Be inclusive, don’t mention women
The latest in Ways to Erase Women:
@GPEWAimee Do you realise the term "non-male" is woman-exclusionary? Women do not define ourselves in relation to men #checkyourlanguage
— Rosemary Goude (@greengoude) March 29, 2016
There are no women any more, only non-males. There are still men though, of course. That’s not going to change. [laughs merrily at the very idea]
Young Greens Women (ooh they’d better change that title pretty fast) came up with a response:
Thanks to those who have offered constructive thoughts on the language we use! We currently use 'non-male' because this is inclusive of…
— Young Greens Women (@ygwomen) March 31, 2016
…other non-binary genders which have a place in our group. However we understand why people may have issues with language that defines…
— Young Greens Women (@ygwomen) March 31, 2016
…us in relation to men. We are currently discussing within the group if we can/should change the language we are using. Rest assured…
— Young Greens Women (@ygwomen) March 31, 2016
https://twitter.com/ygwomen/status/715502640071905280
Except of women. There’s no need to be inclusive of women, because women sit at the top of the cis privilege tree, gobbling up all the resources and respect and power. The only way to practice truly completely purely correct intersectional feminism is to delete the word “women” from your vocabulary.
“Feminism” is not inclusive, since it refers only to females, and human ones at that. Check your species privilege LOL. We’ve come a long way from the fight against gender essentialism, and we’re losing.
“Golly, I’ll tell you, we are going to get this right because we are committed to intersectional feminism and, darnit, if there’s one thing that us true feminists stand for it is, without a doubt, make no bones about it, feminism stands for … er … that group of people we don’t dare mention.”
“Feminist activists, unite! (Around this group of people who only exist relative to males.)”
“Male! Now there’s a word we can use! No one is going to question us for using a word like ‘male’ since it is True North on the gender spectrum. Let’s define everything else around that because it is respectable and it is meaningful and it is all inclusive and everyone will pave our paths to equality in gold if we simply demonstrate that we have a relationship to males, even if we are non-such. Yay, intresectional feminism!”
Holy hell, they can’t even hear themselves, can they?
And now for the $ 1,000,000 question: We’ve been told, over and over again, that the “male”/”female” distinction is about biological sex (i.e. physical traits) whereas the “man”/”woman” distinction is about “gender”, meaning an “inner sense of self” etc. (I can’t be the only one who has heard this). So, how can the use of words like “male” or “female” (a biological category) possibly be either inclusive or exclusive to any “gender” (an entirely mental category)? Smells suspiciously like another attempt at having it both ways to me.
Bjarte, you’re behind the times: now everyone’s sex is whatever they want it to be regardless of reproductive organs, and if you say there’s an important distinction you’re committing violence against trans and intersex people.
Blood Knight, I think you meant to say nonbinary, because intersex *is* about reproductive organs and chromosomes, and they are actually not included in male or female.
Oh yes, of course.
Bjarte #3,
I saw a Jezebel article the other day where the author actually wrote “biological gender.”
Science and feminism are dead, long live gender essentialism!
I don’t get this – surely everyone would understand that non-white is an offensive way to refer to a person’s race/ethnicity, so why would they think non-male is OK?
Because women are the one subordinate group it’s ok to erase, trash, exclude, threaten, shun, etc.
Why are they? I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure that out for a long time, and I still don’t know.
‘Women’ doesn’t mention trans women, and even though trans women are a subset of that group, that omission is considered erasure and is thus a bad thing.
‘Non-male’ doesn’t mention women, and even though women are a subset of that group, that omission is considered… totally cool, nothing to see here, move along.
Another beautiful example of feminism so intersectional, it intersects with everything but feminism.
Claire, the trouble is that as much as non-white makes the assumption that white is therefore the default colour, the descriptor ‘people of colour’* is useless as an indicator of race / ethnicity.
First, and perhaps a little trivial but no less true for it, is that with the possible exception of the invisible man we all have colour. Even albinos are not strictly white, just a whiter shade of pale. I, on the other hand, whilst being officially classified as white, am naturally darker skinned than many lighter toned Asians**.
Second, people of colour is a one size fits all descriptor which tells us exactly nothing about race / ethnicity. The only information it does give is that it will be referring to a person or people who will have skin of a colour somewhere from beige to black.
*I have recenfly heard the acronym ‘poc’ used as a racist slur for the first time. I only caught a snippet of the conversation as a young woman and her dad were getting on a bus as I walked past. The woman said “Dad! You can’t call them that anymore, you have to call them poc’s”. He snapped back “That’s not new, they’ve always been a sodding pox on society”.
It never takes long. Is there a case to be made for the adoption of the descriptors already used by police and security forces? Or would the usual suspects cry racism because it’s obvious (for several wrong definitions of obvious) that the message intended is that I.C.1 is the superior group with the rest placed in order of inferiority to no.1?
I would have hoped that after so many thousands of years of getting to know each other we might at least have been at the point where skin colour was just skin colour rather than a convenient category marker more divisive than religion or politics.
We really are a horrible species.
**I was going to make a flippant point here about how the use of ‘Asian’ only in association with brown people was Oriental Asian-exclusive, but now I’ve seen it written down it looks no less ridiculous than many of the claims and accusations coming from some quarters
A final point; in the comments on a recent article here a few days ago somebody asked if the far left can still be called ‘left’ at all. If one uses the standard idea of a straight line then the further one gets from the centre, the more ‘left’ or ‘right’ one becomes, With no theoretical limit to how far to either side one can be.
However, in reality it makes more sense to think of the line in terms of the earth’s equator. The further West of Greenwich, the more left wing one is, the further East, the more right wing. But now there is a limit; once the extremes of each side have reached 90° from centre they are as far apart as it’s possible to get, once they pass that mark they are closing in on each other, and whilst their goals might still differ, their methods become increasingly similar.
To add to what Obsessive said, non-white also sees use when we think of groups that have been non-white, namely European immigrants of all stripes in the US (Irish, Germans, etc…) as well as Jews. Whiteness is belonging to the master ethnic class, not just skin tone.
The conclusion to my comment above is simply that whether we’re talking colour, gender, sexual orientation, yadda yadda, there are no words or phrases that will find universal approval. I’m starting to think we can get too hung up on words, or is the constant haggling a way of avoiding the problems they describe; after all, one cannot solve a problem if we can’t even talk about it without offending somebody.
To S.J.: Words are the point for those who have no power to actually do anything. We progressives are much easier to put up against the wall than actual bad folks. Making people you mostly agree with feel bad about using the “wrong” words is so much easier than actual politics, totally ineffective though the practice might be.
Another beautiful example of feminism so intersectional, it intersects with everything but feminism.
I need a T-Shirt with this on it.
Yes, Holms wins the Internet today!
And…will all of this ‘discussing’ and ‘striving’ do diddly squat for ANY actual human beings suffering from injustice or oppression around issues of gender-sex-identity etc. etc.?
Just keep ’em down on the farm, relentlessly policing themselves.