Words like ‘women’ matter when they die defending their own sex
SORRY Ms Rowling, but I’m afraid you’ve lost.
Remember wading into the transgender battle last year over a headline that appeared on a website about ‘people who menstruate’?
You followed it up with a tweet in which you said ‘Surely there used to be a word for those people...Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?’
Some thought your tweet was funny. Others thought our most popular living author was ‘disgusting’ ... a transphobe using her great power to ‘punch down’.
Most, I suspect, kept their views to themselves. Why risk being ‘cancelled’ in a cause that has probably been lost?
Anyone who heard the interview Martha Kearney conducted with Dr Viki Male on Radio 4’s Today programme this week will have concluded there’s no ‘probably’ about it.
Dr Male is a reproductive immunology expert at Imperial College. She has been researching the effects on the menstrual cycle of women who have Covid jabs. Or rather, as she puts it, on people who have periods.
Martha, to her credit, used the word ‘women’. Dr Male used ‘people’ not once, not twice, but ten times in a three-minute interview. Intriguingly she even used ‘people’ referring to those who are ‘thinking of becoming pregnant’. The word ‘women’ did not pass her lips.
Maybe it’s only words after all. But words matter.
Sex is a biological reality and countless brave women have fought for their sex. Many have died in that noble battle.
George Orwell knew that thought is dependent on words. That’s why his sinister Ministry of Truth in 1984 removed certain words from the dictionary.
We must not remove ‘women’ from ours.