The Deconstruction of Women

[WarriorN]

A brilliant article by Helen Saxby

Sorry if there's a thread; I couldn't see one.

I had some unease about the idea of meno as an EA10 characteristic though agree the research and support for women is insanely inadequate.

thecritic.co.uk/the-deconstruction-of-women/

(That image is crying out for a soft sculpture rendering of anyone fancies knitting it.)

Bumping, we are trying to get this article "out there" as it makes excellent points about divorcing women from their biology.

Thanks, I read it through and it makes sense to me.

Thank you for that article WarriorN. What interesting points it makes about removing the woman as a word and referring only to disembodied parts and their functions of women.

At one point it says that the menopause is in a way already protected by the Equality Act through the characteristic age and sex.

There is a problem though, in that ‘sex ‘ in the Equality Act is nowadays often conflated with ‘gender’. If so, people who are not women by biology, who will never experience menopause, may
be cause confusion.

If anyone who hasn’t seen it this Parliamentary petition is to update the Equality Act to make clear the characteristic sex is biological sex.

The need for this is not just in relation to the Unherd article, but to reclaim some sanity and meaning around the fundamental fact of our lives that people are born with bodies and physiologies that are male or female and that is what ‘sex ‘ refers to.

To sign and share the petition currently at 77,000 plus signatures but needing 100,000 by a date in April for the Government to consider a debate.
⬇️
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/623243

The word “female” is not offensive in and of itself, but it is a biological category which encompasses animals as well as humans. If we need to distinguish ourselves from animals, we need the words “women” and “girls”. These are the words that humanise us. When we are dehumanised, by use of language which avoids the humanising words and makes us a collection of body parts and functions, it is easier to abuse us and deny us our rights.

Very true.

Also the points about avoiding the words 'girl' or 'mother' and replacing with the detached 'cis-female' and 'surrogate' in case the reader is accidentally prompted to see them as human beings and has sympathies aroused that get in the way of the political agenda.

I have used 'female' a lot to separate women as a group from the mixed sex mess it has been turned into. But I'm done with that as of this week. The dehumanising of women and girls has been illustrated in all its appalling glory, and by being nice and polite about language (with heavy pressure to be so), we've accidentally enabled our own oppression.

Yes very true Scrolling.

I don't think making it a protected characteristic is anything more than an icicle on the top of a huge iceburg, where the real issues are all beneath the surface.

It's clear that sex and age are not being considered enough in this area and women are already being discriminated against under existing law. M
The amount of money that would be thrown at the bureaucracy it would take to add this extra characteristic would be better spent elsewhere.

I'm still unsure of all the ins and out though and would appreciate convincing arguments for the protected characteristic being enshrined in law.

What a brilliant article. Thank you for sharing

Haven't got time to read now, will do later.
But thanks for posting.
And yes, I can definitely see the image becoming an iconic hooky mat!

When a convicted double rapist is treated with more understanding and sympathy by our system than the women voicing concerns about male violence, something has gone badly wrong. The trans lobbyists seem to have won this round: they have joined in with our old enemies, the pimps and the pornographers, to split women apart into usable chunks in order to appease a tiny population of men who want to be women but who don’t have the biology. They have refused us the right to our language and our perception of ourselves, and they have influenced powerful men (and some women) who have forgotten that women and girls are human beings, let alone human beings who deserve rights.

it's a really good piece. Now off to finish reading it

It is a concise summary of the way inclusive language excludes by erasing the embodied identities of many. We become synecdoches (where a part is used for the whole, as in womb-carriers), and this is done so that others get their identities validated.