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The Baldwin quote that ends this @VictoriaPeckham essay is perfect: if you can't name your reality, you are submerged by it. And the more women are moved out of the language, the less power we have to control our world https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/war-of-words-risks-wiping-women-from-our-language-djhp2mwjg
The first time I realised propriety around trans issues was stopping me speaking was when I was writing about abortion c. 2013 - suddenly the formula "woman's right to choose" was either 1. "exclusionary" or 2. included male people among those with a deciding say on pregnancy
So I shifted to talking about "female people", but that excludes transwomen from the category "female" - also a no-no. That left the circumlocutions like "pregnant people", "birthing parent", "uterus haver". But these deny the wholeness of women's lives
The abuse of women in maternity health scandals, for e.g., is linked to the denial that women can make their own choices to end pregnancy, is linked to an economy in which women's work is devalued, is linked to the exclusion of women from public life: sexism is about sex
And slicing women down to individual body parts or specific physical processes is intensely dehumanising. It atomises the female self and defines it by its deviation from a male standard
This is appealing for women, I think, when you are still naive enough to think sexual oppression can be bargained away (the old Paglia "well I don't see my sex as making me a victim" trick). It was for me. But age and experience tend to take the shine off that
And ultimately, if you won't acknowledge the reality of being a woman that you share with other women - the simple, ordinary, unexceptional fact of being a body like anyone else - then you're subtly declaring yourself a superior class of human to all other women
You're Judith Butler saying "oh but I'm not cis" having carefully allocated all the ills of the world to "cis women". You're Margaret Thatcher savvily disowning women's lib while reaping its benefits. This has always been a rational thing for women to do. But it's also wrong
