If we can’t say women we can’t say feminism
Why does it matter, saying “women” instead of “people” when we talk about abortion or contraception or pregnancy?
It matters for the same reason we have the word “feminist” at all – because it picks out the fact that women are treated as an inferior caste, whose bodies don’t fully belong to them.
The logic is identical to the logic of “Black Lives Matter” versus “All Lives Matter.” BLM became a slogan because black people are treated as an inferior caste, subject to arbitrary interference and violence by the state. People on the left are well aware that retorting to “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter” is at best a clueless irrelevance and at worst a racist provocation.
Talking about abortion rights in terms of “people” obscures the fact that many people (sic) think it’s ok or even obligatory to boss and control and limit women because they are women – that women are an inherently subordinate group, designated to be obedient to the dominant group. The fact that women and only women get pregnant is the core reason they are treated as an inherently subordinate group: childbearing must be controlled.
Once you start using language to obscure that fact, you lose the ability to name it and analyze it and rebel against it. Sexism becomes completely weird and unfathomable, it becomes random, and the random is not political; it can’t be resisted.
We understand this with no trouble when it comes to issues around race – so why is it so occluded when it comes to sex?
Brilliantly put.
Some things just are women’s issues in the sense that they affect women and not men. In another sense they could be thought of as everyone’s issues in that it is a good thing if people other than women are concerned, but, when all’s said and done, there was never any chance of me having an abortion, for instance. What is wrong with using language that simply reflects the facts?
Then there’s the fact that the people who are most exercised about saying “people” seem to be the same ones who charge into every situation waving a blunderbuss and in fact, whatever gender they may wish to be recognised as, behaving exactly like men. The whole “sit in that corner, don’t argue, don’t express an opinion, use the correct language and alway, always defer to me because I know best” grates.
I remember the days – and there are people 20 years older than I in full working order – when one of our priority tasks as feminists was to reclaim the word “woman” and the energy expended upon that. Patriarchy had this little trick, you see, of dividing us by treating us as two sets of beings.
Ladies were quiet creatures, lavender-scented most likely, who assiduously ensured that every need of the superior caste was met, the church flowers were done and who were most unlikely ever to express an opinion, certainly not a heterodox opinion.
Women, on the other hand were entirely different – about 2 brownie points up from a slag – who could be extraordinarily useful but only acting in the service of man. (However you may care to define useful!) In many cases this distinction might be entirely unconscious but it was deeply ingrained. I remember the hours spent in TU branch meetings and at work which we all spent insisting upon being referred to as women. It’s also where the graphics on toilet doors, rather than a disputed word, came from. Know your history!
Those of us who fought that fight and won are most unlikely to bow to this new-ideology-every-week, control of language mob. Yes, they are a mob. They are also extremely tedious to deal with. I do not see that they have any positive objective in mind or much idea what progress might look like.
My most recent episode of explaining the difference between ‘Woman’ and ‘Lady’ occurred last week.
“Ladies”…oh, man, that takes me back…it’s hard to remember. I mean, I remember, but it just seems so alien now.
I was in high-school in the 1970s. The name of the toilet that women used was “The Ladies Room”. That was the universal locution. Universally used, universally accepted. It was never referred to in any other way.
The Women’s Room was published in 1977. When it came out, that title was…bizarre. It grated. It was transgressive. Even if you hadn’t read the book, you knew something serious was going down.
Today, it’s a commonplace: Men’s room, Women’s room. Nothing to it.
I notice that children are still taught to say “lady” instead of “woman”. I know adult women who dislike the term “woman” and I think it’s because they were subtly taught that it is derogatory.
Myrhinne,
Yes, I’ve noticed that too and came to a similar conclusion.