What Ruth Bader Ginsburg never said about [people]

Using gender-neutral language to talk about sex-based inequalities obscures what's happening, to whom, and why, as the ACLU illustrates perfectly by editing women out* of what Ruth Bader Ginsburg actually said:

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choices.”​ ​

The sexual politics behind abortion bans matter. We can't make sense of Texas' great abortion bounty hunt—to take just one example!—by resorting to a vague language of "some people want to control other people's bodies" when male bodies are not and cannot be controlled like this, and when much of the history of humanity is a history of control exercised over females because of our reproductive capacity.

What's happening here only makes sense if we can keep sex in the picture. Female people are the only people who will ever need abortions. The fact that only female people ever get pregnant or ever need abortions is a huge part of why mostly male people slap severe restrictions on abortion and birth control, why maternal health is so neglected (and why women's issues are generally neglected in medical research and care), why so many women—especially Black women—die preventable deaths connected to pregnancy, and why we don't have anything like guaranteed paid maternity leave in this country.

Every language in the world has a word for this distinct class of human beings—women, 여자들, wanawake, wahine, feminae—except for the obscure and obscuring 21st-century dialect now being pushed in the empty name of ‘inclusivity.’

If you've somehow convinced yourself that this is wonderfully and terribly progressive—not having a word everyone knows so that we can speak clearly about half of humanity and the issues they face because of what they uniquely share—think again.  

*Never mind for the moment the basic principle of don't edit quotes like this, it makes you look like a mindless functionary from 1984's Ministry of Truth. Have some respect for RBG, who chose her words carefully and meant what she said. If you wouldn't put it like that, don't quote her: say it your own way.