As you know, we have a spate of new words for “woman” or “women”, all devised to either efface the distinction between biological women and transwomen, or to include transmen (many of whom still have male genitals, have periods and can bear children) together in a group with biological women.
If you say, “trans women are women”, then you are forced to make up new words to refer to biological women who are physiologically and reproductively different from tranwomen. So far these words have included “people who menstruate”, “chestfeeder”, “womxn” and others I can’t recall. Yet the activists haven’t seemed to settle on one word that fits all.
Lately they’ve added a new one as a euphemism for “biological women + transmen who can have children”. This was brought to my attention by Nellie Bowles, whose Friday weekly summaries on Bari Weiss’s Substack site are both informative and snarky.
Here’s from her latest summary (her emphasis):
New slur for women arrives: “Womb carriers.” You have to hate women a lot to refer to Native American women who suffered horrific abuse as “womb carriers.” Verso Books, the ultra-trendy Brooklyn publisher and cultural hub, brings us the latest slur for females.
Because nothing really disappears on the Internet, I found the Verso tweet, which they’ve apparently removed because so many people mocked or criticized the usage. Yes, the sterilization and forced adoption (as well as forced away-from-home schooling) of Native Americans in Canada and America are well known, and are reprehensible and immoral. The problem is with how “women” are semantically described. I’m wondering what J. K. Rowling will have to say about this. What you can’t deny is that “womb carriers” is simply a synonym for “biological women”.
Speaking of “womxn“, Bowles also reports there’s a controversy about how to pronounce it (I had the same issue with “Latinx”.) The word was, I believe, introduced by feminists to take the word “men” out of “women” or “man” out of “woman”, but now is also being used to include transwomen.
Bowles:
For some dark humor, take a look at University of California, Irvine’s Womxn’s Center, a publicly funded institution now debating how to pronounce womxn. So as not to leave out the blind community who can’t see the X, the new thinking is: “say it as wom-inx or woma/en-x, or wom-ux.” Wominx. Womux. (h/t Aaron Sibarium)
I never say either word, preferring “Hispanic” to “Latinx”, and I don’t think it’s in me to say “womb-carriers.”
Some humor brought to our attention by reader Jez:
A real gentleman offers to carry a lady’s womb for her. He at least opens the door for her if she’s struggling with it.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) June 23, 2022
“Womb carriers”? Isn’t that exactly what previous generations of progressives fought against — reducing women to their biological child-bearing function? It reminds me a bit of my old gay roommate who used to jokingly divide the species into gay people (like him) and “breeders” (like me). But at least he knew it was a joke.
“Beeder” is no longer funny. It has been weaponized. Your first sentence is cogent and on point.
He said “used to jokingly divide. . .” No need to chastise Daedalus Lex.
I have been misunderstood. I was not chastising him. I know it was a joke, even affectionate. I have been around that as well, although no one has ever called me that, joking or not, to my face.
Perhaps “breeder” went dormant for a while … but now I see it used with deadly serious insult everywhere.
I use “breeder” as a reply to those who criticize my childless status.
HA! So do I! To quote Pinker: “If my genes don’t like it they can jump in the lake.”
Actually, I’ve pretty much edited out from my life anybody who’d question my childlessness by now. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
I think you are entitled to be ruder than that.
You hit the nail on the head. Women are being reduced to our breeding function by that language. It erases our humanity- it is homoring language at all. Wish I could laugh, if only didn’t seem to have so much influence. At women’s expense.
As a woman can I find some comfort in that they didn’t refer to our exemplary cleaning skills lol… but seriously I find the whole organ identification game both absurd and infantilising of womaen. They must be very scared of us to be reduced to this level of label toxicity
“As a woman can I find some comfort in that they didn’t refer to our exemplary cleaning skills lol”
Broom carriers?
Sorry I couldn’t resist a childish joke. I agree with your point.
Thank goodness – although the vision of Halloween and Salem enters here.
please read the room and maybe don’t post this on the day when women’s rights across the country are completely gutted by this fascist supreme court?
What? This is the perfect time to post this.
Please don’t tell our host what to post on his own website. If you’re offended, I believe other websites are available.
Yes, RIP Roe vs Wade. I’m pretty sure our host will be posting about the destruction of abortion rights by SCOTUS in due course. Meanwhile, women’s rights are certainly not aided by the linguistic idiocy promoted by Verso and the author responsible for the phrase “womb carriers”.
Urbster 1, I didn’t know that decision when I wrote the piece earlier. So please get your tuchas off this site. You’re banned for ignorance and unnecessary lecturing of the host. I don’t often insult people, but you’re an idiot for lecturing me about something that’s completely misguided.
We won’t miss you!
What would have been an appropriate waiting period? A day. A week? A month? A year?
Congratulations, I believe this the first use of “read the room” on this website. I see our host has already sent you back to Twitter where that nonsense belongs.
What is it about the “progressive” inclination for creating the absolute ugliest words possible?
It’s like “Brutalism” for language.
On the subject of wokeness, a university has launched an investigation after a conservative student complained that liberal students disagreeing with him amounted to “harassment”.
The woke will, of course, pronounce that: “It’s only harassment when they disagree with us, not when we disagree with them!”.
But maybe a slew of such complaints by conservatives might lead to some commonsense among university administrators.
The “womb carriers” phrase came from the author of the book Verso was promoting. The author claims to have Cherokee ancestry, identifies as “two spirit” (I think that’s bisexual for the old-fashioned like myself), and uses the pronoun “hir”. *sigh*
Ricky Gervais took to Twitter with his take on this nonsense: https://ugc-assets.mumsnet.com/images/202206/large-O368yXWusYasqZ2wZeOhzboeE0pUoOootYXLiM3n.jpg
Ha ha Ricky Gervais – I involuntarily read that in his voice & it was even funnier.
I guess “womb-in” is moot.
I personally don’t like the word ‘womb’ at all. Uterus is better. But having one today is worse than having one yesterday – whatever you call it and women will suffer.
“Womb carriers” has to be about the worst offence of effacing the personhood of someone in the name of social justice that I’ve seen to-date. It’s especially egregious since it’s juxtaposed with a sentence about misogyny.
Absolutely Diana!
I mean, my god, it’s like out of some dystopian novel, where women are re-named with their “job description.” It’s both reductive and retrogressive in implication.
We may as well re-name males “Bread Winners.”
Or prostate havers.
How about “ sperm squirters”
Or toilet-seat sprinklers?😂
Hurray for us womenz🤓
Love THAT one!
Ewww
“Womb Defenders”
Particularly when the job description requires jars to be opened after the battle.
If we’re sticking with standard Anglo-Saxon grammar, ‘wombed’ would be more consistent, along the lines of ‘two-legged’, ‘cross-eyed’, and ‘six-fingered’. If we stick with Greco-Latin medical terms, I would use ‘hysteric‘.
I don’t prefer either one. It leaves me wondering what term I should use for a woman who has had a hysterectomy.
Egg producers. That would be actually funny.
Careful. There will be much impassioned hand wringing and sniping over what to call those who used to have a uterus.
As well there should be. Maybe it will help dispel the impression that all women and only women menstruate. Many girls, but not all, do too. I’m looking forward to when people finally stop stressing sex, gender, and race.
It’s an interesting coincidence that trans heroine Lili Elbe (born Einar Wegener) received a uterus implant that had probably been removed from a woman to treat the latter’s hysteria. And of course hysteria and hysterectomy both come from the Greek word for womb.
Elbe died shortly after surgery (as was to be expected in a time before antibiotics and much knowledge about implant rejection) – the story was told in the 2015 movie The Danish Girl starring Eddie Redmayne. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Danish_Girl_(film)
“I never say either word, preferring “Hispanic” to “Latinx”…”
Hispanic and Latino aren’t the same thing.
One thing that has struck me with terms such as “people who menstruate” or “womb carriers” is how exclusive or exclusionary they can be toward tens of thousands or millions of people who are covered by the term “woman”. There are, of course, millions of women who either do not or no longer menstruate. And any woman who must undergo a hysterectomy is of course no longer a “womb carrier”. So as substitutes or pseudo-synonyms for “woman/women”, they seem to be far more exclusionary than the traditional term.
Yup, misgendering someone is “violence” but erasing more than 50% of the adult population by deleting the word woman is inclusive, progressive, and to be applauded. I despair.
I’m interested in hearing some updated covers of popular songs from the sixties, seventies, and well, come to think of it — all history. For example, that soulful ballad by Alice Cooper….”Only Wom– something something “.
Slightly off-topic, but the cover version on Humanary Stew: A Tribute to Alice Cooper is pretty good: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DWpLchGlHwQ
“This is a man’s world, but it ain’t nothin’ without a womb carrier in it”
“When a man loves a womb carrier”
“Man, I feel like a womb carrier”
“I am womb carrier, hear me roar”
American Womb Carrier.
I wouldn’t want to be one of those right now if I was pregnant and didn’t want to be.
Good one.
Ditto that. But seriously, numerous popular songs can now be at risk for cancellation. I don’t think I’m kidding.
“No More Mister Nice Transwoman.”
Both Ricky Gervais and poster #1’s old gay roommate are guilty of making a joke!. Joking about any solemn point of woke doctrine is, of course, the worst kind of microaggression. Any DEI committee will explain that. And, by the way, should the plural of womxn by womxnx?
I am very disappointed in SCOTUS’s last two decisions, but there’s no need for a number of people here to get so damned touchy and finger-pointy🙀
Instead of the focus being on the noun woman what about using adjectives. My suggestion wannabe woman and real woman lol
The neologisms of the so-called Left are a silly joke, however unintentional, though some are truly funny. They will probably go the way of Negro or colored person. What scares me is the lunatic Right, which regards women as receptacles for “babies” and assigns them no rights whatsoever.
I think Hispanic referred to the iberian Mexican peoples while Latino included the French invaders of Mexico during the mid 1860s during our civil war. Until the Americans stopped killing each other and told the frogs to GTFO. And stay out.
I prefer Latino but what do most Hispanics prefer? How does Latinx improve Latino? Is that Latin-ecks or Latin the tenth? Pronounced Latin-tenth? That sounds like Sylvester the Cat.
Thylvester😹
Some women aren’t “womb-carriers” owing to a congenital disorder called uterine agenesis; but wombless women are certainly women.
Bullshit like this “THERE IS NO DEBATE! TRANS_WOMEN ARE WOMEN!” dictat is a big part of the reason why the SCOTUS is now hell-bent on reversing all progress in social justice for marginalized identities which had been painfully won over the past 70+ years. Next stop: Gay Marriage. How long before the SCOTUS declares a black person to be 3/5th of a Human again and subject to being bought and sold even outside the for profit prison system?
I expect the push by the perpetually outraged to have transwomen in women’s sport will go down the memory hole as they sense it is a battle they will lose. But never fear, for what passes as scholarly activity in their segments of academia, things like devising new intersectional categories and new names for things, and demanding that society adopts these absurdities without debate, will continue.
As usual, misogyny is at the base of this. We don’t hear howls of protest from trans-people and their aggressive allies when the words ‘man’ and ‘men’ are used. Noone is insisting on “penis-bearers”, “people with prostates” etc, or insisting that men accept a compromise to their personal safety, or that gay men date/have sex with female-bodied straight individuals who identify as male! As usual it’s only women that are bullied into giving up protections.