Say what now?
Typeset women back into history with #Daylighting our four-day programme of letter printing presses, zine workshops, discussions on how womxn can challenge existing archives, wikipedia 101 & more. 18-21 Oct. Explore the programme: https://t.co/jt7HitkDaA #free pic.twitter.com/uWTpEhhhwK
— Wellcome Collection (@ExploreWellcome) October 6, 2018
“womxn”? What the fuck is that? I know what Latinx is but what the sam hill is “womxn” and what do they mean typeset women back into history when they immediately grab them back out again? With an X?
TOP DEFINITIONwomxn
A spelling of “women” that is a more inclusive, progressive term that not only sheds light on the prejudice, discrimination, and institutional barriers womxn have faced, but to also show that womxn are not the extension of men (as hinted by the classic Bible story of Adam and Eve) but their own free and separate entities. More intersectional than womyn because it includes trans-women and women of color.
by juniperberry April 03, 2016
No.
Since when does “women” exclude women of color? Since never, that’s when. Women of color are women. The word “women” has never excluded them; throwing out the word would be fixing something that’s not broken. As for trans women – there’s “trans women.” How are they more included if the word “women” is misspelled? And why does the word “women” need to be thrown out while the word “men” carries right on, there for Brett Kavanaugh just as it is for Wokey McWokerson Esquire? For the same reason all the “trans-inclusive” duty is dumped on women – because women are seen as and treated as a dumping ground.
(Look it up if you don’t believe me. Google “mxn” – you don’t get the urban dictionary saying it’s the Inclusive for “men.”)
Comments
16 responses to “Back into history and out again 15 words later”
So how is one supposed to pronounce ‘womxn’? If pronounced the same as the traditional ‘women’ how are the woke police supposed to know if we’re using the approved spelt version in our speech? What is the singular of ‘womxn’? What the fuck are these people taking?
Wimmixin?
Very elegant, don’t you think?
I suppose if we also had mxn. Then again I just googled that and the suggestion was Mexican Peso.
This reminds me of when I was at Uni and the woke thing then was for womyn and herstory. I honestly thought it misguided wankery then and I do now. Especially as history had nothing to do with ‘his’.
I’ve been aware of the variant “womyn” since the mid 80’s (a friend of mine went to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival). I understood at that time that it was the preferred spelling for some feminists because it avoided the word “men” or “man” in the new ending. Unconventional, but it made sense to me. New conventions have to start somewhere. But I guess excluding “man” or “men” from “womynhood”, even if only orthographically, is just A Step Too Far. The Top Definition appearing in the Urban Dictionary entry spells out the evil “terfiness” of the use of this spelling. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=womyn I wonder who edited or gamed this? I s’pose the Urban Dictionary is gonna be Woker than Woke.
Sure looks like the explanation for “womxn” quoted in the OP is a smokescreen with the narrow, transactivist usage riding the coat-tails of the broader based, more legitimate sounding, greater-liklihood-of-generating-sympathy-and-support “women of color” rationale/pretext.
Maybe “womyn” still has too much “hint of maleness” with the dreaded, manly “y”. “y” represents the male chromosome, and so “womyn” still subordinates womxn to men. Hence the substitution of the feminine “x”, glorxing in its inherent womxnhood!
…or some bollocks like that.
Dear woke foke, have you come up with a viable alternative for ‘girl’? ‘Gurl’, maybe, or ‘gyrl’, or, and here’s an idea, try putting your selfishness aside for a bit and stop trying to force women out as a class of person just to accommodate and validify your psychological mis-firings.
Sincerely.
Me.
back in the ’80s when I was at at Uni, the womyn spelling was most associated with a small clique of quite rabidly anti-men feminists who also styled themselves as wytches. Note the ‘y’. Now, I have no problem with people having it in for some men specifically, or for that matter all men generally. We have a lot to answer for both individually and collectively. Sometimes symbolic actions can even have value far in excess of any practical purpose. However, both the ‘y’ and ‘x’ tinkering seemed/seems more about in-group posing than political action.
Karellen, one would think ‘womyn’ ideal in the context of including the male chromosone in the definitive spelling of women. That is, after all, exactly what they want on the larger scale of redefining women to include men.
I’ve said this so many times but, once again, why don’t people think things through before spouting off their ill-conceived nonsense?
AoS – gxrl?
Rob, their spelling of wytches simply reeks of a lack of conviction to me. Well, that or a created loophole against accusations of witchcraft.
“We’re not witches, we’re wytches. Different things.”
iknklast, gxrl looks angry!
#4
Urbandictionary is sort of like wikipedia in that it is user edited… but it has far lower standards for definition entry. I’m pretty sure anyone that wants to can enter their own word if they wish.
And so we get:
1. Mystery scare quotes around ‘alternative’.
2. Apparently womyn is singular…? I always thought it was plural, or possibly even one of those cool words that make no distinction between plural and singular, which would be both nifty and inclusive, but nope. Singular.
3. The exclamation points and breathlessly eager tone tell me this was written by …an intellectual? (No.)
4. By urbandictionary convention, the italicised portion of a definition is always a conversational demonstration of the word in question, but I think I can guarantee that those “quotes” were never uttered by a feminist but rather by idiots lying against feminists.
5. “Progressive” airheads have taken up the insulting dismissal of feminism started by conservatives. Nice to know they have picked up Rush Limbaugh’s torch for him.
6. The entry is basically a rant about how womyn is evil and male-excluding, but I don’t seen even an attempt at explaining that.
7. Hold on… “Well, you obviously don’t know anything about feminism and the troubles men and trans people face…” why the fuck are men included in that?
8. In the original, the word ‘trouble’ is also a link. Odd word for urbandictionary, I thought the word was plain english. Following the link, I see six of the seven definitions are flagrantly sexist:
…The trans brigade is surprisingly retrograde.
9. Every other definition of ‘womyn’ completely disagrees with the top definition, leading me to believe the upvote/downvote ratio was gamed to put the woke idiocy up top. The same goes for ‘womxn’.
10. The second definition is interesting.
Yeah, pretty much. I’d like to find fault with that, but I can’t.
AoS, this gxrl (or is that womxn? – I just turned 58, probably not a gxrl anymore) is angry. And I don’t care how unfeminine it looks on me.
Oh, I’d happily use a variant of that.
Woman
Trans wxman
There, that should do it!
iknklast, in that case maybe you’re a grrl!
tiggerthewing, I’ve long thought that the perfect name for a transwoman is x-man.
[…] the Wellcome Trust and “womxn”? From two days ago? With so much to laugh at in the list of 100 Narcissistic Non-negotiable Demands yesterday […]