After the disappearance of the “n-word”, are we witnessing the disappearance of the “f-word” at Radio-Canada?
This is the question we can ask ourselves since a journalist from the Crown corporation, Angie Landry, used the expression “people with a uterus” instead of the word “women” in a report on the effects of the vaccine.
That a columnist or a host plays with this Orwellian terminology to look good with the woke community, that’s one thing. They can well say enormities, if they assume them.
But that in a factual report a journalist has recourse to “Newspeak”, it is worrying.
WHERE ARE THE WOMEN ?
Even at Radio-Canada, host Isabelle Craig had the courage to write: “No! I am not ”a person with a uterus” no offense to my/my colleagues. And no, saying that doesn’t make me transphobic or homophobic.” She later deleted her tweet saying there was “no pressure from [s]one employer”.
As the news caused an outcry, a real outcry, Radio-Canada retracted, removed the expression “people with a uterus” and even published a box explaining: “These formulations could imply that the identification of women was reduced to biological terms, which was not the intention”.
The problem is that Radio-Canada, in its box, never mentions the expression that was deleted. It’s still weird!
Luckily I took a screenshot of the first version of the text. With Radio-Canada, you can never be too careful…
Not only is this practice of replacing “woman” with “person with a uterus” to avoid hurting transgender or non-binary people ridiculous, it is hypocritical.
Do you know a single person who expresses himself like that in his daily life? Even the most woke of woke doesn’t exclaim, in a moment of panic, “the person with a uterus down the street is going to get run over!” »
Can you imagine if, at the time of Aline Desjardins, we had presented on television a program called People with a modern uterus ?
Should Michel Tremblay’s novel be renamed: The fat person with a uterus next door is pregnant ? What to say about this great classic of Quebec cinema: Two people with a golden womb ?
What if we applied this same practice to men? We no longer use the word man and replace it with “person with a prostate”.
CHABADABADA
A person with a do-it-all prostate, by Micheline Lanctot. Would we like to hum “chabadabada” during Lelouch’s film: A person with a prostate and a person with a uterus ? Guy A. Lepage’s comedy show, A person with a prostate, a person with a uterus.
If we eliminate the word woman from our vocabulary, we eliminate the presence of women in the public space. How can we talk about the Conseil du statut de la femme, the Minister responsible for the Status of Women and even “feminism” or “feminicide” if we eliminate the word itself?