I expect to be blogging in the next couple of days about the Jan 6 hearings, but an article in today’s NY Times so caught my attention that I can’t help commenting.
It seems that the word “woman” is increasingly excluded from discussions of issues related to pregnancy, childbirth and abortion. The preferred term is “birthing person,” or something like that. Thus,
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a section on “Care for Breastfeeding People,” the governor of New York issued guidance on partners accompanying “birthing people” during Covid, and city and some state health departments offer “people who are pregnant” advice on “chestfeeding.”
….The American Cancer Society website recommends cancer screenings for “people with a cervix.”
Why? The avoidance of “woman” reflects pressure from LGBT activists “to find a language that does not exclude and gives comfort to those who give birth and identify as nonbinary or transgender.” Is this nuts, or is it just me? No data exist for the US, but in Australia about 0.1% of births involve transgender men. The number must surely be comparable for the US: A little over 7% of the US population identifies as LGBTQ. More than half of those identify as bisexual. Most of the rest are gay women (i.e.,self-identified women who prefer other women) and gay men. That surely leaves well under 1% of the population that identifies as truly trans-gender. My guess is that most of even that tiny number will never become pregnant.
So, a fundamental change in language is under way to accommodate the sensibilities of a miniscule proportion of the population. The overwhelming majority of people who get pregnant are women who think of themselves as women. That natural self-identity should be acknowledged in our language as it always has been. The perverse logic of the new usages is that we cannot talk about women’s rights and needs when we discuss pregnancy, abortion and childrearing. I don’t think an effective reaction to the prospective Supreme Court ruling on Roe would be to raise the banner of “birthing people’s rights.”
The problem here, as it is with other anomalies like “Latinx,” is that it is symptomatic of an overblown sense of obligation to serve some kind of newly conceived progressive orthodoxy that is foreign to the consciousness and experience of most people. It invites ridicule by the right, who can point to political correctness gone wild: progressive elitists out of touch with ordinary people.
So, yes, there are very rare exceptions, but let’s keep it simple. It’s women who get pregnant. Women give birth. And some women need abortions.
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John June 9, 2022 at 5:06 pm
Yes, it does sound a little crazy out there! Thanks Tony.
Lee Yanowitch June 9, 2022 at 5:11 pm
I had the same reaction when I read the piece. Thank you for articulating it so well. I consider myself a liberal, but this is just silly.
Jeffrey Herrmann June 9, 2022 at 5:14 pm
You are right about it being nuts, and I don’t mean that in the cis-heterosexual, hegemonic patriarchal testicular sense.
It strikes me as a ludicrous form of virtue signalling rather than a sincere sensitivity to sincere snow-flake feelings.
Declaration of my pronouns: See Webster’s Dictionary.
Peter Sepulveda June 9, 2022 at 10:41 pm
Amen!
Elliot Linzer June 10, 2022 at 11:59 am
I also saw that article in the NYT and agree with you. I am vitally concerned about the use of language, at least since I worked in the dictionary department at Funk & Wagnalls, a long time ago.
I am afraid that this will be come a sideshow, distracting from the real issues of gender.
Mel Brender June 10, 2022 at 4:27 pm
I think lots of stuff is at work here. A part of it is certainly virtue signaling, armchair activism, and some foolishness. But I think there is also the effect of powerlessness: since women’s rights are under vicious attack, committed progressives feel obliged to do something, so they focus on this kind of linguistic activism for want of anything better to do.
In another context, I had a delightful conversation with an Urbanist in Portland. We discussed many issues, but mostly we talked about the enormous numbers of people living in large collections of tents throughout that city. I realized she was using the word ‘houseless’ to describe them. I asked whether the term ‘homeless’ was no longer acceptable. Her response was that even someone whose home is a tent on the sidewalk is not ‘homeless.’
Now this was a perfectly sensible and intelligent person. I replied that we really need effective policies, not better euphemisms, for what is certainly an extremely awful situation for anyone to be in, and she really did not disagree.
In my most pessimistic moments, I feel that the rich and powerful, having corrupted electoral politics, distorted tax policies to their advantage, and manipulated the media to prevent real discussion of the many serious problems we face, have won. Progressives will argue with each other about these terminological dead ends while the country becomes poorer, coarser, and rotten to its foundations. It’ll be guns and bibles, all the way down.
Then I lighten up and take a walk.