If you run a women’s community space, you provide coaching for women, or you are writing a book to inspire women, it’s okay to describe your work in that way. If your target audience truly is women, call them “women.”
You may be thinking you’d like to be more inclusive than that. However, you don’t want to invite people of all genders to your activity.
The problem is, it’s not inclusive to invite “people who our society assumes are women.” It’s not supportive to invite a trans man to join your women’s group, because that can feel like you see him as a woman.
As a non-binary person, do I join women’s groups or men’s groups? Usually I don’t feel comfy in gendered groups, but occasionally I join a women’s group. I’ve been to women’s self-defense, women in tech events, and joined online groups for writing and publishing tailored for women. I’ve never been invited to join a men’s group, unsurprisingly.
It’s kind of like locker rooms at a gym. I use the women’s locker room, perhaps obviously, and people in there seem comfortable with me changing and showering with them.
However, some trans people do not feel comfortable using a gendered locker room. They may feel excluded from activities because using a men’s or women’s locker room does not feel safe.
So should we name the locker rooms more inclusively? “Women and people who I think look like women?” “Women and women-identified?” “Women and non-binary people?” I don’t think so.
Because, fundamentally, the women’s locker room is a women’s space and should be named accordingly. Just naming the locker room differently does nothing to make it inclusive to other genders.
Some phrases sound inclusive, but may not actually be helpful. For example, it’s time to remove the phrase “women-identified” from your vocabulary. I, a person who writes extensively about the words we use to describe people, have no idea what “women-identified” actually means. Women and women who identify as women? Let’s just say “women.” Note that “women” includes both cis and trans women, by definition. Trans women aren’t “women-identified”—they are women.
“Women and non-binary people” is challenging because this often means in practice “women and women-lite” or only people who are assumed to be women in our binary society. This likely excludes some non-binary people were were assigned male at birth and some transfeminine people.
“No cis men” is a very clear way to say what a lot of these descriptions hint at. But, we’re all scared of saying cis men aren’t welcome, aren’t we.
A small peeve: if you have a class, a paid business community, a coaching group, and it is just for women, please let me know upfront, so I do not need to wade through sales pages talking about how inclusive and LGBTQ friendly your program is, only to find, “welcome, ladies!” at the end. Let me make an informed decision whether I want to join your community or not by letting me know right away who it is for.
If you’re thinking, wait, I don’t want to lose potential customers because of their gender identity, consider making your business truly more gender-neutral. Don’t wrap it in gender-neutral language but actually keep the core of it a gendered group.
On the flip side, some groups are gender-inclusive but members still use gendered language. Some Facebook groups I participate in are for everyone but cis men, yet posts sometimes still start with, “Hi ladies,” or express gratitude for being in community with women. I’m not upset—I’m not offended—I’m merely trying to raise awareness that a variety of different people participate and contribute to these gender-inclusive spaces.
I support women’s spaces. I think they should be called women’s spaces. I generally choose not to participate in these communities, however, I think they can be crucially helpful for the population they do serve.
I support spaces just for trans people. Yes, these are gendered spaces too.
I also support all-gender spaces.
My approach to building a community to support trans people, non-binary people, and women (with a lot of overlap between these categories) is to talk about trans rights, non-binary rights, and women’s rights. I don’t try to limit community members based on their gender. The cis men who participate tend to be allies.
Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments.
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Take care,
Rey
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