Playing the ace card

The radical feminist publishing house Verso has begun, in its tweets, to refer to a section of the population as ‘womb-carriers’. This conjures up for me a number of distressing images. The first is of a rather sinisterly cheerful woman in late middle age dispensing wombs, which she keeps in a large and battered holdall, to passers-by. ‘Here you are love,’ she says, ‘have a womb.’ People would like to say no, no, I don’t really want one, but they are oppressed by her forceful, jovial demeanour. When they get the womb they don’t know what to do with it, although some end up using it as an umbrella stand, masking the gamey scent with a lime and ginger diffuser placed nearby. Others leave them out at night for the foxes.

The second image I have involves test driving a new car, perhaps a Renault Captur, and asking the salesman seated beside me what is the purpose of the large, pear-shaped plastic compartment built into the car just behind the gear stick, where normally there would be a circular space for a hot drink container. ‘It’s a womb carrier,’ he replies, over-eagerly. ‘The Captur is the only car in the range to have one. They’re usually only provided in much higher-spec vehicles.’

I wonder if there is a different term we might use to refer to those people we used to call women, which is less psychologically disturbing than ‘womb-carrier’? I favour ‘rib-thieves’, although I suppose the feminists would cavil and the young fail to understand the allusion. How about ‘persons possessing many more shoes than they actually need’? Meanwhile, ‘bleeders’ sounds both unpleasant and pejorative. I shall think further on the matter and let you know.