Encroachment on the word 'female'

[pombear]

I'm not here as much as I used to be, so this may have been covered recently already.

But I wanted to sense-check - is it just me, or over the last few months is anyone else seeing a growing encroachment by some on the word 'female' to try to include males who say they're women?

How recent was the addition in 'dictionary definitions' to include gender identity as 'female'?
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/female - ': having a gender identity that is the opposite of male ?

And this little treasure that's posting under 'what is a woman' questions on twitter: twitter.com/WhatIsAWomanBot/status/150516372219659878 with a youtube link where the 'bot explains A woman is an adult human female being, female here can refer to gender identity (they then go on to refer to 'whether you're a boy, girl, both or neither - which is always a red flag to me - why 'boys and girs' when you've just been talking about adults?)

I've noticed it slipping into a lot of language used by males who identify as women:-

www.mindinmidherts.org.uk/being-trans/ I identify as a mature – in my 67th year, Trans-gender female. There are not many of us in that age group around, in fact I’m the oldest female of that age I have ever knowingly met

And in the organisational terminology, like Planned Parenthood's site:
www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/transgender/transgender-identity-terms-and-labels

Transgender Woman (Trans Woman):
A person whose sex assigned at birth was male but whose gender identity is female

For those posters who were around FWR when this was just fields, this wasn't a thing back then, was it?

It seems to be a response in part to Posie's successful 'adult human female' campaign, and in general women's attempts to circumnavigate the abusive appropriation of the word 'woman' to be able to describe ourselves as a category separate from men?

No you're not imagining it.
We said this would happen.

Also - Merriam Webster isn't "the dictionary" it's a politically captured American online word resource.
The OED still has the usual definitions.

Yes Linguini, and I agree about Merriam Webster, and did do a search of the others and thankfully 'female' remains what we know it to be.

And we did see it coming. I just thought I'd give it a specific thread, as I'm seeing a huge increase in it being used to include gender identity.

It feels like the last bit of the snake eating itself though - how on earth can you parse something like Planned Parenthood's definition of a Drag King:
A female performer who exaggerates male behaviors and dress for the purposes of entertainment at bars, clubs, or events They seem to want to desparately describe females as we know them in one breath, and then blow the definition apart elsewhere?

Ongoing language manipulation is the reason many of us now use phrases such as “men who claim they’re women”. If those men want to be called something other than men, then they need to come up with terminology that doesn’t imply they’re something they aren’t.

And I caught the fabulous Sharron Davies trying to explain the issue with Lia Thomas to the former UK tennis player Andrew Castle on LBC this morning

And although he seemed equally appalled by the unfairness, he kept saying Lia had transitioned to being a 'female', even after Sharron had corrected him.

I don't agree with losing the word woman to refer to what the majority of society knows to mean as woman. To now see even the word female being appropriated blithely is...I'm lost for words that won't get me deleted!

^TheCurrywurstPrion* I agree, as you'll see in my first post.

I do think it's something we need to watch out for and challenge whenever the term female is used as 'gender identity' though.

It's that Overton Window - the risk of the word female being used for men who identify as women slipping into normality seems to be high right now?

Oh definitely. It's been increasing. It used to be that we kept hearing that "no one is saying that trans women are female". Now, I rarely see that and instead it's all claiming that trans women are female and definitely not male.
There's been a definite push for it

Yes TheGreatATuin - definitely remember the 'no one is saying that transwomen are female' thing.

We knew this would happen. We (well, other women) said, ok, you can have 'woman' to refer to gender and we'll use 'female' when we need to speak about sex. Trans-ideologues claimed woman and then looked round for new territory to conquer, and set their sets on female. So now actual women get referred to as 'bleeders'.

Meet me halfway, said the reasonable man.
You take a step forward. He takes a step back.
Meet me halfway, said the reasonable man.

Sigh... Set their sights.

I’m concerned that the OED will change its definition in the not too distant future

SirSamVimesCityWatch
Trans-ideologues claimed woman and then looked round for new territory to conquer, and set their sets on female

Agree, But once they've burned the house down, they've removed the space they want to occupy. If there's no definition of woman, how can they claim the space they attacked? It's gone. It means nothing.

And I caught the fabulous Sharron Davies trying to explain the issue with Lia Thomas to the former UK tennis player Andrew Castle on LBC this morning

And although he seemed equally appalled by the unfairness, he kept saying Lia had transitioned to being a 'female', even after Sharron had corrected him.

Yep, raised my hackles when I heard this. IIRC, Sharron switched to saying "biological female" to make things crystal clear.

RubyTrees
Sharron switched to saying "biological female" to make things crystal clear

And this will be the next wall to fall. 'Biological females' will apply to men who identify as women as 'they've always been women so therefore their biology is female'. I think I've already seen that argument elsewhere.

Agree, But once they've burned the house down, they've removed the space they want to occupy. If there's no definition of woman, how can they claim the space they attacked? It's gone. It means nothing.

I'll use a double analogy here which sort of makes a bit of sense.

I was thinking recently,
Why is Russia destroying Ukraine when it wants to own Ukraine? Surely it has political power in the sense it could literally buy Ukraine or convince it politically to unite, rather than just bomb, flatten and kill the entire population rendering it useless.

That lead to thinking that, there are parallels to being in an abusive relationship... When she tries to leave she's most likely to be killed. Ukraine being the "she" and Russia being the abusive husband here.

Destroying the thing you want the most when you can't have it, seems to be part of (male) human nature.

It's the same with gender ideology.
I want X but because I can't have X I'll destroy it instead. The destroying is in the plan, an act of vengeance because the thing you want is unobtainable.

The mantra TWAW is an act of vengeance against women. So it makes sense from that perspective.

Circumferences

There are certainly some very strong similarities. And the overlapping theme is male.

First, women couldn't have the 'woman' all to ourselves any more, so some simply stepped back thinking they could say they were female instead. Nope - we can't have that word either, because the whole point is to define women's reality for them.

If we came up with an entirely new word for ourselves, they would try to claim that as well.

It's all about boundary pushing. If we make a definition for ourselves that excludes them, they simply cannot have that as they think there should be no differentiation between us and them, even if the whole of that differentiation is to protect women. They don't care.

EarthSight

It's all about boundary pushing

All of this. Summed up in five words.

The whole ideological movement and mindset is about colonisation and appropriation - a fundamental disrespect of women as human beings.

There is no boundary that will not be transgressed. Every space, service and word will be taken - first by sob stories and guilt tripping, and then by force if you dare to object.

Every time a woman tries to 'be nice' and concedes a little bit of ground, whether literal or figurative, it's a wedge to push open the door open even further and escalate the demands.

The only way the door can be firmly shut once and for all is if women unite in agreement that no more compromises will be made. No man, no matter how he identifies should be in women's spaces, or accessing women's services or appropriating words related to women.

NonnyMouse1337

Agree, and Kellie's interview here is a good example of doing that. It may not feel comfortable to some, but a very visual demonstration of giving no compromise.

twitter.com/JonnyRoot_/status/1505565342885507075

Well I've been doing this quite a long time. so I'm familiar with the old 'are you an expert?, and I think it's just speaking really plainly and truthfully, like we did about five years ago, and not accepting the new. I don't use any of the new language. There are men and women. There's no such thing as non-binary, there's no such thing as a transwoman. I don't use female pronouns for men.
Really, really rigid. I have to hold the line somewhere. I run an organisation called Standing for Women, so if I can't hold the line I can't expect anyone else to.

Trans women are men biologically. It’s an inescapable fact. However it’s dressed up with language twists.