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This article is so good! @VictoriaPeckham https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ca340930-5cce-11eb-86f4-4fa0aa4e7fd3?shareToken=12c48ac962c2fb8fc9593cc9f5bbf5f3&fbclid=IwAR3Zz9F3xfT4xOIbBMzRKCQhlNcOIT3bWzvg6KgdkY9Sh5sgwhwKlyw6kTQ
"with zero debate or legislative scrutiny, biological sex as a discrete political & legal concept has gone. US women’s prisons, publicly funded domestic violence refuges & college sporting contests can no longer deny entry to any male-born person who identifies as a woman."
"Words matter. When words are removed, when their definitions are changed or conflated, concepts vanish...A raging debate over the definitions of “gender” and “sex” may sound dry, pedantic, obsessive or arcane. Yet in this war of words rests the very future of women’s rights."
"In fact “sex” (whether someone is biologically male or female), unlike “gender” (here meaning an internal sense of self), is a protected characteristic under UK equality law"
"That these two words [sex and gender] are constantly conflated is not an accidental linguistic slippage but part of a deliberate decades-long push by trans rights groups to erase biological sex from language and law."
"If sex & gender ID are the same, a male person does not just have the human right to live as a woman free from violence & discrimination, or be granted social & legal recognition as a woman (which most feminists support) What is now claimed is such a male is biologically female.
"From this bizarre science-denial stem many absurdities: a penis is not necessarily a male organ, therefore a teenage male who identifies as a girl cannot be denied entry to female showers because, regardless of physical appearance, they are also “female”.
"The problem for the world’s women is that biological sex is not some abstract idea or inner feeling. From menstruation to menopause, pregnancy to birth, abortion to rape, it is a vivid reality."
"That women’s oppression is “on the basis of sex” is why generations of feminists sought legislation for sex-based rights such as maternity leave and single-sex spaces such as rape crisis centres."
"In India, activists demand toilets for girls who are sexually assaulted while defecating in fields. Child brides in Afghanistan or female genital mutilation (FGM) victims in Somalia do not suffer because of a nebulous inner identity but the immutable sex of their bodies."
"Yet now the concept of womanhood has been untethered from biology under gender-neutral edicts — as espoused by Pelosi — we are increasingly forbidden to describe the reality of our own lives. The very brands, charities or support groups created for women are tongue-tied."
"Tampon manufacturers now call customers “menstruators” or “bleeders”. Female cancer charities speak of “everyone with a cervix” even if such obscure usage might reduce already low take-up for lifesaving smears."
"The breastfeeding group La Leche League tweeted its support for “all human milk feeding families”. An NHS sexual health clinic writes of “people with vaginas”.
"Yet a male NHS gynaecologist tweets about “labouring people”, as if he means toilers on building sites. A female health charity speaks of “black birthing bodies”, a term for BAME women so dehumanising it evokes the word “breeders” used of fertile female slaves."
"Even Sands, which supports those bereaved by stillbirth and neonatal death, referred to “birthing parents”: on top of losing a baby, women were denied even motherhood itself."
"This “inclusive language” is necessary, we are told, because it includes trans men. No matter that it erases the beloved, even sacred words of 99 per cent of those to whom it applies."
"Even a compromise, perhaps referring to “women and trans men” rather than the insulting “menstruators” is usually rejected. Because in this context “women” does not include trans women, who do not have periods and are the chief driver of this linguistic erasure."
"Before the 1st Women’s March, which sprang from fears that Trump would destroy US abortion rights, trans activist Munroe Bergdorf tweeted that to “centre reproductive systems” at the demonstration was “reductive & exclusionary”. Even feminism should not focus on female concerns.
"This also explains why men’s charities and health bodies are under no equivalent pressure to refer to “testicle-havers” or “ejaculators”. Trans women have, understandably, no wish to be reminded of their male biology."
"The first six paragraphs of NHS guidance on prostate screening uses “men/man” nine times; the first nine paragraphs on cervical screening uses “women” once with a caveat about trans men. Men are still men: women are now merely persons."
"Terminology which erases women’s material reality is not only degrading but impairs our ability to protect existing rights."
" @Amnesty could not bring itself to utter the name of those who risk bleeding to death in the backstreet clinics of Gdansk: women. "
"if reproductive rights are no longer women’s rights but “people’s rights”, “a woman’s right to choose” dissolves. It follows that “people” should determine the outcome of a pregnancy, including men."
"Even campaigners against FGM are now accused of transphobia because under gender-neutral ideology the clitoris, which is sliced off little girls, cannot be categorised as an exclusively female organ."
Ok I know i have done heaps of quotes but this article is just too good!
"As the anti FGM-campaigner Nimco Ali tells me, “the idea womanhood doesn’t exist impacts the most vulnerable women in the world, and these happen to be women of colour”.
"Or as JK Rowling put it in a tweet which began her vilification across the globe: “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased.”
"Already the globally expanding commercial surrogacy industry strives to erase the inconvenient existence of a sentient woman in the lucrative business of commodifying wombs to make babies."
"Instead of “pregnancy” its advocates speak of a “surrogacy journey”; “birth mother” is replaced by “gestational carrier”....But does a “gestational carrier”, a mere vessel, have rights or even feelings?"
"Increasingly feminists are told that biological sex is boring, outdated and reductive while “gender identity” is modern and progressive."
"sex impacts on our lives. Gender-neutral speech doesn’t make biology go away: it just removes the analytical tools to understand and address it."
"Only through freedom of information requests do we know that around 38 per cent of women in prison for sexual offences are trans women. Could this explain changes to child-sex offending rates too?"
"In Connecticut, two trans athletes have dominated track events, breaking girls’ state records, denying female competitors qualification to higher contests."
"No semantic shifts, no cancelling of words, can change what ordinary people see: to them activists who deny biology sound like flat-earthers, while trans women athletes look like cheats."
"The liberal insistence on placing every male criminal who identifies as a woman — including murderers, rapists and domestic abusers — in female jails looks cruel and even deranged."
"Yet peace depends upon an agreement that sex exists, that in certain limited circumstances it overrides gender, and that language to describe biological reality is valid."
What a piece of writing. Thank you @VictoriaPeckham - bloody brilliant.
