What’s wrong with the word ‘woman’?
It isn’t hate to speak the truth.” Taken out of context, JK Rowling’s words could apply to so many truths spoken at this fever-pitch moment in time. They could have been defending the Prime Minister’s denouncement of those who attempted to set fire to the Cenotaph memorial flag on Sunday night against more of the same. They could have been defending a Brexiteer or Remainer’s stance on pretty much any issue you care to mention. Only what Rowling was actually defending was women.
Reacting to an online article entitled “Creating a more equal post Covid-19 world for people who menstruate,” on Saturday, the 54-year-old Harry Potter author sparked acres of social media hate with the tweet: “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”
Out came the Twitter tribes with their pre-digested opinions and easy conversation-cancelling labels. Rowling was an “exclusionary” “transphobic” “bigot”, using her “power and influence” to spread “hate propaganda” and incite “suicide”.
In a feat of righteous indignation that dwarfed even the writer’s award-winning powers of imagination, one explained how Rowling’s tweet “makes it clear she not only hates trans folks, she doesn’t give a s--- about black folks either.”
How it wasn’t also held up as proof of her views on Dominic Cummings, the viability of motorised, selfadministered eye tests and a no-deal Brexit is a mystery.
Nevertheless, the author refused to be silenced. “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them,” she retaliated. “I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”
You’ve got to admire Rowling for trying to logic her way through this, of all arguments.
After all, when we start from the
There is nothing more reductive than calling me ‘a person who menstruates’
standpoint that human biology is a construct contrived to offend, and that every medical and dictionary definition of “man” and “woman” is part of a larger conspiracy of hate against the trans community, we have to accept that logic in itself has long ago been cancelled out as “discriminatory”, “exclusionary” – “anti”.
Which is a shame, when you consider how little effort it would take for most of us to follow the logic, if not the wording, of the tweet subsequently posted by “I Support The Girls” – an organisation that helps
distribute menstrual hygiene supplies to girls – and how willing many of us are to understand the emotions behind the vitriol: “Not all women menstruate and not all who menstruate are women. There are many girls, nonbinary folx, trans boys and trans men who also get a period.”
Why the word “folk” – which is already gender-neutral – had to be replaced by one specifically “used to indicate inclusion of marginalised groups”, I won’t pretend to understand. But if we transcend the politics of grammar for a moment and open our minds, we get the point.
Menopausal women are still women; women who have undergone hysterectomies are still women. But those who have gone through the unimaginably painful and laborious process of gender reassignment from female to male didn’t go through all that to be called “women”, and – sorry, but absolutely on a lesser scale – those who neither identify exclusively as masculine nor feminine can take exception to the use of that word. Got it.
It’s when the likes of one Rowlingbasher, who declares “biological essentialism bulls---”, rages at her for being “so determined to reduce women to walking wombs”, that my willingness to understand stops (see how that works?).
That’s when I too get to rage; that’s when I get to be the victim. Because what could be more reductive than calling me “a person who menstruates”? It would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. Because by reducing us to that, as Rowling points out, “the lived reality of women globally is erased”.
How many times in our continued fight against racism and discrimination of every kind have we lamented the bigotry, closed mindedness and exclusionism of past societies and civilisations – and all for what?
To box ourselves in with ever more exclusive language and labels, devise new divisions and cultivate still more intransigent viewpoints? That’s not about wanting to effect change but a bored and cosseted society spoiling for a fight.