IS GENDER-INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE TRULY ABOUT ERASURE?

When J K Rowling got all up in arms about the term, “People who menstruate,” she ignored something. Why do we use the term “police officer”? Why do we say, “paramedic” or “firefighter” instead of “ambulanceman” or “fireman”? The answer is in the nomenclature. If one hears the term policeman, it could mean “a man in a police uniform who is a serving officer,” or it could suggest that serving in the police force is the sole prerogative of a man. I remember, when I was seven, asking my mother if there could be women in the ambulance service, and she said no, but the ambulance service began to take on women who wanted to join.

With all the issues regarding transwomen in women’s sports, Marylebone Cricket Club has erased the term batsman replacing it with batter, a point that I agree with, as while cricket is not a mixed sport, Elysse Perry is not a batsman, she is a woman. So, it includes both sexes.

I remember when I was in my first year of university, we were asked not to use the terms “woman doctor,” or, “lady lawyer,” or “male nurse,” for the simple reason that it connotes that those roles are not held by a woman or a man. In Australia, the number of female doctors is roughly equal, if not higher, in some cases, than males. And while there are more female nurses than male nurses, traditionally, doctors were male, and nurses were female and nurses were doctors’ handmaidens. Also, where until as recently as the 1970s, student nurses needed to obtain permission to marry and keep their job, and a female nurse married a male doctor, nowadays, it is more common for a male nurse to marry a female doctor, and with marriage equality, a nurse and doctor of the same sex may marry.

Terms such as “people who menstruate” do not erase women, especially since, if an 11-year-old girl menstruates, she is not yet a woman, and a transman who has kept his uterus and ovaries still menstruates.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a feminist, and I am on a transition journey, and I believe that feminism is about choice, but inclusive language works both ways.