Not one mention of women or girls

[PaleBlueMoonlight]

It is about dehumanising menstruators because they are not catered for properly at festivals. They don't seem to have noticed their own dehumanising language.

The erasure of any mention of women and girls and the replacement with the words menstruator and people with periods is the dehumanising language. It is being used to describe women and girls even when they are not menstruating, as women and girls who are not actively menstruating at this moment but have to plan for their periods are affected, girls who are not yet menstruating will be affected in the future and women who used to menstruate have been affected in the past. This means that they are not using these words to describe someone menstruating, but as words to describe our sex class. They are using them with the same meaning as the words women and girl have always meant. Its use in this way is an illustration of why we need words to describe a human sex class, but apparently the words we had are not OK and we have to use bodily functions to describe that sex class instead.

I know we have seen this to many times before, but it is so stark in this piece.

BBC: It's time festivals catered for people's periods

By the way, the title on the clicky link is what you see on the home page.

That is such a weird watch. As a woman who has had periods for 40 years, I didn't even feel like they were talking to me. It felt like they were some niche subsection of people who have a medical issue.

Menstruators. FFS

Fucking BBC.

I wish they allowed comments on the article.

Yeah, total bollocks.

As an aside, at my GPs the other week I was heartened to note the waiting room flat screen explaining the different invite rates for age groups for cervical screening used the word "women" and only "women" throughout. This is in a scruffy, working class part of South London, so glad to see the wording was as clear as possible to reach the maximum audience.

That term is so dehumanising. Girls and women. We are girls and women. We are so powerful, we bring life, and go through so much, and end up being named for a bodily function. So degrading. It makes me so angry to hear young women using this term.

We've become a dirty word.

I am one step away from cancelling my licence. I really am.

This stuff is making me think very very hard.

I saw that. It really made me angry. Women exist! FFS. We are not offensive by our existence...or apparently we are and cannot be mentioned.

Imagine if they'd run the same article about people with IBS who need access to a clean loo and referred to them as "defecators"!?!

If they'd even said women and other people who menstruate I'd have rolled my eyes but got the point that they're trying to be inclusive. But to exclude and erase the lived reality and identity of so many people is just wrong.

This means that they are not using these words to describe someone menstruating, but as words to describe our sex class. They are using them with the same meaning as the words women and girl have always meant.

This is definitely happening. The London Women's March (the same one that invited Munroe Bergdorf to speak) tweeted (now deleted) that in 1973 when we joined the EU there were x number of menstruators in Parliament. Now I very much doubt they knew the menstrual status of all women in parliament at the time, so they were just using it as woke shorthand for "women"

The BBC is completely captured and honestly it pisses me off seeing people referring to it as an 'independent source' when it is so obviously biased.

@Joystir59 It makes me so angry to hear young women using this term.

Yes - I wonder if they would say "I'm meeting an ejaculator later to talk about work".

@Ereshkigalangcleg

This means that they are not using these words to describe someone menstruating, but as words to describe our sex class. They are using them with the same meaning as the words women and girl have always meant.

This is definitely happening. The London Women's March (the same one that invited Munroe Bergdorf to speak) tweeted (now deleted) that in 1973 when we joined the EU there were x number of menstruators in Parliament. Now I very much doubt they knew the menstrual status of all women in parliament at the time, so they were just using it as woke shorthand for "women"

How pathetic of them. I hope the tweet got deleted due to negative feedback.

@Clymene

That is such a weird watch. As a woman who has had periods for 40 years, I didn't even feel like they were talking to me. It felt like they were some niche subsection of people who have a medical issue.

Menstruators. FFS

This. It’s like it’s a new issue that’s just spontaneously developed amongst some 19 year olds standing in fields.

It therefore comes across as a luxury problem, because instead of seeing it in the bigger picture as something that affects women in India who don’t have access to toilets, and women in Scotland on long rural car journeys, and women in Australia working in farming, women in central London where all the public loos have been closed down, women on a remote beach in Thailand etc. It just comes across as something that affects a few ‘people’ in the British Summer. It’s such a waste.

(And we didn’t even have showers at festivals in my day. Some people don’t know they’ve been born)

@Ereshkigalangcleg

This means that they are not using these words to describe someone menstruating, but as words to describe our sex class. They are using them with the same meaning as the words women and girl have always meant.

This is definitely happening. The London Women's March (the same one that invited Munroe Bergdorf to speak) tweeted (now deleted) that in 1973 when we joined the EU there were x number of menstruators in Parliament. Now I very much doubt they knew the menstrual status of all women in parliament at the time, so they were just using it as woke shorthand for "women"

Iirc it was simply the number of women, many of whom were almost certainly past the menopause for starters.

Dehumanising and ageist.

I recently noticed on the Sainburies website that for younger women, it's "period pants," with no mention of the word woman or female.

For older women who are dealing with leaks, they are all suddenly magically women, apparently.

And yet, none of these people or organisations can define 'women'. There is no alternative definition that is any use whatsoever.

So while women and girls are being described in fairly dehumanising language, I really don't know who these companies consider to be 'women'.

Time for another complaint to the Beeb, I see. Then I can look forward the the anodyne response that wholly fails to address the specific issues raises. I wonder if it’ll just be dismissive or tending toward implicit condemnation of my TERFy-ness this time.

No to derail but similarly have just read the piece in the Guardian about vulvas - got as far as:

This is most noticeable on TikTok, where Ying Lee (*@sativaplath699), who is 24 and uses the pronouns they/them, got a huge number of hits on a post about their “phat coochie” (phat means fat; coochie means vulva), then more still (6.4m) for a witty and complicated piece to camera about “gatekeeping phat coochie culture”.
“When I was making that post, there was a trend of talking about big, juicy coochies,” says Lee over the phone from Vancouver. “And you could apply this to any body part. There was a time when it wasn’t ideal to have big thighs or have a big ass – and then it suddenly was. I guess I get frustrated that women’s bodies are only acceptable when they’re on trend. A trend can normalise you – but only for as long as that’s the trend. And whether you’re in trend or not, you’re still going to have this body.”

Not to be goady but can anyone explain how the they/them pronouns equates with what Ying Lee goes on to say? It seems... contradictory?

I’m beginning to think this might backfire on Stonewall and other anti-woman organisation. If women start groups for ‘menstruators, ex-menstruators, and potential menstruators’, for example, then TRAs would have no excuse to try to join and take over - it would clearly be a group thats not for them.
Maybe its time to start using their weapons against them, maybe we can refer to all transwomen as ‘penis-havers’, as this is language that is acceptable to them.

@BraveBananaBadge: it seems that Ying Lee temporarily forgot that they’re not a woman and accidentally slipped into language that referred to them as such. My trans activist friends do this all the time. One of my non binary friends keeps accidentally referring to herself as a “woman with autism”.

My goodness, that period tent thingy looks so embarrassing!... :(

@Joystir59

That term is so dehumanising. Girls and women. We are girls and women. We are so powerful, we bring life, and go through so much, and end up being named for a bodily function. So degrading. It makes me so angry to hear young women using this term.

The fact they're not even using the word 'female' suggests to me that you aren't even allowed to mention the fact they're biologically female. Sad.

I've just read that too and it made me furious!!! It's outrageous, appalling and dehumanising.

Silencing females again

Just as we started to believe things would be different for future generations of women and girls

I was watching a football match on TV the other day and there was an advert about prostate cancer from the charity prostate cancer UK. It had the word MAN blazened everywhere. The tag line "men, we are with you". No mention of trans, no mention of "prostate havers" or any of the stuff us "cervix havers" are having to put up with. Why are women having to bend over backwards and accept our own erasure when it seems perfectly acceptable for men to be very blatant in their own advertisement?

Complain to the BBC!! And when they reply, complain again, including more info about their lousy reply. Just KEEP COMPLAINING. I think that the complaints slowly get escalated, until they are answered by a real person, not the office cat. I'm on my 3rd level of complaint re. their Laurel Hubbard article.