In commemoration of “Menstrual Hygiene Day,” whatever that is, the Labor Department offered five suggestions “employers can take to help menstruators thrive at work.” The official recommendations provided by President Joe Biden‘s administration include allowing darker colored uniforms to accommodate “an unexpected period or heavier flow” and educating and training “workers and managers about the symptoms of menstruation and how they can impact employees at work.”

From branding women as “menstruators” and “birthing persons,” the president has persisted in erasing the scientific and syntactical reality that there already exists a term for the biological specimens capable of menstruating. But erasing the mere existence of women with the intention of placating a fringe political interest is perhaps less offensive than how exactly it erases the entire gender. For ostensibly progressive purposes, women are stripped of all the gravity included in that term and instead reduced down to the biological functions of bleeding and breeding. And the man in charge is doing so precisely to include biological men in the word that used to mean “woman.”