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I have so many questions I want to ask people who endorse gender ideology and its linguistic tenets: would you ever think to tell members of any other oppressed group how they should refer to themselves? For any other oppressed group, would you think to use language that obscures the nature of their oppression?

I think what you may find is that many people don't understand what oppression is (my lefty liberal boss thinks women can oppress men) or, if they do, they don't see women as oppressed. They don't understand that oppression is systemic: it's not just control of women's reproductive capacity, dehumanization through sexual objectification and violence, the pay gap, underrepresentation in government and positions of influence, period taxes and poverty, dismissal and silencing, it's ALL of those things working together to keep women subjugated.

If anyone's interested, this is a great article on "inclusive" (obfuscating) language from Deb Cameron https://debuk.wordpress.com/2016/09/12/the-amazing-disappearing-women/

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This is so perfectly said, thank you Eliza.

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This is indeed beautifully said and so is the comment by “Frustrated Therapist”. To me in reading the whole leaked draft, it seemed so clearly written by that half of humanity who do not get pregnant by abuse, rape or habit and for whatever reason feel they cannot go through the 9 months of gestation and labour and then the whole life time of caring for the as yet unborn child.

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They’re monstrous.

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"'Birthing bodies' don't have plans or dreams or minds and wills, even. "Birthing bodies" are functions and services. We need language that keeps women in one piece, that keeps our full humanity in the picture so that what's at stake is clear."

Och, this is a great, concise reminder. What could be a more transparent, oppressive male thing to believe, that "women" are only worth the parts they were made of and not actually fully human. They don't have to work very hard to prove they are indeed not women.

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