My latest idea for a femgore tale is that of a reformed tradwife, furious with the low standard of care she has received due to medical misogyny, going on a murderous rampage against the incompetent members of the kakistocracy. Throw in a few media reports about Ozempic face, and you’ve got this month’s additions to the longlist for Macquarie Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2025.
femgore
Often described as a feminist critique of the way that horror has portrayed women as victims or objects of exploitation, femgore authors give female characters control over their own violent and murderous stories. Other specialised terms for concepts in horror have been around for several decades, like slasher, body horror, or found footage, so we could be talking about femgore for quite some time.
tradwife
This controversial term sounds like an insult to some, and a badge of honour to others. However you feel about it, a tradwife is a woman who has willingly embraced the duties and values of a wife in what some call a traditional marriage. Setting aside the conflicting claims about what ‘traditional’ really means here, there is no doubt that tradwife is a new idea, and one which is pitched against all the social and cultural changes to the institution of marriage that have taken place in the last 100 years.
medical misogyny
This is another term that centres women’s experiences, this time referring to the ways that the medical system unfairly treats women, especially when it comes to reproductive health or conditions that disproportionately affect women. There are a range of phenomena that this word could describe: the lack of funding for research into conditions like endometriosis, under-representation of women in medical studies, or some doctor’s outright dismissal of their female patients’ experiences, to name a few.
kakistocracy
This is a renovation of a very old word, first having been coined at least two hundred years ago. But now, as most of planet earth releases a collective sigh, we reach for the word that best describes our current mood: kakistocracy, or rule by the worst possible candidates, those least qualified, or those whose values represent the worst of us.
Ozempic face
A colloquial term for an unwanted side effect of a medication which only hit the US market in 2017, Ozempic face describes the effects that rapid weight loss has on a person’s face. While the medication Ozempic was designed to treat type 2 diabetes, off-label prescriptions for weight loss and subsequent shortages are a large part of the conversation when the term Ozempic face is mentioned.
