Resisting dissociated/dissociating language
Girls become “boys,” not in reality, but in the way we talk about reality. Elective mastectomies on girls become “reconstructive chest surgery” on “boys.” Hysterectomies become “gender-affirming care.
The disjuncture between what we say and what we do when it comes to gender identity is jarring for those of us who’ve been insufficiently indoctrinated.
If you’ve stubbornly hung on to the original meanings of recently redefined words, you’ll marvel at the dissociation and harm this warped language facilitates:
Girls become “boys,” not in reality, but in the way we talk about reality. Elective mastectomies on girls become “reconstructive chest surgery” on “boys.” Hysterectomies become “gender-affirming care.” Changing everything about yourself becomes “authenticity.” Asking why becomes “conversion therapy.” Cheating becomes fairness and “inclusion.”
This is a radical dissociation between language and the realities that language is meant to describe.
And here’s where the gender-malware analogy comes in—when one person gets infected, whole networks get infected. Even—especially—if you’ve preserved your own language and fought off the hacking attempts, you’ll find yourself living in something of a nightmare. Hacked contacts won’t be able to understand you. Gender malware will turn your clearest speech inside-out. It will insist on your “secret meanings” and “dogwhistles.” Gender malware will garble your attempts to communicate and break through, in order to defend itself.
When social circles, colleagues, and institutions that surround us run on gender malware, those of us who didn't get hacked often feel like we must be going mad. How can we look at the same situations and see them so differently? What happened to the people we loved, who always seemed so reasonable? How can they speak such nonsense? How can they buy into it? How have they changed, as if overnight? How did they forget so many things they once knew? It's baffling.
This is exactly it. I feel as if I have gone mad. I am a nurse. I work in maternal health. It is my passion. The only reason I became a nurse is to work with mothers.
Today, in a meeting about maternal mortality, I was the only one using the words mother and woman. Everyone else kept saying birthing people, birthing bodies (so dehumanizing).
How can you talk about this without discussing sex, patriarchy, sexism and misogyny? The fact that labor and delivery units close down because we don’t value women? That black WOMEN die more because they deal with racism AND sexism?
How can we address this if we don’t say the word woman?
My colleagues are caring people. I like all of them. In the last 2-3 years, everything has quickly turned to birthing people and chest feeding. I have not spoken out against this at work. I spoke up. I said that it’s so great that we are finally starting to talk about how racism impacts our clients and healthcare in general. Another thing that is important is to consider how sexism and misogyny has impacted our clients’ lives too. I said there’s no such thing as paternal mortality as it relates to pregnancy and birth and we need to consider how sex affects this. I saw some nods. Another colleague said “100% and it affects women in all healthcare, like menopause and not doing research.”
She said woman. I think people are just parroting things. When confronted, they state the obvious—this is about women’s rights.
I was shaky and stumbling, afraid I’d blurt out my true, raging feelings. That is very unlike me. I’m a confident speaker. But it’s a start. And it is my duty as a nurse who serves women.
It is indeed horrifying. Especially when there are whole age groups that don't know the actual truth, and think this is indeed the way it is. They truly believe we are 'assigned' at birth.. it's deeply disturbing and I'll go down screaming blue murder before I'll ever submit.