Why are feminists silent about the sidelining of women?

IDENTITY politics are erasing the words “mother” and “wife”, and the sisterhood stands by as the concept of womanhood is being stolen from under their noses, writes Miranda Devine.

FAINTING couch feminists are now in their third week of hyperventilating 24/7 over David Leyonhjelm’s rude comments to Sarah Hanson-Young.

They play the victim while engaging in the rough and tumble as hard as any man. Or harder, because, unlike a man, they haven’t grown up with the ever-present primal threat of physical retaliation if they go too far, so they have no off-button and exercise no self-restraint. For them, there are no rules of fair play.

They break taboos and act like ball-breakers and then, when they get a taste of discourteous reciprocation, they melt like crybabies.

Meantime, what women really should be worrying about is that their identity is being stolen from under their noses. The very concept of womanhood is being “culturally appropriated” while feminists are squabbling over hurt feelings.

The Miss Universe pageant, for instance, has just crowned its first transgender contestant, Spanish model Angela Ponce, 26. If she wins the title, it will simply bolster the sexist case that men are better than women at everything, even being women. But unlike their forbears, who used to picket beauty pageants in protest at the objectification of women in the 1970s and 1980s, today’s uptight feminists are silent about the sidelining of women.

Spanish model Angela Ponce will be the first transgender contestant to compete in the Miss Universe pageant. (Pic: Instagram)

British singer and LGBTIQ activist Alison Moyet has just been bullied off Twitter and labelled a bigot for saying she wants to be called a woman, not a ­“cis-woman”. The pronoun is used to describe a woman who “identifies” as female and was “assigned” the female sex at birth.

In sport, transgender athletes with all the natural physiological advantages that come from being born male are starting to blitz women’s competitions, and everyone is too polite to call foul.

The International Olympics Committee has been controversially tinkering with mandatory hormone limits to try to maintain a level playing field, but transgender women retain an edge in muscle mass, lung capacity, muscle memory and higher testosterone levels.

You can understand why some athletes might feel it’s not really fair if you were born a woman and miss out on representing your country at an elite level. But dare complain and you’ll be labelled transphobic.

While the eradication of discrimination against transgender people is a welcome development in a just society, you only have to see 100kg AFL player Hannah Mouncey, New Zealand’s 130kg Commonwealth Games weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, American cyclist Jillian Bearden and MMA fighter Fallon Fox to see that women’s sport as we knew it is coming to an end.

Then there is the relentless mania for gender-neutral language which means that two of our most feminine words, “mother” and “wife”, are in the process of being stamped out of our lexicon, with nary a complaint. First it was the Diversity Council and Qantas black-listing “mum”, then a Manhattan preschool axed Mother’s Day. Now Australian universities are marking down students who use “she”, “wife” and “mother’’ in essays.

Athlete Hannah Mouncey was given the green light to play in the Victorian Women’s Football League this year. (Pic: Nicole Garmston)

Mainstream media tells us “men are giving birth” to babies, a biological impossibility, and
even breastfeeding those babies.

The British Medical Association has warned doctors against using the terms “pregnant woman” or “pregnant mother”. “Pregnant people” is the only acceptable phraseology.

Of course, you can opt to ignore the woke language police, but the innocent words you use will always be tainted by fresh taboo, and slowly but surely they will disappear.

You’re not allowed to wear an Indian sari or sell a burrito without being accused by the radical left’s identity cops of stealing from a culture not your own. But engage in “gender appropriation” and the sisterhood falls silent.

There are few better examples of identity politics eating itself alive than the UK’s first all-woman festival, which is having a devil of a time defining who is its target audience.

Women Fest in Somerset next month is billed as a “radical participation festival” to “celebrate all things Woman!” It is an opportunity for “Woman (sic) to come together in these fundamental and empowering ways … Woman are able to be in a safe space with each other (and) can begin to surface their Power, Wisdom & Intuition”.

A “creativity tent” will have workshops on basket weaving. There will be a “womyn rising tent” and a “sacred womb tent”. A special area will be set aside for “yoni steaming, the practice of vaginal herbal cleansing made famous by aficionado Gwyneth Paltrow”.

But festival founder Tiana Jacout may have bitten off more than she can chew because who knows what a woman actually is any more.

All women are welcome at the festival, she tells the UK’s Guardian, including transgender women and pre-operative people. “We’re also happy to have non-binary people provided they have a vagina; but not non-binary people with a penis because we have to draw the line somewhere.”
You do have to draw the line somewhere.