Is The Word “Woman” A Victim Of Cancel Culture?

Much has been made about Rosie DiManno 10/15/2021 article for The Toronto Star “Why can’t we say ‘woman’ anymore?” especially after Margaret Atwood — of The Handmaid’s Tale fame — shared the article on Twitter. Of course, Atwood is someone who has repeatedly spoken out in favor of transgender rights in the past and has defended DiManno against claims she is a TERF.

In the same regard, I would not go so far as to call DiManno a TERF based on this article alone. TERF implies active transphobia on her part, and although I know her article is making the rounds in TERF spaces and won’t deny there’s some overlap, this article alone does not contain transphobia so much as it contains — well I’m not quite sure what it contains. Hyperbole based on misinformation seems like the best way to classify her article, maybe good old fashion sensationalism, but transphobia would not be an accurate descriptor.

Take this point:

In Britain, where roughly 680,000 people do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, according to government figures, midwives at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals were told to start using terms such as “chest milk,” instead of breast milk. This, apparently, because some transgender men who give birth and nurse their babies were distressed at being reminded of what they were doing…