Thread by @MForstater

Women's prize .... mangling the definition of woman.

Let's break down this word salad

https://twitter.com/WomensPrize/status/1313059947626848256

Firstly, when they say "in our terms and conditions" the word woman equates to [word salad]

They don't mean that this word salad is in the small print of the terms and conditions

The terms and conditions say "woman" thats all.

womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/wp-content/upl…

What should be in the terms and conditions?

"cis women" is hard to understand, and is seen as offensive by many women

Its also superfluous since everyone in this category is also in the "female" category.

Lets remove it, since this doesn't exclude any individuals.

Do they really need "anyone who is legally defined as a woman" AND people "of the female sex"

-- these two categories are almost the same population apart from <0.01% of people who have legally changed sex

"anyone who is legally defined as a woman" includes males with a GRC whose birth certificate now says female

But it could exclude females who have a GRC as a male

(although in some cases the law will still consider them women such as still giving a peerage to their brother🤔)

You wouldn't want to exclude that second group because surely their writing reflects the experience of being a woman who legally changes their sex to male.

Freddy McConnell's experience of giving birth for example amazon.com/Seahorse-Dad-W…

"The female sex" encompass cis women, women who reject that label or have never heard it, women who identify as non-binary & transmen.

It only leaves out legal women who are biologically male (i.e. transwomen with a GRC), but they are covered by the category "trans women"

OK so now we have edited it down to two categories "transgender women" and "people of the female sex", without excluding any individuals covered by the other categories.

But surely they should be in the other order - the larger group, then the smaller?

And now the problem is quite evident!

There must be a name for "anyone of the female sex" - but what is it?

Since the woman's prize is "broadening the bandwidth" of what a woman is it can't be woman, so I'm going to go with biological woman, since this is an English word that is clearly understandable.

Maybe @womensprize think "biological women" is offensive?

Then we are left with "transgender woman" which they have left undefined.

"Transwoman" or "transgender woman" is not defined in law, so Women's prize will need to come up with their own definition.

legalfeminist.org.uk/2020/07/17/doe…

I see three options:

- any other legal women (i.e. transwomen with a GRC)
- anyone who identifies as a woman (self identify to the prize submission)
- anyone living as a woman (Women's prize needs to set some criteria)

Could a male novelist with a book published from April this year please be brave enough to help out by "doing a Zuby" and identifying as a woman for the purposes of submitting an entry for next year's prize?

https://twitter.com/ZubyMusic/status/1232692005802823686

This business of organisations saying of course when we meant "women" we always meant "women and men who identify as women" we just didn't bother to spell it out because its so obvious, is cowardice and dishonest.

Its the same trick pulled by Girl Guides and the Women's Institute.

All of these institutions, set up to recognise a particular need of women and girls, unable to just stand up and this is for women; we don't have to budge up because a male person wants in.