I have problems with the grouping, too, but find myself using the term more and more as I try to venture into a career in social work. Its probably because its easier to describe what I want to do that way, But it definitely comes up short because I want to focus my work on victims of abuse, and the problem is VERY different depending on the ages of the victims. As you said, its demeaning to suggest that women can be equated with children and only men can be actual autonomous adults.

I also have a problem with it because it adds to the stigma that men who are victims of abuse face when they try to get help. They're completely left out, as if it's not possible for them to be victimized by domestic violence.

i guess part of the reason i still use the term, even though i think about the problems you've risen with it often, is that it's practical, and I don't really have another term that would quickly and concisely convey what i'm trying to accomplish. I know a lot of groups have started using the term "women and families" instead, which is better, but a lot of the people i'm working with don't have families at all.

also, i think it benefits my work (and myself, in many ways) to try not to insert politics into the discussion. that kind of sounds bad, i don't mean i'm a sell-out, but a lot of times the people that I'm working with have more immediate, really critical problems to deal with and in day to day efforts to fix them, trying to implement new terminology can do more to keep the women i work with from getting their needs met than to promote equality. Its a hard line to draw, but i think about it a lot. you make a good point and i'd like to hear more suggestions of better terminology.

Oh, I TOTALLY agree with this. I hate that phrase with a passion, too. Can you imagine 'men and children'?

I am currently taking a class on 20th century genocides and my teacher says "women and children" all of the time. It makes me so angry! Especially when one of the ways in which we are supposed to determine whether or not the atrocity was truly a genocide was whether or not "women and children" were killed. Why can't we just say "adults and children" or "non-combatants". I mean, as far as I am concerned a non-combatant is a non-combatant regardless of gender. Why is it more of a genocide if the non-combatant happens to be female?

Kathryn

"that kind of sounds bad, i don't mean i'm a sell-out, but a lot of times the people that I'm working with have more immediate, really critical problems to deal with and in day to day efforts to fix them, trying to implement new terminology can do more to keep the women i work with from getting their needs met than to promote equality."

I understand that to a victim of domestic violence, this is probably the case in their minds. However, I'm not sure any domestic violence exists that isn't made possible by the victim being psychologically abused into thinking they are inferior before the violence begins, and disgustingly misogynist sayings like "women and children" are part of what does that. I'm not trying to take anything away from the good you do helping domestic violence victims, Kathryn, but the use of terminology like that was probably the sort of thing that drove the people you help to a position where they could be victimized in the first place. Setting a tone of equality in your speech would probably help the victims.

Absolutely agreed, this pisses me off so much, every time I read "casualties included many women and children". Here's an example from the Guardian, supposedly a liberal and progressive (UK) paper, just this week: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/08/pakistan.afghanistan.

So four fatalities were women and ten were men - why the need to distinguish the women, and in the first sentence of the article? I really don't understand it - as theanglerfish said above, if it's a case of distinguishing civilian from military/other combatant casualties (as if men can't be civilians and women are never in the military) then "non-combatants" will do fine. It reiterates the idea that women are on an 'innocence' or 'helpless' level with children, and that it is less of a tragedy when men are killed. GRRR.

I've always viewed it, not so much as women being helpless (like children), but for the reason that society considers women's and children's lives being worth more than men's,

Afterall, people often say what a tragedy it is for someone to die so young, and that applies to children, because they have yet to live life and imagine all that potential that woild never be.

And women's lives are seen as worth more than men's because women can actually create life, ie. give birth, thus creating another life.

Unlike women however, one man alone can father the entire planet if he really wanted to. So therefore men are more expendable and their lives worth less.

That is why people will tend to care more about women and children dying, but men are just anonymous in death. That's how I view it anyway.

Timothy - I pondered that too, and always presumed that was why "women and children first off the Titanic" and all that, but it's not really a sound, sensible argument; the world has 6.6 billion + people (with more than half of that being women). We don't need women to survive in higher numbers than men to keep the world populated. Even if that was the original reason the phrase came about (and really if it was about survival of the species it would have to be an oooold phrase), contemporarily it's serving to make women sound weak, it's used lazily and isn't necessary.

andromeda,

I'm really talking about using the term in my negotiations with people that we need to donate or provide services for the us of the population that I work with.

These organizations often have categories of non-profits and charitable organizations that they'll help. "women and children" is a common category.

The implication that I psychologically abuse the population that I work with is supremely insulting. I am very conscious of the language I use, and merely wanted to express that there are places that I feel the needs of clients are better served by a term that I personally don't like.

would it make my clients be helped more if I get them a grant for textbooks, or if i tell them they don't get textbooks because I want to implement a more egalitarian terminology and the donor declined, because they didn't get the "agenda" of the organization? My job isn't always to have an agenda besides getting for my clients what they need. It would be great if I single-handedly revolutionized speech used in social work fields, wouldn't it? but I'm only one person and I barely have enough time and resources to get my clients needs met in the first place.

Part of the reason for it is that the women are *with* the children. Since women are the primary caretakers of children, if say you let the children onto the lifeboats first, if you don't let the women go with them then there are no adults who can take care of them, so the children will die anyway.

It *does* reinforce a few poisonous notions in society:

- men deserve to die or suffer more than women and children do
- women are like children
- only women can take care of children
- men can take care of themselves but women and children need special protections

and so forth. However, in many circumstances it's an accurate description of the situation. For instance, and i say this as someone who knows two men who were abused in their marriages, victims of domestic abuse are more likely to be women and children. Rape victims are more likely to be women and children. Perpetrators of violence are likely not to be women or children. And so on.

It's problematic, I agree. If a man is the sole caretaker for two children, is he allowed on the lifeboat because he's a caretaker for children, or is he denied because he's a man, and his place is taken by a woman who has no idea how to take care of kids? if a woman participates in hacking up her neighbors with a machete, is she one of the "women and children" who were victims of the genocide? Is the elderly male neighbor she chopped the head off of suddenly *not* a victim of the genocide?

Also, this construction is part of the same mindset that allows us -- feminists and sexists both -- to "disappear" the fact that men are 80% of all murder victims. The only people who ever notice this are MRAs, and then *they* conveniently forget that 90% of the murder*ers* are also male. There is *no* one currently addressing the issue of violence as a male issue, even though both the majority of victims of all forms of violence put together and the majority of violent perpetrators are male (part of the reason "violence against women" strikes us as especially horrifying is that women are rarely perps, but the pacifist man who is beaten to death can't really be reassured by the fact that at least he belongs to a violent *category*.)

But in most places in the world, statistically, a killer is male, a rapist is male, an abuser is male, and a person burdened with childcare is female. And since perps are rarely women or children, we also think of men, potential perpetrators, as also potentially capable of self-defense. I think feminism itself is not enough to address this. We need to unpack what it means to be a *man*, and why men are disposable and why male violence against men is invisible, without falling into the MRA trap of somehow imagining that male violence against men is the fault of women (bwuh?)

Men must be redefined as potential victims who are deserving of help, because men who are victims are a *lot* more common than women who are perpetrators, before this construction will go away.