Recently, Bette Midler wrote a viral tweet that read, “WOMEN OF THE WORLD! We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name! They don’t call us ‘women’ anymore; they call us ‘birthing people’ or ‘menstruators’, and even ‘people with vaginas’! Don’t let them erase you! Every human on earth owes you!”
Let's be real: nobody is, as the transphobes claim, walking around telling women, "You can't say you're having a women's night out tonight and will be hanging out with the ladies! You have to say you're having a menstruators' night out and will be hanging with the people with vaginas!" Not a single trans person is saying that.
Inclusive language about body parts is used in a specific context: when talking about a body part and medical care related to it. When medical guidance is being given in a pamphlet or on a website, and it's about getting menstrual periods, care providers have become aware that young people may avoid reading that advice, or may read it and feel hopeless, because they are nonbinary youths or trans boys and it refers to everyone who gets a period as "girls." So they write, "When a person gets their first menstrual period. . ."
Medical educators are not worried that cis girls will read the inclusively-worded menstrual health advice and say, “I don’t know if this applies to me. Is a girl a ‘person’?” That’s a strange concern to claim to have.
When I write "pregnant people" rather than "pregnant women," when discussing abortion, it's because I want to recognize the nonbinary people and trans men who might become pregnant and seek those services. I know there are lots of people who roll their eyes, and say "You're catering to some tiny minority!" And there are some who say, "You are erasing women, and denying that it is we who give all life!" As Midler says, "every human owes women" for the gift of life.
But that's not true at all. My daughter owes her existence to my former uterus, and I'm a trans man. Nor was I ever actually female, having been born intersex. People who insist that if I gestated a baby, that means I am a woman, are not just denying that identifying and living as a man means that yes, I am a man. They are ignoring the complexities of physical sex diversity.
Now, here's the irony. What language that includes trans and intersex people does is to say, "A woman and a uterus are two different things. Some people have uteruses, but are not women--they're nonbinary people or trans men. Some people are women, but don't have uteruses--they could be trans women or cis women who had hysterectomies or intersex women assigned female at birth who never had a uterus. Anyway, it's weird to reduce womanhood to having some bodily organ. Women are so much much more than walking uteruses!"
Now, what do trans-exclusionary people claim? "How dare you speak about 'people with uteruses!’ You're calling women walking baby factories--nothing but containers for wombs!"
Actually, we're doing the exact opposite of that. So, rest assured, being respectful of trans people is 100% compatible with being respectful of cis women! We all agree: you can't equate a woman with a uterus.
Right now we are seeing a flurry of nasty tweets and transphobic media columns (there was a doosy recently in the NY Times, which Midler said inspired her tweet, and which I'm not going to dignify with a link). They all claim that it's the transgender agenda to erase womanhood by referring to "pregnant individuals" instead of "mothers-to-be." That's not true--it's in the same vein of lies as "They won't let you say Merry Christmas anymore!" that has been a Fox News staple for so many years now. Nobody is asking cis women not to call themselves women. Nobody is asking Christians not to celebrate Christmas.
Being inclusive of a minority does not erase the majority. Yes, the majority of children who play American peewee football are boys, but girls play too, and it doesn't erase boys from the earth to speak of "kids who play football" rather than "boys who play football."
When we move from saying "mankind" to saying "humankind," we are not erasing men. When we say "pregnant people" instead of "mothers-to-be," we are not erasing moms. We're just trying to make everyone feel welcomed and seen.
Trans people and our allies agree with cis feminists when they say, "A woman can't be reduced to a uterus!"
We're not the ones doing that. Direct outrage at people who are actually oppressing women--not at intersex and trans and nonbinary people! Please.
