Bleeders
The Guardian has a letter plus answer thing under the headings In it together Women.
Headline: When I went home with period pains I told my boss I had a cold. Should I have told the truth?
Letter:
Last month I had to leave work in the middle of the day. I was in a great deal of pain from my period, a problem I have had for several years. Sometimes I can manage it with painkillers, but not always. Even when I can cope with the pain, my periods affect my sleep, and make me slower and less productive. When my (female) boss saw how unwell I was, she kindly suggested I go home. I told her the next day I must be coming down with a cold. I’ve been thinking, why didn’t I just say “I have bad period pains”? I know it’s because I don’t want to be seen as weak and I don’t want to play into stereotypes that women can’t work or have important jobs because of their periods. That said, I worry about using a sick day or two every month. What are my rights in this area regarding sick leave? Should I speak up next time? Am I letting the side down by not coming out and being honest about my period?
Reply by Poppy Noor:
Something happens to you once a month that is painful and out of your control. You are not alone. Last year, YouGov asked 538 menstruators about their experiences of period pain in the workplace; 57% said it had affected their work.
screeeeeeeeeeech Wait, what?
Menstruators?
What happened to “women”?
It says “women” at the top of the page, before the headline. The writer mentions that her boss is female, and then cites “stereotypes that women can’t work or have important jobs because of their periods.” The piece is about a thing that women have to deal with that can hinder them at work and school and life in general. It’s about an issue that affects women, it’s from a woman, it’s about a physical process inseparable from the female reproductive system. Why was the hideous contemptuous reductive word “menstruators” used instead of “women”?
Poppy Noor herself promptly uses the dreaded word:
Last year, YouGov asked 538 menstruators about their experiences of period pain in the workplace; 57% said it had affected their work. And yet, you feel you will be seen as weak or unreliable if you tell someone about it. Your fears aren’t unfounded: a number of studies show that women’s pain is routinely dismissed by health professionals, especially when it comes to gynaecological issues. And other women seem to share your fear. YouGov found that only 27% of women affected by period pains told their boss and many of them (33%) pretended, as you did, that it was something else affecting their work.
“Women” three times and “gynaecological” once. So why use “menstruators” at all?
Puts women in their place?
Possibly not a trans super woke thing – possibly they meant some women no longer menstruate. Which is true, but I would go with “women who do/don’t menstruate” to describe that.
No longer due to age I mean.
Let’s remember that this change in terminology is from the same people that inexplicably dislike women=female because it “reduces people to their anatomy.”
Anna, no, it isn’t that. There’s never been the slightest issue with talking about menstruation and women, menopause notwithstanding. It’s strictly a woke thing about trans women.
Yeah, most women who have passed menopause or had a hysterectomy do not feel threatened by referring to menstruating women simply as “women”. Our lack of that feature does not render us any less women, and we recognize that the people who are menstruating are women, so it is not a big issue. It is only an issue when you are trying to force everyone else to see you as a woman when you do not menstruate because you were born with a penis instead of a uterus.
Plus, also, we’ve had the experience ourselves, so we know what it’s like. I for one feel infinitely more insulted and ignored by “menstruators” than I do by “women.”
Yeah, I had a similar reaction to Anna at first, then I read the sentence again and wtf. It’s definitely saying “not all women menstruate”, which is obviously true, but it’s also implying that “not all menstruators are women”, which clearly is not.
It’s a false equivalence carefully sneaking under the radar on its hands and knees.
wtf at the sentence, not at Anna, to be clear.
I thought ‘The Menstruator’ was going to turn out to be an all-female remake of The Terminator.
Seriously though, who could possibly think it would be ok to refer to a group of people this way? And what are the chances they call men ‘ejaculators’?
I attended a play conference a couple of years ago where one of the plays referred to the female characters as “Breeders” (that was actually the title of the play, but the main characters, both male, were obviously not the Breeders they referred to). The “breeder” referred to was a surrogate mother for a young same-sex male couple who talked trash about her behind her back, and disdained her continually. They did, however, take her baby (which was not fathered by either of them) and send her off alone. They did pay her, yes, but for some reason, they were the “good guys” in the play, and she was the shitty slut who had a baby without being a fit mother, and without any father in sight. They were the great fellows who just wanted a little bitty baby of their own.
The same conference, there was another play about surrogacy. That one also saw surrogacy as a good thing. No one even gave any consideration to the mothers. They were “breeders”, right? And now that they have bred and been sent on their way, they are “menstruators” again, I suppose.
Woman appears to be a category that is now only allowed to be used when you are saying “Trans women are real women”. Other than that, women apparently no longer exist. We must be divided into men, menstruators, pregnant people and…well, there is no “and”. Women who have passed the age of pregnancy and menstruation simply no longer exist.
Does the fact that spell check hates the word menstruators, and continually underlines it as wrong, suggest anything to these people? I’m sure it doesn’t.
It’s an ugly word, but I’m not sure it has anything to do with trans issues, especially since Poppy Noor had no problem saying ‘women’ several times after that. I notice the survey she links to says it specifically surveyed women who experienced periods, so the word may have been a clumsy attempt to specify women who menstruate (as Anna suggested). Though why Poppy Noor couldn’t simply say ‘women who msnstruate’ rather than invent an ugly new word, I don’t know
@PD:
Then why is it an ugly word?
It’s an ugly word because it reduces women to things and especially ugly because “women” would have been fine. And especially especially ugly because, as Ophelia explained:
Why take such pains to remove the word “woman”? That’s what makes it ugly.
And it’s a pattern, and it keeps repeating. It is an explicit expectation and sometimes demand of the more…exigent trans activists that everyone stop saying “women” when talking about abortion, menstruation, childbirth, nursing, etc etc etc, because whataboutransmen. Funnily enough, it’s not a pattern that applies to men – it’s only women we’re told to stop mentioning. There is no male equivalent of “TERF.” There is no male equivalent of “transmisogyny.” Bullying and silencing women is way out front, while men are allowed to carry on as before.
Well there was apparently pushback, since the word “menstruators” is gone now, and it now simply says “women”.
Excellent!