'Egg producer': The war on language and the dissolution of womanhood
Rachael Powell argues that current attempts to control language are not innocent concerns for people's feelings. Instead, they respresent a sinister, underhanded form of misogyny.
The war on language may, at times, seem futile: a distraction from the real, concrete problems that our world is currently facing. Debating over the meaning of words, which words should receive capitalisation and which should not, and deciding which words are offensive and which are empowering can appear as a meaningless, fruitless exercise. Words are just words.
However, language shapes our perception of reality. In a literal sense, for example, if we did not have a word for the colour ‘blue’, we may not be able to easily distinguish it from green. Such is the case with the Himba tribe in Namibia, who, lacking a word for blue, were seemingly unable to quickly identify a blue square from green ones.
We use language to communicate with one another: to convey ideas, share experiences, tell stories, and illustrate who we are. Controlling language, therefore, is not just an aimless game, but an attempt to control our perceptions of reality and how we relate with one another.
As such, the suggestion to use the term ‘egg-producing’ instead of ‘female’ should not be taken lightly, or considered as just ‘wokery gone mad’ — although, of course, it is. As reported by The Telegraph, the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Language Project has compiled a list of terms used in science that are not inclusive and could be offensive. The list included the ‘harmful’ words such as ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘father’, and ‘mother’, which should be replaced with ‘sperm-producing’, ‘egg-producing’, or even ‘XY/XX individual’.
It is too easy to dismiss this alteration of language as an unwitting attempt to smooth sensitive language for the sake of political correctness and to spare some hurt feelings. Rather, it is a sinister and deliberate manipulation of our use of language — one that creates the false assumption that the ability to produce eggs is potentially universal and is separate from womanhood. The simple shift in language to deny that a human with ovaries is a ‘female’ and instead label her as an ‘egg-producer’ separates women’s biological capabilities from herself, implying that producing eggs is separate from femaleness and that anyone (male or female) may produce eggs — but, of course, this is biologically impossible. The control over language has thus controlled the perception of reality. Now the ability to produce eggs can be easily considered unrelated to women’s bodies.
This is not the first time that we have seen the alteration of language around women and their biological processes. It is part of a continued attempt to divorce the connection between women and their bodies with the aim of being more inclusive to trans women (who do not produce eggs) and trans men (who do). Biological women now are not simply women or even females, but the much uglier terms of ‘egg-producer’, ‘period-haver’, ‘uterus-owner’, ‘birthing person’ — the list goes on.
The term ‘egg-producer’ reduces a woman to her biological capabilities. The implication is that a woman is nothing more than a person who can give birth. This is hardly the illuminating vocabulary that our scientific language should be aiming at. As far as the scientific world is concerned, it seems, women are just egg producers. A biological machine. A body that is unrelated to the person. A biological experience that is irrelevant to the person’s wider social and cultural identity. Biological essentialism, in any other context, is deemed dehumanising — yet, in this context, it is asserted as inclusive and liberating.
To compartmentalise biological processes, such as producing eggs, denies the reality that there are two biological sexes. Moreover, it creates the narrative that a woman is not a complete, whole being, but is instead broken up into separate components of eggs, uterus, breasts. Now, a woman is simply a human, with or without eggs. Through the manipulation of language, what it is to be a woman has been dissolved, and we have been left with alienated biological processes that are seemingly irrelevant to an individual’s sex.
Ironically, perhaps, the creation of such ‘inclusive’ terms to include gender non-conformists has resulted in the exclusion of women. The ability to grow a baby inside one’s body should be considered exclusive because it is: only biological women have the potential to do so — but this is not all a woman is. The aversion to terms such as ‘mother’, ‘woman’, and ‘female’ has led to the erosion of womanhood — that is, womanhood in terms of the community, or the collective identity, where women have certain things in common: the ability to become a mother, among many other qualities that makes a woman. If it is denied that women have in common bodies that can create life, then the binding factor between women begins to disintegrate — and with it, the community of womanhood.
The power of language, therefore, must not be underestimated. We are social animals, and as such the language we use shapes how we perceive reality and how we relate to one another. Any attempt to shun particular words or phrases, to push the use of new ones, or to change the definition of others, must not be taken lightly. The war on language is not a word game: it is a cunning, intentional manipulation of not just the words we use, but the thoughts we have, the assumptions we create, the ethical choices we make, and the relationships we build.
Rachael Powell is a politics graduate and writer based in London.