New York Times: Fight period stigma! Also New York Times: “New menstruators” Of course, actually fighting period stigma would mean not reducing women and girls to our bodily functions every time our experiences and needs deviate from the default male (who, you'll notice, never end up reduced to prostate-havers or ejaculators).
What strikes me about it is how it disconnects female experience across time. Classifying a woman as a "menstruator" severs her from her pre-adolescent and post-menopausal selves, denying the continuity of the individual. Why exactly the "vertically integrated messaging apparatus" (as Wesley Yang dubs it) would want to do this I'm not sure, but I do notice the similarity in thinking in trans ideology, re things like "dead names" and other taboos around acknowledging that a trans woman used to be a man (and is still male). In wokese there is only the eternal present, which lasts forever until it changes again and becomes what it always was and will be, until another change rolls around the palimpsest is rewritten again.
The impression I'm left with is that there's an entire activist class who lack object permanence, as through a whole generation missed out on a crucial developmental milestone from infancy. Perhaps this explains their loathing of and antipathy towards women, and the reduction of female reproductive capacity to a list of atomized traits?
Feminist linguist Deborah Cameron wrote about this back in 2016. She's less direct about critiquing gender ideology but she makes the same points about "inclusive" language being obfuscating.
I agree that the article avoids the use of the word "girl" (although they do use "daughter"), but it's important to note that the term "menstruator" is in a quote from a "charity". https://period.org/ The NYT never actually chooses to use that word. Which is not a word. This, from the Mirriam-Webster dictionary: “menstruator”
The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above.
What strikes me about it is how it disconnects female experience across time. Classifying a woman as a "menstruator" severs her from her pre-adolescent and post-menopausal selves, denying the continuity of the individual. Why exactly the "vertically integrated messaging apparatus" (as Wesley Yang dubs it) would want to do this I'm not sure, but I do notice the similarity in thinking in trans ideology, re things like "dead names" and other taboos around acknowledging that a trans woman used to be a man (and is still male). In wokese there is only the eternal present, which lasts forever until it changes again and becomes what it always was and will be, until another change rolls around the palimpsest is rewritten again.
The impression I'm left with is that there's an entire activist class who lack object permanence, as through a whole generation missed out on a crucial developmental milestone from infancy. Perhaps this explains their loathing of and antipathy towards women, and the reduction of female reproductive capacity to a list of atomized traits?
Calling a 'trans woman' sir is a crime similar to murder but labelling women by body parts or functions is inclusive.
Are we meant to take these fools seriously?
Feminist linguist Deborah Cameron wrote about this back in 2016. She's less direct about critiquing gender ideology but she makes the same points about "inclusive" language being obfuscating.
https://debuk.wordpress.com/2016/09/12/the-amazing-disappearing-women/
Spot on! Thanks for the article...
I agree that the article avoids the use of the word "girl" (although they do use "daughter"), but it's important to note that the term "menstruator" is in a quote from a "charity". https://period.org/ The NYT never actually chooses to use that word. Which is not a word. This, from the Mirriam-Webster dictionary: “menstruator”
The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above.