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Long-form writing on conscious marketing, gender-inclusive language, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and accessibility.
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Conscious Marketing · Gender & Inclusive Language · Allyship & Accountability
What to Say Instead of “Womxn” and Why It Matters
Many well-meaning folks use terms like womxn or women+ in an effort to be inclusive—yet these alternatives often separate and other trans women rather than affirm their womanhood. In this piece, I unpack why I no longer use these terms, explore their histories, and offer a more integrated, justice-oriented approach to gender-inclusive language.
originally published November 18, 2021; revised April 18, 2025; expanded 2026
QUICK LINKS:
+ THE SHORT ANSWER
+ TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN
+ THE HISTORIES BEHIND THE WORDS
+ NONBINARY & GENDERQUEER PEOPLE
+ THE LARGER PATTERN
+ GENDER & OUR AUDIENCE
+ WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD
+ FOUR QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
+ “DOESN’T THIS ERASE WOMEN?”
+ LANGUAGE IS A BEGINNING
+ COMMON QUESTIONS
+ FURTHER LEARNING
THE SHORT ANSWER
Use women when you mean women. Women includes trans women, and it always has. And also, be sure you’re ready to truly welcome, serve, and affirm trans women.
When you mean something more specific—a body, an experience, a life transition, a form of oppression—name that thing directly. People who menstruate. People impacted by misogyny. Women and gender-expansive leaders. Specificity does the work that an x or a + was reaching for.
Wondering which language fits your particular work? Try the free Gender-Inclusive Marketing Language Tool →
When we seek to use inclusive language, our intention might not always match the impact of our word choices.
Words like womxn and women+ were once applauded in so-called radical spaces for attempting to acknowledge and include trans and nonbinary folks. Today, these terms aren't as inclusive as they once claimed to be.
Let's break this down.
Trans Women Are Women—No Asterisk Needed
Terms like womxn and women+ imply that trans women are somehow separate from the word women. This suggestion—that trans women require an "update" to the word to be included—is based on a misunderstanding at best, and an act of exclusion at worst.
If we affirm that trans women are women (spoiler: they are), then the word "women" already includes them. No additional symbols or characters are necessary. The idea that we need to modify the term is rooted in a cisnormative understanding of gender—a belief system that centers cisgender people and sees their identities as the default.
Using the word women, full stop, is inclusive of both cis and trans women. The fact that dominant culture doesn't yet recognize this truth is part of the cultural shift we must work toward.
The Histories Behind the Words
(This is a super abbreviated history.)
There's important context to understand about how these alternative spellings came to be:
Womyn emerged in the 1970s as an effort to separate the word "women" from the word "men" as part of feminist language reform. However, it was quickly co-opted into trans-exclusionary feminist spaces, most notably the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, which enforced a "womyn-born-womyn" policy that explicitly excluded trans women.
Womxn was initially offered as a more inclusive term—one that sought to honor the existence of trans women and signal inclusivity. In its time, it was a well-meaning attempt. But as our collective understanding has evolved, many of us see how it still subtly reinforces transness as "other" and risks upholding the very binary it claims to subvert.
Language evolves. And as our understanding of gender and inclusion deepens, so must the ways we communicate.
What About NonBinary and Genderqueer People?
Here's where it gets even more complex: These so-called "inclusive" terms—womxn, women+, womanish—are often used to signal inclusion of nonbinary and genderqueer people. But in doing so, they risk reducing us to the margins of a binary framework we don't belong to in the first place.
Nonbinary people aren't a footnote to womanhood. We aren't an afterthought to men or women. And placing us under a "+" or a stray "x" is not the liberatory gesture it's often framed to be. It's another example of how dominant language frameworks—even well-meaning ones—can reinforce the very systems of power and exclusion they aim to disrupt.
The Pattern is Bigger than One Word
Altered spellings are one version of a much larger habit. Watch what happens in phrases like these:
for women and anyone who menstruates
for women and pregnant people
for mamas and pregnant humans
for women and nonbinary folks
for women and people of all gender identities
First comes the main category: women. Then comes everyone else, arriving through an and.
Read structurally, the message lands as: this work is primarily for women, and also for some others who might fit here. The intention behind these phrases is almost always care. The structure still does something the intention did not choose.
Womxn, women+, and womanish are the same move compressed into a single word. An x, a +, and an and are all doing the same job: holding one category at the center and attaching everyone else to the edge of it.
Nonbinary people are not a footnote to binary identities. Trans people are not an addendum. And bodies, hormones, cycles, and reproductive experiences belong to people across the full range of gender identities.
Gender is Often a Shortcut
"I work with women."
It's one of the most common phrases in bios and taglines. Sit with it for a second, though, and a question opens up underneath it: which women?
Do you mean cis women? Cis and trans women? And what does that phrase say to someone who would benefit enormously from your work and happens to be a gender other than a woman?
Much of this traces back to conventional marketing advice, which has taught us for decades that the path to clarity runs through niching by identity:
Women entrepreneurs
Female founders
Marketing for women
Leadership for women
These phrases feel precise. They're built on assumptions, and assumptions—about gender and about everything else—flatten the actual experiences of the people we hope to reach.
Here's the irony: most of the time, gender is doing very little work in your marketing. The people navigating the experiences you support will recognize themselves the moment you're clear about what you actually do.
So the useful question shifts. Rather than asking is this for men or women?, we get further with:
What experience is this for?
What need does this meet?
What context is this person navigating?
What language helps someone recognize themselves and understand that this work is for them?
Clarity is available without the binary.
What to Say Instead
Here are six situations, and what to reach for in each:
-
Say women. The word already includes trans women, and using it plainly is part of how that becomes obvious to everyone else.
When you want to be specific about who you're gathering, name them:
Women
Cis and trans women
Queer women
Women of color
Black women and Black nonbinary people
Women and gender-expansive leaders
That last construction earns its and because both groups are named as full categories rather than one being appended to the other.
NOTE: if you’re not yet prepared to meaningfully hold space for trans and nonbinary people, that is work to note and do as you start to shift your messaging, positioning, or marketing.
-
Bodies and gender identities are separate things. Name the body directly:
People who menstruate
Pregnant people
Birthing parents
People navigating perimenopause and menopause
People with uteruses
People navigating fertility treatment
People experiencing pelvic pain
-
People navigating career change
People in the early years of parenting
People recovering from burnout
People navigating identity shifts and change
-
People impacted by misogyny
People affected by gender-based violence
People whose careers are shaped by sexism
People navigating gendered expectations at work
Women and gender-expansive people living under patriarchy
-
People building a sustainable business
Practitioners rethinking their relationship with visibility
Caregivers looking for support
People learning to rest
-
This is the most common case, and the easiest one to miss:
Participants
Clients
Practitioners
Business owners
Community members
Parents and caregivers
Leaders
WORKED EXAMPLES
-
Instead of: for women's wellness
Try: for people navigating menstrual and hormonal health
-
Instead of: for female entrepreneurs
Try: for small business owners who care about impact and profit
-
Instead of: for women in transition
Try: for people navigating life transitions, identity shifts, and change
-
Instead of: a leadership program for womxn
Try: a leadership program for women and gender-expansive leaders navigating sexism and gendered expectations at work
Or, when gender is beside the point: a leadership program for values-driven nonprofit leaders
-
Instead of: menopause support for womxn
Try: support for people navigating perimenopause and menopause
-
Instead of: women's reproductive health
Try: reproductive health education for people with uteruses
-
Instead of a plus sign that asks people to guess whether they're included, name the actual community: a gathering for Black women and Black nonbinary people
Specificity is more respectful than a symbol.
Four questions before you use gender in your marketing:
Is gender actually relevant here?
Sometimes it absolutely is. A support circle for trans women, a program addressing workplace sexism, a space built around shared experience of misogyny—gender is the point in each of these, and naming it plainly might be the right call.
Am I naming a lived experience, or making an assumption?
Assumptions carry bias by design. They're worth interrogating every time.
Who might read this and feel like an afterthought?
Then ask the follow-up: who do I want to include, and how do I show that alongside telling it?
Could I be more specific without leaning on the binary?
Usually yes. And the more specific version is almost always the stronger marketing.
"Doesn't this erase women?"
This objection comes up often enough to answer directly.
Terms like pregnant people, birthing parents, and people with uteruses exist because of three straightforward facts:
Some women cannot become pregnant.
Some people who become pregnant are men or nonbinary people.
Many people harmed by reproductive injustice are something other than cisgender women.
Language that accounts for everyone affected by gender-based oppression makes a movement more accurate, and accuracy makes it stronger.
Women's rights and trans rights move together. Reproductive justice advocacy reaches everyone affected by abortion bans. Work against gender-based violence addresses harm across all marginalized genders. Solidarity that centers the people facing the most compounded oppression—BIPOC/PGM, disabled, and unhoused members of trans communities among them—builds a better outcome for everybody in the room.
A feminism that excludes trans people is a smaller, weaker, more exclusionary thing than feminism.
Saying women clearly, and saying people who menstruate clearly, in the situations where each is accurate, adds precision. Nobody loses a word.
Language is Where the Work starts
Changing your copy shifts what people read. Shifting power in a room takes more.
In my workshops we talk constantly about intent versus impact, and about the difference between allyship as a signal and co-conspiratorship as a practice—Bettina Love's framing, and the more useful of the two.
Before you invite people in, work through this:
Do your forms let people enter their actual name and pronouns?
Are pronoun fields optional rather than required?
Are your facilitators prepared to interrupt transphobia in real time?
Do your examples and images include trans and nonbinary people beyond tokenization?
Are your physical spaces and bathrooms accessible and inclusive to use?
Do your policies name discrimination and harassment specifically?
Is there a process for feedback, harm, and repair before harm occurs?
Are you prepared to serve the people you're about to invite?
If a handful of these are open questions, that's where the real work is waiting.
And a few prompts to sit with, which tend to surface more than a checklist does:
Who do I picture when I say women?
What assumptions about gender are already built into my offerings and my content?
When I describe my work as inclusive, how do I demonstrate that beyond the word itself?
Who might feel uncertain or unwelcome in my space because of how I've described it?
What would it mean, for me specifically, to decenter patriarchy in my work and my marketing?
Common Questions
-
This is the question underneath most gender-based niching, so it's worth answering plainly.
Start with the practical: how often do cis men actually seek out your offerings? For most people I work with, the honest answer is rarely—and the language built to keep them out does far more work excluding trans and nonbinary people who genuinely want what you offer.
Then the deeper piece. Building your marketing around who you're keeping out lets patriarchy set the terms. Relying on binary gender norms for your niching and your keywords is not the feminist flex it can feel like.
When your work centers people navigating gender-based oppression, say that:
This space is for people impacted by gender-based oppression, including cis and trans women and nonbinary folks.
Notice the structure. The experience comes first and the groups are named inside it, rather than one group sitting at the center with everyone else attached at the edge.
And when a space is genuinely restricted for safety—a survivors' circle, a specific affinity gathering—name that clearly and hold the boundary. Specificity serves you there too.
-
Intentions behind it are usually generous. The impact is that it marks trans women as a modification to womanhood and folds nonbinary people into a binary we sit outside of.
Most trans and nonbinary people I know would rather see women used plainly, with specific language reserved for specific situations.
-
Yes. Trans women are women, so the word already covers them. Cultural recognition of that fact is still catching up, and using the word plainly is part of how it catches up.
-
The plus sign asks readers to determine on their own whether they count. Name who you actually mean instead.
-
It repeats the women and structure, with a second category attached to the first. If you're gathering people connected by an experience of gender-based oppression, name that experience. If you're gathering a specific community, name that community.
-
When you're talking about uteruses, yes. When you're talking about women, say women. The terms serve different purposes and both are useful.
-
It refers to how a person was raised and treated based on the sex assigned to them at birth. It carries assumptions worth examining before you use it, and it's rarely as precise as naming the specific experience you have in mind.
-
Thank them, change the word, and move on without an extended apology that puts them in the position of comforting you. Then look at whether anything underneath the word needs to change too.
-
I recommend sex assigned at birth, which is more accurate and less frequently weaponized. I've written about that here.
WANT TO LEARN MORE?
+ Apply this to your own work.
The Gender-Inclusive Marketing Language Tool walks you through five questions and returns language suited to your specific offer, audience, and context. Free, no email required.
+ Go deeper on the underlying ideas.
· Debunking the myth of biological sex
· Beyond the buzzword: why "safe spaces" aren't always safe
· Spiritual work shouldn't harm
+ Bring this work to your team.
I offer consulting, workshops, and training on gender-inclusive language, trans solidarity, and building cultures that hold up under pressure.
+ Keep reading.
Visibility Is Not Neutral, my Substack articles on marketing, power, and showing up online.
Beyond the Buzzword: Why “Safe Spaces” Aren’t Always Safe
What does it really mean to create a “safe space”? And what might be more honest, more liberatory, and more aligned with trauma-informed practice? This article explores why “safety” isn’t a promise we can make—and how shifting toward safer spaces invites accountability, care, and collective responsibility.
Published August 8th, 2024; revised April 18th, 2025
It’s a phrase many of us hear a lot: “This is a safe space.”
And while the intention behind it is often rooted in care—a desire to create environments where people feel welcome, respected, and included—I’m increasingly aware, especially moving into 2025, that it’s not trauma-informed to promise that any space is inherently safe.
Because safety is personal. Each of us brings our own lived experiences, identities, and traumas into the spaces we occupy. What feels safe to one person might feel uncomfortable, disorienting, or even harmful to another.
For many trans and nonbinary people, for example, spaces that are labeled “safe” often still uphold systems, behaviors, or unconscious dynamics that exclude, tokenize, or harm us. Sometimes it's a lack of gender-inclusive practices. Other times, it's a refusal to name power dynamics, or a culture that prioritizes comfort over accountability.
This isn’t about dismissing the good intentions behind “safe spaces.” I truly believe many people mean well when they use that language.
And yet, when we make that promise—explicitly or implicitly—we risk unintentionally erasing the complexity of people’s lived realities. We flatten difference in the name of comfort. We silence necessary conflict. We prioritize a feeling over a practice.
So, what’s the alternative?
Credit to Michelle Cassandra Johnson, who was one of my first teachers on this topic: she taught me that safer spaces are the more honest and aligned aspiration.
Safer spaces don’t pretend to be perfect.
They don’t claim to be free from harm.
They acknowledge that conflict, rupture, and discomfort are part of the work of being in any relationship, and especially in relationship across lines of differences of identity or power.
What makes a space safer is the commitment to try—to take responsibility, to repair when needed, and to orient toward practices that reduce harm and build trust over time.
Safer spaces require care. They ask us to consider:
Who holds power in this space?
Who feels most at ease—and who is being asked to stretch, explain, or accommodate?
What are we willing to do when harm happens—not if but when?
These are the questions that can guide us into deeper integrity. Because creating safer spaces isn’t a checklist. It’s not a bullet-point on a flyer. It’s an ongoing practice—personal and collective—that asks us to stay engaged, especially in relation to power, privilege, and oppression.
It asks us to be brave enough to move at the speed of trust, even when that trust has to be rebuilt again and again.
Reflection Prompts
I invite you to sit with these questions, whether you’re a facilitator, an organizer, a participant, or simply someone who wants to move through the world with more care:
Have you ever been in a space that claimed to be “safe” but didn’t feel that way?
What would creating a safer space look like in your community or workplace?
What’s one commitment you can make to help build a safer space for trans and nonbinary people in the years ahead?
Want to keep this conversation going?
I write regularly about trans inclusion, collective care, and equity-informed marketing and business. You can sign up for my newsletter here or check out more articles and free resources.
Let’s build something better—together.
I’VE MOVED MY WRITING TO SUBSTACK
Several articles from the archives are included below. Otherwise please visit Substack for the latest.