Do it to her
Sarah Ditum takes a look at the peculiar asymmetry of the move to make language more “inclusive” by not using the word “women.”
In June Cancer Research UK, a charity, tweeted: “Cervical screening (or the smear test) is relevant for everyone aged 25-64 with a cervix.” The odd phrasing—“everyone with a cervix” rather than “women”—was not accidental. The charity explained that it had deliberately chosen to use what it described as “inclusive language”. Similarly, the campaign Bloody Good Period, which donates tampons and sanitary towels to asylum-seekers, uses the word “menstruators” rather than “women”. And Green Party Women, an internal campaign group of the British Green Party, confirmed last year that its preferred designation for the constituency it represented was not, in fact, “women” but “non-men”.
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Trans people face substantial injustices, most significantly violence (perpetrated, like all violence, largely by men) and discrimination. The process of applying for a gender-recognition certificate is intrusive and burdensome for many, and there are frustrating waiting lists for medical transition, which are compounded when doctors appear unsympathetic or obstructive. Yet rather than confront male violence or lobby the medical system, the focus of trans activism has overwhelmingly been the feminist movement, spaces and services designed for women, and the meaning of the word “woman”.
It is notable that Cancer Research UK did not test its “inclusive” approach with a male-specific cancer. Its campaign messages about prostate and testicular cancer address “men”, rather than “everyone with a prostate” or “everyone with testicles”. (Addressing “people with a cervix” is, of course, only inclusive of people who know they have a cervix. Many women do not have that detailed knowledge of their internal anatomy. And those who speak English as a second language may well not know the word.) While organisations in the women’s sector have revised their language to avoid the word “women”, male-specific charities such as CALM (the Campaign against Living Miserably, a movement against male suicide) continue to refer uncomplicatedly to “men”. Women’s groups are aggressively picketed for being exclusionary; men’s clubs are left unmolested.
Strange, isn’t it. The explanation that leaps to mind first is the fact that men hit harder. Sarah points out in that parenthesis that most violence is perpetrated by men – so who ya gonna go after if you have a choice? Not men, because they might cut up rough.
But also, let’s face it, because women are inferior. Women are the subordinate sex, so if there is bullying aka “activism” to be done, it’s obviously women it should be done to.
Or, in other words, we’ve always told women what to do so why stop now?
Also, to be perfectly honest, women are the sex trained to be agreeable – or is it innate? Nature or nurture? Some of both with a dash of lemon juice? Either way, they are, so let’s push them around, not those stubborn autonomy-protecting men. Let’s keep right on treating women as the servant half of humanity.
As Sarah sums it up,
There is a word for a situation where women talking about female bodies is considered impermissibly antisocial, where describing the consequences of sexism for women is systematically impeded, where resources for women are redistributed to male users while resources for men are left in male hands, and where “male” and “female” are rigidly associated with masculinity and femininity. That word is not “progressive”, “liberal” or any of the other terms usually associated with trans activism. The word is misogyny. Trans rights should not come at the cost of women’s fragile gains.
Wouldn’t you think?
Damn it, “Do it to her” sent shivers down my spine. I was back in 1954, watching Peter Cushing in black and white on BBC TV.
I wonder how much attention could be directed at (e.g.) transitioning medical resources, awareness of (actual, physical!) violence against trans people, and social support for those of whatever unorthodox sexual identity, that gets siphoned out into discussions of pronoun usages for people who may not care or hear them, avoiding the use of ‘women’ and ‘female’ where they may exclude some tiny fraction of people possibly entitled to them while excluding or confusing much larger numbers, and trying to assign a gender identity to people long dead who didn’t have the categories we use and maybe would not have wanted them.
People should be sure that their activism has a net benefit even for the precise category of people for whom it is meant, before they open up the floodgates to negative repercussions to many, many others without even that use to it.
It’s like, if we’ve been working at correctly an injustice long enough and it’s not over and done with yet, people can’t be bothered to work on it any more and have to abandon any progress in any number of directions to grab onto the latest social justice fashion, before it’s even thought through well enough. First things first, we need attention spans longer the Trump’s and a lot more interest in reading and considering consequences.
Gee, all us men with a cervix are terribly relieved by this I’m sure. Oh, wait…
Checks…
Nope, doesn’t apply to me.
Why the hell are they wasting time and resources shitting on women.
Tradition. It’s a grand old tradition, dating back millennia. The amount of ink and time spent hating women in the holy books of numerous religions probably could have gone into saving the world from real problems, but women are easier. We’re smaller, we tend to have less upper body strength, and it’s soooooooo much fun to demean and suppress women.
What a good idea, perhaps in the interests of inclusiveness we should describe men and those trans women to whom it applies as Wankers
Seems fair and uses the same underlying logic. Includes some of them and not others. How could they object?
my gynecologist wanted me to have Pap smears every year for 10 years after my cancerous cervix was removed. That statement isn’t accurate.
David Evans @ 1 – yes, the echo was intentional.
I’m still waiting for a good explanation for how these two things can be argued simultaneously by the same person:
a) the word ‘women’ is exclusionary and should be replaced with some other proxy,
b) the word ‘women’ applies just as much to trans women as it does to those that have been female all along.
It seems to me that anyone claiming trans women are implicitly excluded by the word ‘women,’ then they are assuming that the word does not apply to trans women. Stated another way, if the word includes trans women, it is not excluding them.
How do their heads not explode?
Lack of any organic material inside the cranium?
@Holms.
As I understand it, they see the word woman as excluding the trans-men that didn’t transition (yet) or any other female-bodied person that doesn’t identify as a women.
I agree with iknklast, as usual. When women (and children) are at the bottom of the heap, even the lowliest man with the least power in society feels great because he has power over more than half the human race.
Just as a matter of practicality I’d think that would be a bad move, as you’re going to alienate more women than you’ll pick up non-men (a tiny subgroup of a tiny subgroup).
But Skeletor, think of the purity.
Well, as usual, PZ has rung in on this article, and he…sees it a bit…differently.
PZ cannot see the illogic of his own arguments. Women have every reason to worry about men they do not know in vulnerable spaces, like elevators; women who see a male-bodied person they do not know in a woman’s space (like a bathroom) and protest about it are anti-trans bigots. I guess somehow, we’re supposed to magically know that person who looks male, dresses in conventionally male clothing, and still has a penis (though hopefully we can’t see that for sure) is a woman, and therefore entitled to be in women’s most private spaces, spaces where women are even more vulnerable than in elevators due to the requirement for women to remove substantial amounts of clothing to use the bathroom.