Given all the effort feminists have invested in making language more equitable, you might expect that they would welcome use of the term pregnant peo… - Helen Lewis

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Given all the effort feminists have invested in making language more equitable, you might expect that they would welcome use of the term pregnant people. But some, including me, are concerned that it obscures the social dynamics at work in laws surrounding contraception, abortion, and maternal health. The argument for the second wave’s language changes was that women fought fires in the exact same way as men, so one word should cover both sexes. That’s a different decision from whether we should keep gendered language to reflect heavily gendered experiences.

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About Helen Lewis

Helen Lewis (born 30 September 1983) is a British journalist and a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is a former deputy editor of the New Statesman, and has also written for The Guardian, The Times and The Sunday Times.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Helen Lewis-Hasteley Helen Alexandra Lewis
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Additional quotes by Helen Lewis

That this play is at the Globe, the home of Shakespeare, only underscores that it is not in the Shakespearean tradition. The great English playwright is still revered today because he drove the possibilities of drama forward, creating characters with psychological depth and ambiguity. I, Joan is part of an older tradition, the medieval morality play. These pitted virtues and vices against one another for the soul of the protagonist: Greed and Sloth raged against Chastity and Patience. In I, Joan, that conflict has given way to one between Cisnormativity and Authenticity. I, Joans supporting characters exist not as people but as conduits for the moral lesson being delivered to the audience.

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When I think back over the most memorable parts of Dahl's work, it's always the nastiness that lingers. ... The awful married couple at the center of The Twits subject each other to a campaign of relentless psychological harassment. The message of George’s Marvelous Medicine is "Why not brew up all the chemicals you can find in your house and feed the resulting concoction to your grandmother?" This is not an easy fit for an era when peanut packets carry a warning that they contain nuts.

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