J K Rowling and the trans furore

[Kimstu]

@The_Librarian

I’m the first to defer to anyone who can make make a good argument that calling women “menstruators” is a good thing. But I haven’t seen that argument yet.

I repeat, with slight paraphrase, my remark from my preceding post:

@Kimstu

AFAICT nobody is suggesting that anybody call anybody else a “menstruator” except in contexts where the fact of menstruation is relevant. It seems both delusionally paranoid and ridiculously squeamish to object to your [mother/wife/daughter] being included in a category called “menstruators” in contexts that are specifically about the experience of menstruation.

Remember, this whole “menstruator” kerfuffle got started because Rowling made a silly snide joke about a perfectly reasonable and relevant use of the phrase “people who menstruate” to refer to, you know, people who menstruate, specifically with respect to experiences involving menstruation.

Here is the article using that phrase:

Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate […]

Importantly, advocates are calling attention to the many gendered aspects of the pandemic, including increased vulnerabilities to gender-based violence during lockdowns, and the risks faced by primary caretakers — particularly women in the household and health care workers, approximately 75% of which are women.

An estimated 1.8 billion girls, women, and gender non-binary persons menstruate, and this has not stopped because of the pandemic. They still require menstrual materials, safe access to toilets, soap, water, and private spaces in the face of lockdown living conditions that have eliminated privacy for many populations. […]

And here is Rowling’s dumbass comment on that article:

‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

Hyuk hyuk. :rolleyes: In fact, of course, “women” is not a particularly useful real-world synonym for “people who menstruate”. A very large percentage of cisgender women are post-menopausal, and thus are not impacted by the difficulties of maintaining menstruation hygiene during a pandemic. On the other hand, a very large percentage of girls do menstruate but are not yet officially categorized as “women”. And, of course, there’s also the small minority of people who menstruate who identify as transgender men or non-binary.

So gosh, what sort of term could we use to refer specifically and only to those people who currently experience menstruation, and thus have to cope with the challenges of maintaining menstruation hygiene in our COVID-19 world? “Someone help me out”…

Wait, I know! How about we refer to them as “people who menstruate”, or “menstruators” for short? It’s specific, precise, and biologically factual. Surely there’s nobody dumb enough to regard such a descriptive clinical nomenclature as somehow offensive to women.
…As it turns out, though, there were plenty of people dumb enough to jump to the conclusion that trans-rights activists are somehow advocating the use of “menstruators” as a shorthand term for “cisgender women” in all contexts, the way some gay people call straight people “breeders” or misogynists call women “holes”. So a great clutching of pearls ensued.