“Pregnant Women”
harry-lewis.blogspot.com
harry-lewis.blogspot.com
The rejection of "pregnant women" came from rejection of a scientifically provable fact that humans do have a female sex, and the vast majority of pregnant people are of that sex and gender, colloquially called women. Rejecting the reality in favor of the prevalent ideology and forcing norms based on it right now fortunately just produces awkwardness, and no broken lives as of yet, but the trend is worrying enough.
The sad part of it is that the whole thing is happening not in a temple where divine prescriptions overrule any observed reality, and not on an anonymous imageboard where "bitards" develop silly rules and keep silly discourses for, let's assume it, fun. It's happening in a university, in a department of a natural-scientific discipline that normally operates observable facts and is assumed to honor the Descartes' maxim.
The rapid institutionalization of a new radical set of definitions and scrutiny (socially and professionally) over allowed/disallowed speech is disturbing, particularly because it reflects the desires of a small but vocal activist group and not broader society. The bureaucracy of diversity officers referenced in this blog post is an enabling mechanism for this type of distortion, because free inquiry and dissent are discouraged by implicit fear of reprisal, and this body therefore acts more like a “ministry of truth” from the Soviet era. I’m not surprised to see this Professor end the post by asking that 1984 once again be made required reading for Harvard students.
This is not sarcasm. What you’ve generally been taught about the binariness of these terms is an oversimplification to say the least, and wrong. Read Galileo’s Middle Finger as an excellent primer.
That the edge points of group inclusion become more subjective or inconclusive, does not abnegate the very obvious reality of overall group determination.
We fully accept that there is a material ratio of people who don't fit clear categorization ... but most people do ... and that' really important artifact of sex and gender.
It's not 'grey'.
It's mostly 'pretty black and pretty white' with some interesting bits in the middle.
We are 'mostly' binary, it's really obvious, and fighting against that fact is a woeful place for people and institutions to lose all of their credibility, which over time they will, and it will be bad.
'Wrong side of history' bad.
We're already trying to convince people that vaccines are generally safe, and to accept that 'the grey areas' of gender do truly exist and to stop hating on trans people, to stop being racist etc.. Those are the important things.
And from a populist perspective, I can't imagine a bigger losing strategy than shaming people for saying 'Pregnant Women'.
There are so many obvious 'good fights' to be worked on (not just social issue either), let's focus there.
This is the problem. For every definition of woman I can give you, you can easily dispute with counter argument. So we get "something". Undefined, because every definition is flawed. We end up with an overcomplicated system because we want to be accurate. If you think woman is a woman and pizza is a pizza - you are wrong. And we make so much fuss about it.
But now, there is no accepted definition of woman - because of trans-people, or intersex, or people say that women who are sterile are still women. And they are all correct.
So there is no definition of "woman" so anyone can declare their womanhood - which means there will eventually be no womens clubs, womens shelters, womens sports or womens scholarships - because without a definition of what a woman is, anyone who claims womanhood can have those too.
Is that a problem? Who knows, and only time will tell.
Sterile women were still women. As typically were some other accidents of nature like testosterone-resistant males.
Language changes over time, and so we assigned the word woman recently more to a gender rather than social status or sex.
Polish is more permissive in this particular "pregnant woman" alleged issue, we have a gendered noun equivalent "pregnant" or long form "woman in pregnancy". Though nobody is yet using form "man in pregnancy" or "pregnant man" except as a joke.
Sure, ridiculous situations like the one in the article happen, but usually, in my experience, it is pretty easy to have a conversation and figure out where civilized disagreement and/or miscommunication lies.
Hence, I am always perplexed when someone says that they feel it is becoming difficult to dissent.
A lot of vocabulary would need to change then.
Edit: Downvoters are apparently not educated on genetics either. First please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex and reconsider your position. If you're not moved, then please leave a comment explaining yourselves.