How the Canadian minister for women kicked off #16DaysofActivism: ".... all gender identities... blah blah blah... regardless of gender..."

Words matter. It's called International Day for the Elimination of Violence against WOMEN for a reason. It is predominately MEN who kill girls and women. Guess how many times Ms Monsef mentions the word men in her declaration? https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/statement-by-minister-monsef-on-the-international-day-for-the-elimination-of-violence-against-women-and-the-start-of-the-16-days-of-activism-against-gender-based-violence-880355848.html

ZERO. Ditto for the words man and male. Men are taken completely out of the picture, as if they have nothing to do with this. Girls and women are 'lost' in attacks, 'experience sexual violence', are 'intimate partner homicide victims'. Men's role as killers conveniently erased.

Do you want to know how often she uses the word gender to talk about male violence against women? Twelve times. There is an epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous girls and women in Canada. They are mentioned only once.

Know who are mentioned much more often? Men. Gay men, transgender men, two-spirit men, queer men, gender-diverse men, non-binary men, men of all gender identities and expressions etc.

But as I pointed out above, they're not mentioned as men. Neither men who commit violence nor men who are the victims of violence are mentioned expressly. They're mentioned in coded language: "LGBTQ and two-spirit people", "non-binary, transgender, two-spirit and other

gender-diverse people", "LBGTQ2 individuals", "people of all gender identities and expressions", "every Canadian – regardless of gender". What the minister is really saying is she wants to include men as victims in the conversation about men's violence against women.

On a positive note, she does use the words women and girls which given the current climate I guess we should be grateful for. But even so, when we don't define the problem, the victims and the perpetrators accurately, we can't fight it.

The term 'gender-based violence' perfectly encapsulates the problem as it makes both victims and perpetrators invisible. Leaving out the word 'women' was a first step towards making biological sex as a factor invisible, a process reinforced tenfold by gender ideology.

The word women - ironically - is now only accepted when it includes men. Otherwise it is either expanded to vague terms such as pregnant people, non-men or uterus-havers, or it requires a prefix like 'cis'.

This has consequences for policies. You can't collect accurate statistics if you don't objectively define the terms. If woman is a subjective feeling and can include men it is undefined. The same applies to the term man. If men can be lesbians LGBTQIAA2S++ means nothing.

If the data don't identify target groups correctly, this reflects on policy actions and budget allocation. In a society where men are generally considered more important than women, this means more resources will be allocated to men. Resources for women must be earmarked as such.

Resources for lesbians must be earmarked as such. Resources for LGBTetc. people will go primarily to the T, specifically men, and lesbians will be the ones to benefit the least.

This is why it's unreasonable to ask women to refer to men as if they were female - be it through pronouns, names or words designating women. There is quite literally a price to pay. We are too far from "gender equality" to drop the word focus on women and focus on women.