Why we must save the word ‘she’ from the woke brigade

A top law firm is erasing the words ‘he’ and ‘she’ from documents - to the horror of feminists. An infuriated JULIE BINDEL argues...

SEEKING to embrace transgender ideology, the law firm Clifford Chance is removing all mention of ‘she’ and ‘he’ from its legal documents in favour of ‘they’. In a development straight from some Orwellian nightmare, the firm has unveiled a computer program designed to ‘eliminate gendered language’.

Shouldn’t feminists l i ke me be happy? After all, many law firms still begin letters ‘Dear Sir’ (rather than ‘Sir/Madam’) and have documents that use only ‘he’.

In a word, no. I am actually sickened and furious.

Far from showing a commitment to end the age- old sexism in our legal system, this is yet another example of the slow eradication of words and terminology to describe women in the law, business and society as a whole.

The change in terminology is not about being more female-friendly. Far from it. It is about pandering to trans activists.

Another change adopted by some firms is a requirement for staff to end their emails with ‘he/him’ or ‘she/her’ next to their signature, so the recipient knows how to reply.

On its website, Clifford Chance admits its decision could be seen as virtue- signalling but adds: ‘ The reality is that, as well as being respectful of trans and non-binary identities, it is also a sensible and practical action to take.’

So there we have it. None of this is about being more inclusive of female staff or clients. Rather, it is aimed solely at appeasing pressure groups and their woke allies.

Such an approach is a cheap and easy win for Clifford Chance and potentially, a neat way to obscure any possible inequality. If all staff become ‘they’, it obscures how differently the sexes are treated as employees. T HE latest figures on the gender pay gap show that women at the firm earn j ust 63 pence to every pound that the men earn. There are very few women in top jobs.

But rather than addressing inequality, Clifford Chance has arguably opted to neutralise the very concept of biological sex and its implications for women. This move costs it nothing and wins it a reputation for being progressive.

Along with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and many police forces, Clifford Chance is listed as a Stonewall Diversity Champion. The LGBT charity hands out awards — conferring its influential seal of approval — to firms and organisations that follow the party line on transgender ideology.

Perhaps schools will be next to enforce the use of gender-neutral pronouns? After all, Stonewall is the most i nfluential LGBT organisation in the UK, with an income of £8.7 million in 2018, including a £233,673 grant from the Department for Education. Stonewall has produced guidance material for both primary and secondary schools.

Stonewall also has a major influence on Parliament. Both the Commons and the Lords have signed up to be Stonewall Diversity Champions.

And while firms such as Clifford Chance bend over backwards to appear progressive, organisations including the BBC (also a signed-up member of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions initiative) is instructing staff to add she/ her/hers and he/him/his to their email signatures.

Media regulator Ofcom is also taking advice from Stonewall to determine who may speak about trans issues on the BBC and whether trans-critical voices are now ‘ inappropriate’. Of course, language matters. For decades, feminists have campaigned to eradicate sexist language.

We fought for an equivalent to ‘Mr’ because we did not wish to be defined by our marital status as ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’. Finally the prefix ‘ Ms’ became acceptable. But men are still seen as the default human.

Women are now being told we have to accept the word ‘womxn’ — a trans-friendly version of ‘women’ — being imposed on us.

TEDx London, an influential organisation that runs inspirational public talks, announced in September that it would rename its annual women’s event, in future to be ‘ more inclusive’. Inclusive of those born male who identify as women, they mean.

The traditional feminist goal was once that gender would disappear altogether, with any perceived differences between men and women being put down to sexism.

But while inequality between women and men still exists under the law and in politics and personal relationships, using ‘ they’ instead of the correct gender pronoun, besides being disingenuous, is a slap in the face.

Why is it that the so- called inclusion of trans women seems always to involve the attempted erasure of those who were actually born as women?

HOW much more ‘inclusive’ does the word ‘woman’ need to be when it represents about 3.9 billion human beings — roughly half of the world’s population?

At King’s College London, Womxn in STEM, a network of students and academics who support women in science, tech, engineering and maths, also uses the term ‘womxn’.

The term ‘chest feeding’, coined to make trans men who nurse but may have had surgery to remove their breasts feel more comfortable, is starting to be used in place of ‘breast feeding’, while biological (ie, born female) women have been dismissed as ‘cervix havers’.

The sanitary product f i rm Tampax even replaced ‘ women’ with ‘people who bleed’ in a post on I nstagram in October, prompting a promised boycott by once-loyal customers.

I am sick and tired of hearing that we should use ‘ pregnant people’ because ‘some men give birth’ ( ie, natal females who identify as trans men). Even the British Medical Association says doctors should stop saying ‘mothers-to-be’ and instead refer to ‘pregnant people’.

We must f i ght to save the pronoun ‘she’. It matters, while women are still treated as second-class citizens.

how are we supposed to collate data on equal pay, domestic violence or other issues that disproportionately affect women? The word ‘ she’ is needed until women are no longer treated as if we are worth less than men.

It also matters in recording crime. When several police forces across England and Wales record rapes committed by men as having been committed by females if the rapist identifies as such, this skews statistics and takes the focus off male violence.

here is what I suggest. For the next century, why not have a change? There is no need to use ‘he’ or ‘they’ as the default if you don’t know the identified sex of the person about whom you are speaking, just use ‘she’.

Replace ‘ man’ with ‘ woman’, ‘sirs’ with ‘ladies’ and ‘ he’ with ‘she’. That would irk men but at least it would be a stab at redressing the balance — and stop us women disappearing altogether.

Without ‘she’, how can we collate data on equal pay?