Radio-Canada and the ovaries | The Journal of Montreal

After the disappearance of the “n-word”, do we see the disappearance of the “f-word” from Radio-Canada?

That’s the question we’ve been asking ourselves since Angie Landry, a journalist at Crown Corporation, used the phrase “women with wombs” instead of “women” in a report on the effects of the vaccine.

A columnist or presenter plays with this Orwellian vocabulary to look good with the waking society, and that is one thing. If they hypothesize, they can say great things very well.

But a journalist resorting to “newspeak” on a factual report is troubling.

Where are the girls?

Even on Radio-Canada, host Isabelle Craig had the audacity to write: “No! I am not a “womb person” who has done no offense to my/my peers. No, saying that doesn’t make me transphobic or homophobic.” He later deleted his tweet, saying, “No pressure. [s]A boss”.

As the news caused an outcry, a real outcry, Radio-Canada backtracked, removed the expression “those with a womb” and even issued a box explaining: “These formulas may indicate that identifying women has been reduced to biological terms. Not the intent.”

The problem is that Radio-Canada, on its box, doesn’t mention the deleted expression. It’s even weirder!

Luckily I took a screenshot of the first version of the text. With Radio-Canada, you can never be too careful…

This practice of changing “woman” to “person with a womb” to avoid victimizing transgender or non-binary people is not only ridiculous, it’s hypocritical.

Do you know someone who expresses themselves like that in everyday life? Even the most awake person, in a moment of panic, will say, “The man in the street with the uterus is going to run away!” »

Can you imagine if we had presented a show on television during Aline Desjardins’ time? People with modern uterus ?

Should Michael Tremblay’s novel be renamed: The fat lady next door is pregnant with a hysterectomy ? What to say about this great classic of Quebec cinema: Two people with golden wombs ?

What would happen if the same practice were applied to men? We no longer use the word man, we replace it with “person with a prostate.”

A man with a doable prostate, by Micheline Lanctot. Do we want to hum “Chabatapada” during Lelouch’s movie: A person with prostate and ovaries ? Guy A. LePage’s Comedy Show, A person with a prostate, a person with an ovary.

Don’t be fooled

If we remove the word woman from our vocabulary, we remove the presence of women in the public sphere. How can we talk about the Conseil du statut de la femme, the minister responsible for the status of women, and the word “feminism” or “femicide” itself?