All about the x
Oh does it really.
Why why why why WHY does the word “women” need to be “more inclusive”? Should we start spelling “Black” in some funny new way to be more “inclusive”? The suggestion would be seen, rightly, as incredibly insulting. Should we start talking about wxrkers instead of workers? In order to be more inclusive by including plutocrats and bosses and exploiters of every stripe?
What on earth is progressive about changing the spelling of the word for a subordinated group in order to be “inclusive” of people who are not in that subordinated group? Looks like the opposite of progressive to me.
The word “womxn” sheds absolutely NO light on the prejudice, discrimination, and institutional barriers women have faced; on the contrary, it obscures them in favor of talking about the very people who are NOT women – i.e. men.
Nobody knows how to left any more.
-How could we make it more clear that the word “women” includes men who think they’re women?
-I know, let’s cross out the “men” part of women. WomXn.
-Yes, that works great! It clearly means “women, but also including men who think they’re women.”
Looked at TEDxLondon’s web site.
Interesting. The “x” in TEDxLondon means that TEDxLondon events aren’t actually TED events, but are TED-like experiences. Trans TED events, so to speak.
George Carlin is rolling in his grave.
@#1:
I think “womxn” is probably one of the few things the trans activists and gender criticals agree on, but for different reasons.
The trans activists don’t like womxn because it points out that to include them you have to change the word … pointing out that trans women really aren’t women.
The gender criticals don’t like womxn because it erases women.
I guess the question is … who DOES like “womxn”?
How do you even pronounce it?
If it’s like SXSW, then it’s pronounced “wom by n”?
I think I’ll go with that. It’s better than “whoa mixin'” …
Shouldn’t it be WomYn?
From now on, the word otter will be spelled ottxr to include trans otters (in other words, those of us who know we are otters even though we don’t look like otters, swim like otters, or smell like otters). We must be more inclusive of trans otters, so…ottxr, evxryone.
No actual otters were consulted in making this change; they insist only otters can be otters, and therefore are patriarchal, racist, imperialist bigots that do not deserve consultation. Or existence.
Sastra, I think that’s too obvious; it gives away the game. It must be womxn so those poor men who think they’re women will be able to get that second x.
I think it was in the 70’s that “womyn” or “womxn” was first coined, so that the word for women would explicitly NOT include or be dependent on the word “men.”
Fundamentally, the language itself instantiates the subordination of women. Men get a stand-alone basic building block and default word: “men.” Women get a tag-along word, that includes the primary word, “men,” and the differentiates them from the primary category of “men” by adding a prefix, so “women,” or a subordinate category in relationship to men. Less-men, or not-men. “Womyn” or “womxn” was intended to create a primary word for women, not a word that reiterated their position as subordinate, auxiliary, or second-class to “men.”
Historically, “man” wasn’t gendered–it meant more or less “human” (a use that still exists in some contexts, as when people talk about “mankind”). The word for male humans was “wer” (still seen today in “werewolf”, and cognate to Latin vir; for female humans “wif” (which gives us “wife”). “Man” started to be used to refer specifically to males around 1000CE, though “wer” persisted for a few hundred years more.
“Woman” arose around 800CE as the compound “wifman”, or, roughly, female person (as an aside, “wif” was neuter in gender; “man”, and therefore “wifman”, masculine). So “woman” wasn’t originally a “tag-along” word; that arose from the shift in the meaning of “man”.
Source for all this is the Online Etymology Dictionary, now available as an app!
To clarify my previous comment, when I say “’man’ wasn’t gendered”, I’m referring to its meaning. It did of course have grammatical gender (like all nouns in old English), specifically masculine.
“Womyn” was a thing in the 70s, albeit a fairly minor one – I found it cringey and I think so did lots of people. I don’t remember “womxn” though.
Stop oppressing trexness lateenex wimksin. Put the X in LBGTQ+X!
“Womyn” is too associated with those icky second wave feminists, and so must be rejected.
“Wom by n” is out as a pronunciation, because it contains “womb”, and is therefore transphobic.
I’m tempted to start using the obnoxiously silly “womyn” just to troll people using other obnoxiously silly words.
A load of precious bollxcks. I’m going to start spelling and pronouncing it ‘woah, men’. Or maybe ‘nomen’.
The whole thing about scrubbing “man” and “men” from language in an attempt to make it gender neutral or eliminate patriarchal influence always struck me as incalculably ignorant.
First, the interpretation and methodology are like something a precocious middle schooler might come up with. You can’t just do a substring search through a lexicon and assume that the substring has the same meaning in every place. That’s not how language works. At all. “Woman” doesn’t reference males. “Person” isn’t about male primogeniture. “Chairman” is no more male specific than “doctor”. “Mankind” is everyone. “History” isn’t even from an English root! I suppose they’d be okay with “nomenclature” because it says “no men”.
Second, the idea of eliminating incorrect patterns of thought (i.e., sexism) by eliminating the language used to express them (i.e., gender specific terminology) is slam-bang on the nose Orwellian thoughtcrime and Newspeak. Assuming success, what do we get? First, we can no longer speak of sex, gender, or anything based on them, erasing both women and men. Sexism can no longer be spoken or conceived of, but that doesn’t make it go away. We invent or discover things and then devise language for them. There isn’t a whole list of words for which we don’t know the meaning because we have not yet invented the things they describe. It is an ineluctable fact of linguistic innovation that if something needs to be described, it will be, no matter how ineffable it may at first seem. Humans—oops, sorry—humxnz are quite resourceful that way.
So no mxn, yet again. Color me surprised.
These same people would no doubt be insulted by gxy (to be more inclusive of straight people, no wait that already happened with queer). How about Americxn to include non-US citizens? Txll because I might look 5′ 5″ but in my soul I’m 6′. Oh, I know, I know. Christixn to include Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and other religions plus atheists and agnostics.
I could do this all day.
Frxnch to include me because I love their food. Rxnner to include me because I would be if it didn’t require so much running.
Nullius @ 18 – I think that puts it too strongly. For instance, “mankind” means everyone in a sense, but why not say it in a better way? Nothing is lost by not rubbing women’s noses in the fact that we’re an afterthought.
Ophelia @ 21 – Hm. Doesn’t seeing “mankind” as suggesting that women are an afterthought require interpreting the “man” substring as referring to male people, though? I’m not trying to be disagreeable, but if “mankind” is troublesome because it contains that particular arrangement of letters, shouldn’t “human” also suggest that women are an afterthought? Is it that “man” is a prefix in one and suffix in the other?
They’re different words. Human is from Latin homo, meaning human (man is “vir”); mankind is English, meaning man & kind. The “man” in human is not fully voiced (hum’n) while the man in mankind is emphasized. Human means both sexes, mankind doesn’t.
And, come to think of it, “humankind” is a perfectly cromulent word.
I’m legitimately confused now. Mankind means both sexes by virtue of encompassing the totality of humanity, from Old English mancynn meaning person and family.
If human’s etymology exonerates it, why doesn’t mankind’s? If the stress on mankind’s first syllable taints it, why not the stress on humanity’s second?
Where did you get that? My Shorter Oxford (which is about the size of a trunk, so not all that shorter) doesn’t give that derivation. Why isn’t it just man & kind?
Actually never mind; I don’t care. I don’t share your hostility to small moves to make language less blind to the presence of women, and I don’t much feel like arguing about it.
It may not seem like it, but I’m genuinely not arguing for a position. Questions are my way of understanding the contours of your perspective. If there were a way to make that clear in text, I’d use it, but …
The written word is unfortunately inadequate enough to the task of perfectly conveying intent, and asynchronicity doesn’t help matters. If we were chatting outside over cocktails, it’s likely there would be no tension. Because I’m actually not a priori opposed to linguistic accommodation per se. Certainly not to accommodations specifically to women. I apologize that I’ve given that impression. My only concern is with the justification for a desired change.
Suppose there’s a change that really should be made. If the mode of justification motivating it is sufficiently broad, then we run the risk of having that same mode motivate changes that really shouldn’t be made. I certainly don’t have to tell you that we should be leery of something that could leverage the TRAs’ inclusive language and pronoun nonsense, which they call the smallest of concessions. If there’s something I’m hostile to, it’s to moving forward on grounds that could potentially license too much.
It’s odd that the Shorter OED doesn’t have the full origin. My Compact OED runs the derivation through mankin to mancynn. More accessible sources that don’t require a magnifying glass to read give a similar etymology.
Wiktionary mankind:
Etymonline mankind:
Once again, I’m sorry to have given the wrong impression. Mea culpa.
That’s ok! As you say, the difficulties of text (though in general I actually like conversation in writing, which I guess is not much of a surprise).
More to follow.
I take your point about broad justifications for changing how we say things. I suppose I’m assuming that the justification for not saying “man” when we mean and could say “humanity” or “person” or “people” as applicable is close to self-evident. I did find an article yesterday that discussed “mancynn.” The trouble though is that that’s not obvious, and I think to most of us the “man” in “mankind” sounds like the contemporary word “man” so I still don’t think much is lost by using a synonym that doesn’t sound like that.