you.

Wouldn't work for all the reasons given.

I was talking to a friend a few days back about the sport situation. And she said why not 'start up' female sports, and let the mixed sex situation remain where it is. But of course, almost immediately it clicked that even ignoring it being hugely unfair to women to have to start again, within seconds of such a thing being done, TW would be claiming that its mean and bigoted to exclude them from the new category. And thus it goes round and round.

@Floisme

Thank you for the clarification Michael. If I am reading you correctly, and posts are actually being reported to MNHQ for using the word 'they' instead of 'some', then I think my brain has just blown a fuse.

Yes, otherwise known as taking the piss.

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

Comments along the lines of 'they're doing this' - make it look like a whole group of people are being represented as doing something undesirable

I'm confused. If there is a whole group of people doing something undesirable we are not allowed to use the pronoun they to refer to that group?

..

At least feminists won't have to type out 'we know NAMALT' on threads now, as each post that discusses male violence must now be prefaced with 'I know not all men, etc'?!