Wimpund
The Times (NY) is more circumspect…thus I suppose living up to its reputation for establishment conservatism, but that buys into the absurd new arrangement whereby thinking men become women by saying so is left-wing while thinking women and only women are women is right-wing. To be clear: thinking women and only women are women is not right-wing. It’s tautological, but it’s not right-wing.
J.K. Rowling, the creator of the popular “Harry Potter” series, came under fire from L.G.B.T.Q. groups after she took aim at an article that referred to “people who menstruate.”
The online op-ed article posted last month, with the title “Creating a More Equal Post-Covid-19 World for People Who Menstruate,” highlighted some of the risks faced by primary caretakers, “particularly women in the household and health care workers,” during the coronavirus pandemic.
…
On Saturday, Ms. Rowling wrote on Twitter, where she has 14.5 million followers: “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”Her Twitter post appeared to be responding to a line that described the “menstrual health and hygiene needs of girls, women and all people who menstruate.”
And or to the stupid title. Talking about “people who menstruate” is, among other things, just another way to erase women from public consciousness, which we already get quite enough of thanks to the use of “men” to mean “people” and “he” in general statements and all the rest of it. One of the things feminism has been doing for the past half century is simply reminding all of us that women exist and are not a minority and should not be hidden or forgotten or ignored. Headlines and articles that substitute “people” for “women” are not helpful.
The backlash was swift, with users calling out her comments as being anti-transgender people.
One user wrote on Twitter: “I decided not to kill myself because I wanted to know how Harry’s story ended. For a long time, that was all that kept me alive. Until I met my husband who helped me learn to love myself and to want to live. You just insulted him to my face.”
Snort. That’s so typical of the level of discourse. “To my face”? It could hardly be less to anyone’s face, since it’s on Twitter. The whole point of “to my face” is that it’s not general, not public, not abstract, but entirely personal. “Nononono it’s all about meeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
What do we want? Narcissism! When do we want it? Always!
T.Q. groups. Upon the TERFening purges, L.G.B. no longer belong.
It’s also plain old emotional blackmail.
Insulted her husband? What about the insulting reduction of half (more than half) of the population to “people who menstruate”? And what about those of us who no longer menstruate, whether from illness, surgery, or age? Are we not entitled to a more equitable world, just because we no longer bleed? They claim that TERFs are erasing so many women, but TERFs are not erasing any women; the word “woman” includes ALL OF US. Women who menstruate and women who don’t. Women who are thin and women who are fat. Women of color and women who are white. Women who are married, and women who are single. ALL OF US.
The word is “women”. Get over yourselves. Put on a dress, make up, lipstick, high heels. Wear a pony tail and a bra. Just don’t call yourself a woman, because that is not what it means to be a woman. And don’t erase all the women who happened to be boring enough to be born women and stay women, and who have suffered for their biology their entire life.
And don’t accuse the “TERFs” of reducing women to their biology. Seriously? People who menstruate? What could be more reductive?
Sorry for the rant. I’m in a bad mood today. Too much Trump and not enough wine.
What does menstruation have to do with the article anyway? The article is described as discussing “some of the risks faced by primary caretakers, ‘particularly women in the household and health care workers,'” not anything inherent to menstruation. Sure, there’s a correlation there, but only because primary caretakers tend to be women and women tend to be menstruators. Adding menstruation as a criterion just dilutes it and introduces an unnecessary complication. Women don’t cease to be primary caretakers when they go through menopause, unless that happens to be when their children leave the home.
And there’s something very odd about bending over backwards to try to cover another <1% of the population when the article is already making much bigger generalizations: specifically, by putting aside all of the male primary caretakers (or at least, all the male non-menstruating ones). I'm not complaining about that, mind you. You can't help but generalize from time to time, and sometimes the generalizations are revelatory — like, that we don't treat problem X seriously as a society because it is (or is seen as) primarily a women's problem.
What do we want? Narcissism! When do we want it? We? Me, if you please. It’s all about me, not we, you narcissophobe.
For a lot of women, not even then. There are still husbands, grandchildren, aging parents, neighbors, the kids in their church…middle-aged women/elderly women are expected to be caregivers because it is believed that is all we are good for. I once complained to a young male friend of mine that plays don’t usually have middle aged woman characters, and complained that it was because people perceive that middle-aged women do not have any sort of rich or interesting life. He said, yeah, middle-aged women really don’t do much worth noting, do they? He missed my point entirely, which is that many of us DO have interesting, rich lives, and maybe we don’t want to spend all our time taking care of everyone else. Some of the time? Fine. People who can’t take care of themselves? Sure, I’ll help out. But that big lug with the beer in his hand in front of the TV? Let him get his own goddamn sandwich. (Disclaimer: Not my husband. He usually has a glass of buttermilk in front of the TV; he doesn’t drink beer. And he would never dream of disturbing my busy day to ask me to make him a sandwich. He knows where the ham and cheese and bread are kept, and how to put them together.)