Should women be spelt womxn?
"Like women, womxn refers to females, but it is an attempt to get away from patriarchal language.
Dr Clara Bradbury-Rance, fellow at King's College London, said the spelling "stems from a longstanding objection to the word woman as it comes from man, and the linguistic roots of the word mean that it really does come from the word man".
The word is also supposed to be inclusive of trans women, and some non-binary people.
But how is it pronounced? "I've heard womxn pronounced in lots of different ways. I've heard some pronounce it 'wo-minx'," Dr Bradbury-Rance says." - Full article link below
What do you think? It is something I have never thought about.
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9 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.What about languages that have gendered nouns and pronouns? Binary gender is so entrenched that you would have to vastly alter most languages to truly eradicate it.
People really do know how to come up with impractical ideas that cut their nose off to spite their face ...
Look, retaining this stuff for historical / contextual reasons doesn't impede changes in attitudes toward gender. Once those attitudinal changes are in place, language will naturally evolve away from the old gendered assumptions.
In any case, based on my limited experience with French, what gender a noun is assigned to is pretty arbitrary, you just remember it from the gendered pronoun associated with it in common usage, but there's nothing inherently sexist about it and certainly nothing for anyone with half a life, to get their nickers in a twist about.
mordant
Level 8
Oct 11, 2018
0
Didn't this idea originate with toxic feminism? Specifically with the man-hating feminists that wanted no suggestion of any relationship with the male pf their species. That's how I've always understood it.
Sgt_Spanky
Level 8
Oct 10, 2018
1
way to challenge the important issues this comes up every year it seems in some way or another [boredpanda.com]
weeman
Level 7
Oct 10, 2018
1
no, that's just silly. we know who we are. can we focus on something real? language is important but not every silly little thing about language is a horrible offense. and in what way would that include trans and nonbinary people? it's just another spelling for woman/women. it doesn't have anything more inclusive about it. if you want to include all people, i have a really good word for you: person.
g
genessa
Level 8
Oct 10, 2018
1
Dunno. I never thought about it.
Like the article says, transwomen don't call themselves "womxn," and nonbinary people don't even see themselves as "women."
I consider myself a nonbinary partial transmale, but taking the Thai herb, derris scandens reduces dysphoria, blending my two gender sides so I can live as an androgynous woman.
I no longer feel outraged and insulted when someone refers to me as "female," but now I don't have a strong identification with either gender
birdingnut
Level 8
Oct 10, 2018
1
Not something I would think about either, so long as the word used means the female of the human species, who cares.
I know what a Woman is, I had no idea what a wammin, wimmin or womxn is until it was explained to me, which just seemed an unnecessary complication.
But even that aside in old English all adult people were called a Man, a wife man or a husband man, in time wife man became woman and husbandman became an agricultural profession and so the male was reduced to simply man.
Interestingly all children were called girls, as the word boy meant servant for either sex. Females were gay girls and males knave girls.
The sexual associations in all these titles is a fairly recent occurrence.
LenHazell53
Level 9
Oct 10, 2018
1
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