It is the burgeoning phenomenon of some biological men identifying as women (“transwomen”, also called called “trans-identified women”) that accounts for the replacement of the definition of woman as “an adult human female” with the new but ludicrous definition of “anybody who says they’re a women”. If people were entitled to all the rights and recognition of any person, thing, or animal that they think claim to be, but aren’t, society would be in a hopeless mess. (This of course goes for “transmen” and “trans-identified men”, who, we’re told, are pretty much the same as biological women.)
Of course ordinary people recognize that a man doesn’t become a woman because he says so, and vice versa, but we are enjoined to engage in this language-twisting. I’ll do so to some extent, though I won’t refuse absolutely, like Jordan Peterson. And, at any rate, if you address such a person diorectly, you can always use “you” as a pronoun. I frankly find it cringeworthy, to be honest, to refer to people in the third person as “they” or, if they’re a female-identified male, as “she”. But that’s the norm in places like the New York Times and other MSM. It is a way to signal your virtue, and is unique to the “T”s in “LGBTQ” folks.
And nowhere is this change of definition more pervasive than among intellectuals and academics. In response, I can only quote George Orwell from “Notes on Nationalism“:
One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.
At any rate, two readers sent me similar photos from different academic institutions. In both places we see the euphemism “menstruators” is used for “women”, just as “uterus bearers” or “birthing person” can be used. Here’s a classic cover from The Lancet with yet another euphemism.
But these refer to “biological women”, and the first reader, who, out of concern for their own hide, is anonymous, thinks that the word “women” could suffice. The reporter’s words are indented:
Someone already mentioned that men’s bathrooms are stocking feminine hygiene products. I wanted to share my picture of this from a meeting at Bates College this past summer. This picture is mainly for people who live and work in saner places and have never seen anything like this. It actually happens.
This, of course, is aimed at trans men who are using the men’s rooms, though most trans men won’t need feminine hygiene products (see below).
More from the reporter:
This campus has apparently partnered with Aunt Flow. [JAC: apparently Aunt Flow wants to place these products in “all public restrooms”, men’s or women’s.]
Here is a snip from the Aunt Flow website:
As my correspondent notes:
So, women, let it be known that you are not women. You are menstruators.Finally, we need to be done with the term “biological male”, in my opinion. What other type of male is there, other than biological? There is no such thing as a non-biological male. There is no need to qualify male with “biological”. I see using this type of language as a sort of capitulation that I think should be avoided.
Finally, here’s a photo sent by reader Anna Krylov, who photographed this in the women’s restroom in the USC chemistry building (in both this case and the one above, the restrooms are not identified as “all gender’ but are specified as “women”.
Below women are referred to as “menstruating persons”, so the problem is not exactly the same as the one above (yellow boxes are mine). Still, referring to women as “menstruating persons” seems a bit rude to me, like referring to men as “ejaculating persons.” (Come to think of it, why don’t men’s rooms offer free condoms for “ejaculating persons”?)
But the main point is the avoidance at all costs of the word “woman” when it refers to “biological women” or “people recognized as women at birth”. Refusing to accept trans women as biological women is about the worst mistake you can make in woke society, though some trans people don’t object to it.
Anna tells me that this poster isn’t limited to the women’s room, but it posted all over the campus, including in elevators.
UPDATE: J. K. Rowling tweeted this today; it’s of some relevance:
I understand that it is also the case that, because trans men (women who pretend to be men) can also menstruate, it is not just women who menstruate now, but also men. Hence using women to be equivalent with the set of people who menstruate would exclude these people who say they are men.
And as for pronouns, I have said for years now that it is extreme to try to control how people refer to you in the third person, presumably when you are not even present. People should worry less about the pronouns people use when referring to them and think about the other terms that people might use to describe them. To quote Hawkeye about Truman, “He could at least call me a son of a bitch; he’s done it for others.”
” it is not just women who menstruate now, but also men”
False. No men menstruate. A woman who pretend she’s a man only menstruates because she is literally a woman. Every human who menstruates knows that they menstruate only because they are female. We cannot change the language to cater for a few deluded people. We need to dispel those delusions and stick with reality.
You’re missing the point, though, Joolz. The study team was trying to recruit “people who menstruate” not because they didn’t want to call them women, but because they wanted to recruit anyone who menstruates even if that person doesn’t call himself a woman. It’s a study about menstruation. If you menstruate we want to invite you to participate. If you don’t menstruate, no matter why, this study isn’t for you.
Not everyone wants to pick a fight at the barricades over language and “inclusion” and “erasure.” Some people just want to get their study under way, publish it, and add it to their CV. If the least confrontational way to get a study about menstruation off the ground on an American college campus is to solicit menstruators, that’s the way to go. Very likely an early draft of the poster had solicited “women who menstruate”, or just “women for a study about menstruation” is how I would have phrased it — scientists do have common sense — but some angry lesbian reviewer from Gender Studies on the IRB who had turned herself into a transman had objected, “that language doesn’t include me!” And so the researchers rolled their eyes and changed it to save the main prize, which was getting the damn thing approved.
I suspect it was “transmen”, i.e., women, who pushed for that language, not actual men. Set your own house in order first. College-age men, no matter what their “gender”, couldn’t care less about a study of menstruation. Ick.
I’m not missing the point. There is NO human being who menstruates who is not the female sex, because the only ‘people’ who menstruate are women.
“even if that person doesn’t call himself a woman”.
What she calls herself is irrelevant, she is STILL a woman. You are falling for the lies of gender ideology. Please don’t use the term ‘himself’ when referring to a woman because no woman is a man, and it’s an insult to men to include women in the male sex class.
“not because they didn’t want to call them women, but because they wanted to recruit anyone who menstruates”
They could easily say “women, and women who identify as men”. You don’t have to completely erase the word ‘woman’ in order to include women who pretend they aren’t women. Remember that male things like prostate checks often only refer to ‘men’ and not to ‘people with prostates’. That includes trans identified men, so they should do the same with women.
Again, if they want people who menstruate, then they want women because menstruation is a matter of SEX, not ‘identity’. Every trans identified female knows that she is female. She still needs cervical smears, unless her cervix has been removed.
Also, even more importantly for research, women who go on testosterone, stop menstruating, or they have a menstrual cycle far out with the norm, and often have specific medical problems, eg uterus atrophy, so they aren’t the best candidates for research on women anyway.
I don’t need to ” Set [my] own house in order first.”. I suggest you need to do that by speaking to those “college-age men” as you don’t seem to understand that they are one of the driving forces in trans ideology.
THEY are the men turning up to protest against women meeting to discuss their rights. At the women’s rallies I have been to the vast majority of the masked thugs ARE college-age men. They are misogynists who protest about anything that women claim for themselves, even ‘icky’ menstruation. I bet none of them would date a transwoman, they just hide behind them as a convenient excuse to attack women.
If you don’t believe me go and look at the footage of Let Women Speak events.
I love the Orwell quotation. Simply brilliant.
I wonder what happens when students graduate from college and go to work. Do they still use these nonsense words, or do they regain their sanity and start using the words “women” and “men” again. Answering that question would make an excellent Masters thesis project (or maybe a Ph.D. dissertation, but I don’t think it’s a big enough project).
Too late after college has destroyed their ability to think. “Hire a teenager while he still knows everything”!
The place where I work has a transgender employee (male to female). We had to watch a training video on sexual harassment when we were hired. It specifically mentioned that misgendering an employee constitutes sexual harassment and is therefore verboten.
That is a thing that would really tick me off. Now preferences can differ, but I for one would not mind referring to a trans woman as “she” or “her”, since this would be a person who I would personally know. It’s about getting along and all that, and it’s my choice.
But compulsion to do or face punishment burns my marshmallows.
It must surely be an offense to mis-specie a member of the Furry Community who identifies as a wombat.
Unfortunately the compulsion flowed directly and inexorably from the kindness…as it always does. You didn’t resist. The activists felt mush when they probed, so they stomped in with their boot heels and made misgendering not only an offence but the foundational premise of their movement.
This could have been predicted, and was. I blame the kind for all of this. The whole trans mishegaas could have been stopped if people had politely said, “No. You talk about kindness. It’s not kind of you to demand that I call you something you’re not.”
Correctly sexing someone is not sexual harassment. It is reality. People cannot compel you to lie just to save their feelings. If we start making lying socially acceptable, then where will it end?
If the HR Department where you are employed or where you do contract work says it is sexual harassment to misgender someone, it is sexual harassment. Full stop. And yes the firm absolutely can fire you for it, very likely for cause, with no severance. Where did you get the idea it can’t?
The reason the firm will fire you for misgendering-sexual harassment instead of taking your side in the heroic cause of scientific accuracy is that various civil/human rights laws require it to. If the firm doesn’t fire the misgendering employee, the misgendered or harassed employee will get damages from the firm awarded by the state, plus the firm’s legal costs in defending itself. The firm will not thank you for making it incur those costs, you little prick, and will fire you anyway. (Not “you” literally, of course.)
@Leslie
Where did you get the idea that sexual harassment isn’t about sex? Just because some woke people in an HR Department say that something is sexual harassment does not mean that it literally IS sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is about being harassed for your actual sex, not your imaginary identity.
The fact that a company says that using the correct sex is a dismissable offence just means that they don’t understand biology and will sack people who do. Stating biological facts is free speech, and any company that doesn’t allow free speech should be challenged.
Please stop assuming that the USA = the world. There are famous cases here where companies have tried to claim that using the correct sex is ‘sexual’ harassment. These companies lost in court and, in the UK, understanding that there are two biological sexes is protected by law. It’s ridiculous that we had to go to court for the freedom to state that a man is a man, but we can, without fear of sacking.
It’s frustrating, this nonsense. Thanks for the link to Orwell’s essay. I’ve seen the line quoted quite a few times previously, almost certainly on this site, and, for example, in Helen Joyce’s comments.
Perhaps we shall end up bringing back the old terminology for females at different parts of their life cycle; girl, maiden, woman and crone. I remember arguing with someone (now banned from nearly all comment sections) who took the gametic definition of sex to a logical but extreme conclusion. He—of course it was a he—believed, and I’m sure he still does, that you have to actually be producing the gametes to belong to a sex. Once you stop ovulating, you are no longer a woman. He was so concrete about it that I’m sure that anyone taking an oral contraceptive, and thus not ovulating, was temporarily not a woman. That’s just as silly as reducing women to one small aspect of their lives, menstruation. Renaming men as “ejaculators” makes the point nicely.
Men who have erectile dysfunction, do they use the ability to ejaculate?
erectile dysfunction is just that: problems getting and maintaining an erection. Men with erectile dysfunction can still ejaculate. So, there are more ‘people who ejaculate’ than ‘people who get hards on (hard-ons? never was sure about the plural of that phrase).
I’ve heard many trantifa (trans ideology agitators) make this same argument for women who do not ovulate for any reason. So postmenopausal women are no longer women? Nope, according to trantifa.
Another target for trantifa’s ire are childfree women. Women who choose not to have children are also not women (even though they do ovulate) because “they’re not using their uterus.”
I wish I were making this up.
Trantifa hates and is jealous of women. It wants to erase every woman from the category of womanhood, leaving only men as ‘women’.
They don’t understand that it’s having a body that is based around the production of large immobile gametes that makes you female. It’s irrelevant whether you have functioning ovaries or whether your sexual development completed perfectly.
Or that humans are sexually attracted to sexed bodies, not “gender identities.”
You’re absolutely correct about trantifa. Trans-identifying males hate women because, on some basic level, they know they can never become female.
Trans ideology is deeply homophobic as well as misogynist. They are trying to erase the concept of being attracted to a sexed body.
They want to replace heteroSEXuality and homoSEXuality with homoGENDERality, so that people date by gender, rather than by sex. That just isn’t gonna happen, except for bisexual people.
I can’t understand LGs who stand with their oppressors. Owen Jones is a gay man who claims to support gender ideology, but he never replies when he is asked whether he would date a transman. I think he only supports gender ideology as a way to hate women.
I thought we all agreed that we would no longer use the terms “men” and “male” here, but only “persons with prostates”. And trans persons with prostates we will not call trans women, but rather trans persons with prostrates who menstruate. Be better folks!
I prefer “testicular individuals”.
My terms are morally superior. You’re cancelled!
“tubal urinators”
The fetishist Fred Wallace prefers the term “sperm producing female”.
He tweeted “I’m not male. I’m a sperm producing female.It’s not hard to comprehend”.
I wonder what would happen if we just went with this and argue for identification on the basis of self-id for indentities like “menstruator”. Could, I, someone with a Y chromosome show up for the menstrual health study, claim to be a menstruator and then launch a discrimination complaint if they rejected me for their study?
As Kat Grant wrote on the FFRF blog, “A woman is whoever says she is.”
You can and, if fact, that sort of thing has been done. In Britain there was a law suit in which a mutilated man (sorry, I meant to say transwoman who had undergone gender affirming genital surgery) sued a gynecologist for refusing him as a patient and declining to give him a gynecological exam. The doctor explained that she knew nothing of transgender medicine and that she was completely unqualified to examine a “neovagina”. So his feelings were hurt that she didn’t treat him like one of the ladies, so he’s suing the gynecologist.
But did the person actually have some simulacra of a vagina? In which case the person wasn’t simply self-id’ing. And did others trying these things actually claim to be a member of these novel groups? My guess is that the guy visiting the gynecologist claimed to be a “woman” not a “menstruator”. My point was more to take them at their word, use their exact terms and inappropriately assume the identity merely by verbal fiat. Would defenders of these neologisms eventually say biology matters, you just can’t claim to be a “menstruator”?
I don’t know. Menstruator is not an adequate definition of female. Probably the guy didn’t claim to be a menstruator. His claim to BE a woman is probably that he “feels” deeply in his heart that he is a woman. I translate thusly: He feels like the way he imagines actual women feel which, of course, he cannot know.
The guy had a “neovagina”. That is done by Frankenstein surgery in which, after they chop off the bat and balls, they form a hole (perhaps “gaping wound” is more accurate). If you have a strong stomach, you can google for exact details of this surgery.
The guy was certainly denying biology if he didn’t understand the doctor’s point that the medical needs of ordinary women and him are totally different.
I remember that. I pointed out that it’s actually dangerous. There is a study into a man who got penile cancer inside his neo vagina as it was constructed from his penis tissue. A gynaecologist would not necessarily be able to spot penile cancer. But these people care more about ‘validation’ than their own health.
One can perceive a sub-current of contempt in this strain of thought.
Here’s a quote :
“Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.”
-Voltaire
I have this quote in my email signature.
My favorite quote is from a 60’s Sci-Fi author (Philip Dick). Quote “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
The CDC, at the height of the pandemic, apparently didn’t have enough to do to keep the leadership busy, so it produced an official guidance document full of similar “inclusive” language—all of which the medical and allied health professions embraced where they had not already done so. It will all come back as quickly as it takes to load an autopen once a Democratic administration takes charge and decrees it the official language of the US government.
So, pay attention all you menstruators and those who issued forth from one: your future grant might depend upon you using the proper words. (Oh? What’s that? At least you’ll get your grants back? Ah, yes, and your academic freedom, too, I gather.) Those of us who are grant challenged might still embrace the language diktats to preserve our respectable jobs and social media accounts. And physical freedom? Well, we don’t yet have the UK speech police incarcerating people over mean posts. Perhaps we never shall—if everyone bloody well gets with the program and polices themselves like responsible citizens should.
“Bloody well get with the program?” Are you referring to the outreach program to get heavy bleeding menstuators to volunteer for the research study?
It never, indeed, occurred to me. But now that you mention it, if the bloody will get with the program, then perhaps researchers could stanch excessive front hole flow.
I follow a Substack by a woman who collects these phrases (like “people who menstruate”). She noted in her last email that they were getting harder to find.
Perhaps a ray of hope that peak trans has passed.
Lesbians who refuse to have sex with trans-identifying males (‘girl dick,’ ‘chicks with dicks’) are accused of being ‘sexual racists’ and ‘genital fetishists.’
Meanwhile, no one ever accuses heterosexual men who refuse to have sex with trans-identifying males of anything.
It’s almost as though they somehow know that straight men are not sexually attracted to other straight men.
Actually they do. You just never hear about it because you don’t circulate in a men’s world. The fact of the matter is that no one who transitions has much of a dating pool to fish in because no one finds them attractive, which is a crushing disappointment that seems never to have entered their minds. So they all tend to resent everyone for not wanting to date them. Of course a man who feels resentful toward women has a larger library of behaviours he can get away with than one who resents a man, especially if the target of resentment is bigger.
“…you don’t circulate in a men’s world.”
LOL! I do go outside my house occasionally, so I do circulate in a man’s world. As does every woman on Earth.
It’s the same thing with homosexual men who refuse to have sex with trans identifying women. Owen Jones is a rabid gay TRA, but when people ask him if he would sleep with a woman who pretends to be a man, he never replies.
So lesbians are terrible for not accepting sex with men, but he’s okay for not wanting sex with.
Gender ideology has always been an anti women movement for misogynist men.
Who dates these trans people anyway?
@joolz I don’t understand how anyone can know about this hypocrisy and not understand that trans ideology is fundamentally misogynist.
@Frau Katze Very few people date trans-identifying males or females. You’d think they’d date each other — problem solved! But it turns out that straight men in dresses aren’t attracted to other straight men in dresses. Lesbians pretending to be men aren’t attracted to straight men wearing dresses either.
Frau Katze said: “Who dates these trans people anyway?”
Some gay men who are in the closet will date a transwoman. But most trans women don’t seem to want to date each other. They are hypocrites. They call themselves ‘lesbians’ but won’t date other trans women who call themselves a ‘lesbian’. Check out ‘Amanda’ in my #TRAsDontDoIrony collection. Remember that if any of US talk about a ‘ natural born woman’ then we’d be attacked by the mob, but it’s ok for a trans identified man to use the term 🤦♀️
https://x.com/joolzzt/status/1784730722038596011
Interesting that the crowd who consistently whine that sex is different from gender apparently has no interest in substituting the word “females” for “women.”
It still wouldn’t be ideal, since “woman” denotes a human female, but it’s certainly less awkward than “menstruators.” Yet a reference to sex apparently still triggers anguish in those special women who know they aren’t women because it’s impossible for a woman to dislike being a woman in the way they dislike being a woman.
Maybe we should feel lucky they’re okay with references to menstruation and aren’t demanding some awkward and attention-seeking substitute like “downward bleeding.”
Hmmm. What about the people who either haven’t been through puberty and haven’t started menstruating yet, or aren’t menstruating because of a physical condition, or who have stopped menstruating after menopause? What are they? How can we ever know?
Needless to say, we of the trans-species community object to the use of terms like “humans” or “people”, not to mention the more technical “H.sapiens”. In the interest of Diversity and Inclusion, we demand that all such terms be replaced by “bipedal primate”. Oh, wait: we should also replace “primate” with something else. A puzzle.
At a serious level, it would be of sociological interest to find out who is responsible for putting up these signs. Maybe it is not really agents of genderwang, but practical jokers in the building maintenance department.
I’ve seen these posters at my former university as well as in my physician’s office. I carry a Sharpie and cross out the dehumanizing term and write WOMEN! in its place.
We all do what we can to oppose this nonsense. I refuse to play along.
As a straight person with no close gay friends or family, and thus no one to ask, I am curious about how mainstream (for lack of a better word) gay/lesbian people/culture feels about transexual politics effectively absorbing all that is gay/queer. Do they feel that it’s a natural next step? Do they feel that the LGBT coalition had an internal coup? Is the fact that there are few if any gay voices that speak out against trans political activism a sign of genuine alliance or a sign of self-censorship and fear of being seen as a traitor to one’s “clan”?
Well, Andrew sullivan has written a lot about this, and he think that not only are trans people drawing attention away from gays, but, more important, that LGBTQ mixes up different movements, with the LG different in ideology and pressure they put on “straight” people from the extreme trans movement, which is more activist and demands accommodation. I can’t really sum up what he says, but do some Googline around. I think that gay people in general aren’t fond of trans activists, but I don’t really know much about it.
We who are LGB have divorced the TQ+ crowd.
Several organizations — LGB Alliance (a global organization with chapters in the USA, UK, Canada, and other nations), LGB Courage Coalition, Gays Against Groomers, Women’s Declaration International and WDI USA, and Women’s Liberation Front have issued a joint press release stating this.
Many LGB people are loudly opposing gender identity ideology. However, MSM completely ignore us.
And then there’s Dave Chappelle’s excellent metaphor of the alphabet people taking a road trip together, from 2019.
There’s an organization called LGB Alliance, which is dedicated to protecting LGB rights and has declared its independence from the TQ+ brigade:
https://youtu.be/blwPu2r5Osk?si=cWvzCRVZS94kT6PE
Also, many individuals who speak out against genderism are themselves gay or lesbian. Prominent voices among them include Kathleen Stock, Allison Bailey, Linda Bellos, Fred Sargeant (who was actually AT the Stonewall riots and has fought back against the lie that “a trans woman threw the first brick,”) Andrew Doyle, and the delightful Mr Menno:
https://youtu.be/xDmaPIKrC-A?si=g_vlJeTTf_3ouWpa
But as for the general public, I don’t know the ratio of gay true believers (in genderist claptrap) to dissenters.
About 10 years ago all of the formerly gay and lesbian organizations became trans rights organizations, because all the major LGB battles – decriminalization of homosexuality, antidiscrimination laws, same-sex marriage – had been won (in the West anyway) and they needed to justify their continued existence and keep the dollars/pounds coming in. Anyone associated with these organizations has to toe the trans-rights line 100%. If you don’t (like LGB Alliance) you face public hatred and accusations of bigotry. Most rank-and-file gays and lesbians go along with this in public but I notice that when it comes to choosing their sexual partners they know what biological sex is.
Thank you, Lady Mondegreen.
Other lesbians who speak out are Julie Bindel (she and Kathleen Stock have a weekly video program), Martina Navratilova, Jamie Reed (whistleblower at the Washington University in St Louis pediatric gender clinic), Lierre Keith (founder of WoLF), and WDI’s Lesbian Caucus.
Because he loudly opposes gender ideology and TQ+, Fred Sargeant, who was one of the organizers of the very first Pride march in 1970, has been BANNED by all of his local and national alphabet-soup orgs. That’s right — a gay-rights pioneer has been BANNED for opposing the TQ+.
I’m sure you’re aware, ginger, of this, but others may not be. The LGB Alliance in the UK has been attacked by many pro-trans organisations, with one of them, Mermaids, trying to get its charitable status cancelled (unsuccessfully). The founder of LGB Alliance, barrister Alison Bailey was denounced by her own chambers for two Tweets and she took them to court, winning damages.
For entertainment purposes only, anyone in need of a laugh could look at the wikipedia page about the LGB Alliance, or that on Alison. The descriptions of them make them look far, far worse than the SS.
Interestingly, Martina Navratilova seems full-on woke when Palestine ist the topic.
I’m straight but I’ve lived for 20 years in Chelsea, Manhattan – the gayest place in the known universe – so I have a lot of friends and neighbors and have spoken to some about this.
I’m a pretty social guy (with a dog!) … and there is a big division I’ve noticed.
Seems to start at around 40-50 years old. All the “new” stuff is not popular with them, my theory is b/c older gay men remember when it wasn’t ordinary to be gay but rather it was difficult.
The younger than 40 crowd are more enthusiastic about the new genderwang nonsense.
(Refers to gay men, I don’t know many lesbians).
D.A.
NYC
@DavidandersonJd
PS – Shout out to Anna K. – I’m a big fan!
Older LGBs who fought hard for their rights in the UK also remember being hated by the cross dressers.
In the UK trans people originally distanced themselves from LGBs as they felt they would be rejected by society if they stood with gay people. LGBs successfully fought Clause 28 alone, when most Ts were still in the closet. Here, equal rights and equal marriage were won by Stonewall for LGBs 2 years before Ts joined it in 2015.
Ts sold gays down the river by not fighting for equal marriage. They hated gays so much they pushed for Gender Recognition Certificates for themselves, so they could pretend to be in a straight marriage – to avoid any association with gay people. They didn’t care about LGBs having the right to marry. It was LGBs who fought for gay marriage, not Ts.
As has been said elsewhere, once LGBs won equal rights, Stonewall didn’t want the gravy train to stop, so they looked for another cause to champion. Sadly they chose TQs.
Since the TQs leeched onto LGB, polls show that public support for LGBs has dropped for the first time in a decade because of that association.
The TQs have done a lot of damage to the LGB community. Older LGBs know that. Many younger ones don’t know their gay history.
So, this is a category that is as fraught linguistically as it is biologically.
What does this category mean for people who are not menstruating for one reason or another: age (too young or old), health (conditions that interrupt or interfere with menstruation), surgical history, and so on? Does it apply to the potential or the ideal of menstruation, or only the actual processes? Does it apply to the 3/4 or more of the reproductive life span when menstruation is not occurring in otherwise healthy, normal humans? Hoo, boy! At least “people with vaginas” makes a little biologic sense, even if it is redundant. Menstruators is a linguistic nightmare1
Where is that pendulum swinging back? The woke are still going strong. What I find most infuriating is the damage that such nonsense does to science and academia in public eyes. It is bad enough when NPR talks about “pregnant people”, but it is simply outrageous when a venerable medical and research establishment, such as USC Keck, talks about “menstruating persons.” And then we are complaining about mistrust in science and funding cuts?
I seem to have lost touch with the zeitgeist, having absolutely no problem with a medical research study investigating heavy menstrual flow only recruiting subjects who menstruate. Duh?
And even the annoying “menstruating persons” is in this case more pragmatically selective than “menstruating women” in an environment of widespread public confusion over what exactly “women” are. ISTM even a male-identifying furry who in fact menstruates would be a perfectly suitable subject.
Please, what am I missing here??
Agree with you. To me, the only cringeworthy aspect of that research recruitment poster is that the study couldn’t bring itself to refer to people who menstruate, — the only people they wanted to recruit for a study addressing a menstrual question, — as women. I’m sure they did this for the practical reason that some women in their target audience don’t self-identify as women and they wanted to catch the eyes of these women to recruit them as long as they were still menstruating. Know your customer. The study wasn’t defining women in terms of excluding them from womanhood if they didn’t menstruate. It was just letting transwomen, along with post-menopausal professors, women with hysterectomies, and women taking so much testosterone that they no longer menstruated, that the study wouldn’t be of interest to them.
I think the only thing you were missing here was an excuse to fly off the handle. 😇
Did I miss it? ISTM my Passhibuaguresshibu practice is progressing nicely. Hái!
I deny flying off the handle.
I didn’t say anyone did. Only that Barbara didn’t, and she explained why. If I thought anyone had flown off the handle I’d have used more moderate language describing the idea, not the speaker.
“…an environment of widespread public confusion over what exactly “women” are.”
Personally I don’t there’s widespread confusion at all. It’s all mind games by a handful of activists who like to jump on people.
Fair point. But from the outside it sure looks like a lot of public confusion, even if it is mainly arse-covering posturing to protect oneself from a small clique of tyrannical activists. O tempora, o mores!
It may be that you are missing the pleasure the researchers take in showing how kind, wonderful and inclusive they are, when they choose to use the nonsense jargon du jour.
As someone who seldom aspired or pretended to be kind / wonderful / inclusive, I can’t miss what I never had. WYSIWYG. 🙂. And l use my own nonsense jargon, thankyouverymuch.
I typed ‘Ana Kasparian’ into Google and was astounded that Google called her a ‘birthing person’. My (strong) impression is that she objects. Quote from her
“I’m a woman. Please don’t ever refer to me as a person with a uterus, birthing person, or person who menstruates. How do people not realize how degrading this is?”
A brilliant philosopher of history, Humpty Dumpty, observed that “Words mean what I want them to mean, no more, no less.”
I notice that in interviews Helen Joyce sometimes refers to her math PhD. She remarks that mathematical training gives you the ability to spot circularity of definition or semantic wordplay based on semantic ambiguity from a mile away. That is also true of the hard sciences.
I have seen physics students confused about semantics and terminology. I was teaching special relativity to a student who complained about the word “momentum”. In classical physics, p = mv. In relativity momentum is p = γmv where γ is the reciprocal of the square root of 1 – v^2/c^2. The student complained that it is illegitimate to change the meaning of words. I tried to explain that the significance of momentum is the fact that it is conserved (Newton’s third law). In relativity we need momentum to be γmv for momentum to be conserved. The student replied that we should then have a new word for relativistic momentum and reserve the word “momentum” for mv. What could I say? The student had no confusion about the facts of physics. I can’t really say the student is wrong rather than simply having bad semantic judgement about the reasonable usage of words. Plus the student needs to learn the standard definitional conventions to study further and communicate with other scientists. I approved of Neal DeGrass’e Tyson’s redefinition of “planet” to exclude Pluto, though he makes an ass of himself when he discusses sex and gender.
What then is a “woman”? It puzzled me when I first learned that transactivists reject the definition “adult human female”. I thought they would accept the definition, but then argue that a man in a dress or even without a dress is female if he fancies himself so. The fact that they reject the definition would seem to indicate that they attach SOME meaning to the word “female” that doesn’t apply to transwomen. But they contradict themselves by pressuring doctors and biologists to deny biological sex.
It is an amazing incoherent mishmash. When they try to be coherent, they contradict themselves. On the one hand, gender is an arbitrary construct. On the other hand, gender is so meaningful a boy who feels like a girl needs medical interventions. A penis does not make a man. Yet removing the penis is needed for some individuals that they can live fulfilled lives as a women.
I don’t get it. Early in the pandemic it amused me that Trumpers could simultaneously believe that 1. Covid is a fearsome bioweapon released, possibly deliberately, by the Chinese, 2. Covid is a nothing burger, just a flu, and 3. Covid doesn’t exist. I can’t honestly say that the left is more logical on matters of sex and gender. They also have plenty of semantic confusions and logical contradictions in their views about race.
It is easier in mathematics, where very little of the terminology is burdened by prior usages. For example, I expect no-one has ever objected that a “Euclidean space” is insufficiently space-like. (Although, it was the class in “general topology” that so traumatised my intuitions that I changed majors.)
and 2. are not mutually incompatible. In one internally consistent world view, Covid was indeed a nothingburger for all but residents of nursing homes who were going to die soon anyway, but the civil-defence response to it was orchestrated by the Chinese inventors and propagandists working for the PLA to produce the maximum damage to our economy and social fabric as if it was like Ebola. This pretty much was the Trumpist position. (There really were Canadians on the Left who called to close our border with the U.S., including to trucks full of food, and for us to be sealed in our homes until the pandemic ran out of susceptibles, because that’s what the Chinese did. Then the survivors who hadn’t starved — how? cannibalism? — could emerge and resume life as before. But keep the border closed against American scoff-masks forever.)
is a little out there, but it’s still compatible with 2., and therefore also with 1.
I’m not picking on you. It’s just the analytics that make me tick. 1, 2, and 3 are not at all mutually incompatible even if all three are wrong. Holding all three Trumpist views doesn’t lead to a contradiction that illuminates a fallacy in there, the way mathematical proofs do. You need additional external facts that prove, independent of logic, that 1 and 2 are false. It’s not good enough to claim a gotcha! that the truth of one would falsify the other.
P.S. For special relativistic momentum, couldn’t you have explained that p=ymv is just a more accurate definition of the same construct as in Newtonian physics? At velocities much less than the speed of light, y is so close to unity — this is easily demonstrated — that ymv = mv for all classical purposes. Momentum itself means the same in both treatments. It just reflects the difference between a particle’s rest mass and its mass at relativistic speeds. You’re really multiplying the mass m by y, not the mv product by y. Arithmetically these are equivalent of course but conceptually they’re different. The idea that y is a fudge factor just to keep momentum conserved would seem unsatisfying to a student and sound like something that does need a new word. I’d love to know if I made any conceptual mistake here.
But it’s not really a new definition of momentum. The relativistic definition is the correct definition.
But when v << c, the relativistic equation becomes the classical mechanics definition.
Usually this is locker room humor for younger me (I’m past PMS jokes), immature, tacky, sexist and basically rude.
This is so cringeworthy it is no longer a source of jokes.
It’s just so blatantly one-sided and so obviously misogynist. There doesn’t appear to be movement of shrieking, hysterical people trying to erase the word “man” and replace it with “people with prostates” or “tubular urinators”, despite the fact that the ever-demanding trans-women crowd have prostates and urinate tubularly but are terminally offended if referred to as ‘male’. Maybe they know that attacking men will be a step too far and will harm their movement? Whereas attacking women is par the the course, especially for people who are not, in fact, women…. along with their “pick me” handmaidens! Finally, nothing says ‘male’ more than demanding that everyone else set aside their needs to satisfy your wants, or issuing threats of sexual violence when women disagree with them!
Totally agree!
This is true. I have seen folks (see above) called ‘birthing persons’, but have never seen anyone called an ‘inseminating person’.
That’s just because giving birth is medicalized, with a bureaucratic, unionized, female-dominated, pseudo-academic, state-regulated apparatus called a Labour and Birth Unit around it, the very fertile soil where nonsense like this germinates and flourishes. Insemination by contrast is a private amateur act between two individuals outside the bureaucracy. No language police.
Some commenters blame XY men (somehow) for terms like “birthing persons” and “chest-feeding.” But this is ridiculous. Where in society do men have any less power than in a maternity ward? What actually happened was that women who call themselves men felt excluded by terms such as “women in labour”, “breastfeeding”, and the “maternal-infant bond.” The women who run these places fell over themselves not to give offence (or get in trouble with the ever-vigilant regulatory state that they helped aggrandize) and so feminine references were duly eliminated….to satisfy male-identified women! This is feminism, ladies. This is what women do when they get power. Enjoy it, or fix it. It’s up to them, not men like you and me, Frank, to tell “transmen” that they are really women, not men, so knock it off with the chest-feeding stuff. No mansplaining from us, though.
Where bad-faith men come dangerously into the picture is in sports, prisons, bathrooms, shelters, the familiar concerns, sure. But the de-feminizing of women’s health is all down to women worried what Elliot Page will think of them.
Say no to a ‘transwoman’ and the male will immediately reveal himself.
I saved a copy of that Lancet cover. They tweeted it on 24th Sep 2010. Only four days earlier they had tweeted “About 10 million MEN are currently living with a diagnosis of prostate cancer.” Not ‘prostate havers’. It shows the double standards of a previously quality magazine that has erased women, but accepts that men exist.
I have collected several of these pieces that erase women. Two articles were published by Healthline website on the same day. One called “Human Papillomavirus (HPV) in Men”, the other called “Everything You Need to Know About HPV in Vulva Owners”.
Macmillan cancer is another one. Its advice on prostate cancer refers to men. Its advice on cervical smears refers to ‘people’, although only women need cervical smears.
This mangling of language has led to children being very confused. A schoolboy was worried that he hadn’t started menstrating yet, because the teacher talked about ‘people’ menstruating. Another one was worried about getting pregnant. It’s absurd.
Re “identifying as women (“transwomen”, also called called “trans-identified women”)”
Males who identify as women are trans identified males (TIMs). This is because they are men, and not any type of woman, with or without a prefix.
In the same way a ‘trans-identified woman’ is a female who pretends to be a man, a TIF.
Trans activists don’t like terms that use their actual sex, but they are truthful.