Making women unmentionable
Also in the Times – Andrew Gilligan:
The government has said the term “pregnant woman” should not be used in a UN treaty because it “excludes” transgender people.
Feminists reacted with outrage to what they said was the latest example of “making women unmentionable” in the name of transgender equality.
The statement comes in Britain’s official submission on proposed amendments to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the UK has been a signatory since 1976. The UN treaty says a “pregnant woman” must be protected, including not being subject to the death penalty.
Yet in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office submission, Britain opposes the term “pregnant woman” because it may “exclude transgender people who have given birth”. The suggested term is “pregnant people”.
Only two known UK cases exist of transgender pregnancy, where children are born to trans men who have had a sex change but retained a functioning womb and ovaries.
Sarah Ditum, a prominent feminist writer, said: “This isn’t inclusion. This is making women unmentionable. Having a female body and knowing what that means for reproduction doesn’t make you ‘exclusionary’. Forcing us to decorously scrub out any reference to our sex on pain of being called bigots is an insult.”
It never ceases to amaze me that so many people – people who think of themselves as progressive and right-on and social justicey – can’t see that deleting women from discussions of the rights of pregnant women or abortion rights – is not a good (or progressive) idea. Never ceases to.
It never occurs to the trans cult that it might be a bigger form of bigotry to ‘exclude’ half the human race on behalf of a fraction of a fraction of one percent of the population. I doubt that most transmen who have given birth could give a tinker’s cuss about not being ‘included’ in literature. It’s the transMRAs who are imposing this, in order to deny the existence of women in anything that might be encountered in public life, and using the existence of a tiny number of transmen as an excuse.
Transmen could be included in all printed material for pregnant women, by the simple addition of a footnote “This also applies to pregnant transmen.” There. The two transmen who have given birth can feel included without excluding the millions of women.
Do the people suggesting the changes really think that two transmen are behind the push to eradicate all mention of womanhood?!
It’s 1984. It’s punishment of Thought Crimes; Newspeak.
Maybe they don’t think that, but they certainly want the rest of us to think that.