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Womxn and womyn are alternative political spellings of the English word woman, used by some feminists.^[1] There are other spellings, including womban (a reference to the womb or uterus) or womon (singular), and wombyn or wimmin (plural). Some writers who use such alternative spellings, avoiding the suffix "-man" or "-men", see them as an expression of female independence and a repudiation of traditions that define women by reference to a male norm.^[2]^[3]

These re-spellings existed alongside the use of herstory, a feminist re-examination and re-telling of history.

Definitions

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines womyn as "in feminist use: women."^[4]

The OED added womxn in 2021, and defines it as "adopted by some as a more inclusive alternative to womyn, which is perceived as marginalizing certain groups, especially ethnic minority and transgender women.".^[5] Dictionary.com added womxn to its dictionary in 2019 with the definition "used, especially in intersectional feminism, as an alternative spelling to avoid the suggestion of sexism perceived in the sequences m-a-n and m-e-n, and to be inclusive of trans and nonbinary people."^[6]^[7]

Controversy

The terms womyn and womxn have been criticized for being unnecessary or confusing neologisms, due to the uncommonness of mxn to describe men.^[8]^[9]^[10]

The word womyn has been criticized by transgender people^[11]^[12] due to its usage in trans-exclusionary radical feminist circles which exclude trans women from identifying into the category of "woman", particularly the term womyn-born womyn.^[11]^[13] The term wombyn was also particularly criticized by trans advocates since it implies that a woman must have a womb to be a woman.^[14]

Some trans-inclusionary feminists argue in favor of the word womxn as being more inclusive of transgender women, non-binary people, and intersex women,^[15]^[10]^[16]^[17] while other trans-inclusionary feminists criticize the term womxn for the implication that trans women are not women but are a separate category, or for the implication that non-binary people are women.^[18]^[19]^[20] Jennie Kermode, chair of Trans Media Watch, stated in 2018 that the organization would not use the term womxn, considering that women already includes trans women.^[21]

Old English

The word woman is derived from the Old English word wīfmann ('woman-person'), which is formed from wīf (the source of wife), then meaning 'woman', and mann (the source of man), then meaning 'person, human', originally without connotations of gender.^[22]^[23] Man took on its additional masculine meaning in the Late Middle English period, replacing the now-obsolete word wer.^[24] This has created the present situation with man bearing a dual meaning—either masculine or nonspecific.^[25]

Old English had a system of grammatical gender, whereby every noun was treated as either masculine, feminine or neuter, similar to modern German. In Old English sources, the word man was grammatically masculine but gender-neutral in meaning. One of its meanings was similar to the modern English usage of "one" as a gender-neutral indefinite pronoun (compare with mankind (man + kind), which means the human race, and German man, which has retained the indefinite pronoun meaning to the modern day).^[26] The words wer and wīf were used, when necessary, to specify a man or woman, respectively. Combining them into werman or wīfman expressed the concept of "any man" or "any woman".^[27]^[28] Some feminist writers have suggested that this more symmetrical usage reflected more egalitarian notions of gender at the time.^[3]

18th and 19th century uses

The term wimmin was considered by George P. Krapp (1872–1934), an American scholar of English, to be eye dialect, the literary technique of using nonstandard spelling that implies a pronunciation of the given word that is actually standard. The spelling indicates that the character's speech overall is dialectal, foreign, or uneducated.^[29]^[30] This form of nonstandard spelling differs from others in that a difference in spelling does not indicate a difference in pronunciation of a word. That is, it is dialect to the eye rather than to the ear.^[31] It suggests that a character "would use a vulgar pronunciation if there were one" and "is at the level of ignorance where one misspells in this fashion, hence mispronounces as well."^[32]

The word womyn appeared as an Older Scots spelling of woman^[33] in the Scots poetry of James Hogg. The word wimmin appeared in 19th-century renderings of Black American English, without any feminist significance.^{[citation needed]}

20th century: second wave feminism and womyn

Second wave feminism developed several alternative political spellings of the word woman, especially womyn.^[1] Keridwen Luis, a sociologist at Brandeis University, states that feminists have experimented for decades to devise a suitable alternative for the term identifying the female gender. Such terms have included wimmin (in the 1990s), based upon the original Old English term, and womyn (since at least 1975).^[34]^[35]^[36]^[2]

The usage of "womyn" as a feminist spelling of women (with womon as the singular form) first appeared in print in 1976 referring to the first Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.^[37] This is just after the founding of the Mountain Moving Coffeehouse for Womyn and Children, a lesbian feminist social event centred around women's music. Both the annual "MichFest" and the weekly coffeehouse operated a womyn-born womyn (cisgender women-only) policy.^[11] Womyn's land was another usage of the term, associated with separatist feminism.^[38]^[39]

Z. Budapest promoted the use of the word wimmin (singular womon) in the 1970s as part of her Dianic Wicca movement, which claims that present-day patriarchy represents a fall from a matriarchal golden age.^[40]

Millie Tant, a fictional character in the British satirical comic Viz, often used the term wimmin when discussing women's rights.^[41]

2010s: fourth-wave feminism and womxn

In the mid 2010s, fourth-wave feminism focused on intersectionality and debated whether to use womxn as a term more inclusive of trans women, or whether to avoid womxn because it implied trans women are not women.

In 2017, the Womxn's March on Seattle chose to use the term "womxn" to promote the march. Elizabeth Hunter-Keller, the event's communications chair, told The New York Times that they chose it based upon the recommendation of a core organizer, who was a nonbinary person, and to reflect the organizing group's diversity.^[35] Nita Harker, a sociologist and organizer of the march praised the term womxn for its ambiguity in pronunciation, saying that it forces users to "stop and think".^[34] The Boston Globe, reporting on the march, called womxn term "a powerful, increasingly popular label, encompassing a broader range of gender identities than 'woman'—or even older feminist terms such as 'womyn' ... a nontraditional spelling for people whose gender identity doesn’t fit in the traditional boxes".^[34]

In January 2018, Portland held the Indigenous Womxn's March, dedicated to missing and murdered indigenous girls, women, and transgender people.^[42]^[43]

In 2018, student university groups in the US and UK used womxn in communications, such as advertising for "Womxn’s Basketball Session" and "Womxn of Color Network".^[44]^[45]

In 2018, the Wellcome Collection, a museum and library in London, made an announcement through Twitter using the term womxn to demonstrate their goal of including diverse perspectives; after complaints from hundreds of followers, the museum later apologized and removed the term from its website.^[35]^[46]^[47] Labour Party politician Jess Phillips responded to the incident by saying, "I've never met a trans woman who was offended by the word woman being used, so I'm not sure why this keeps happening".^[21] Clara Bradbury-Rance of King's College London conjectured that the push-back was because the use of the term was seen as too simplistic and a "fix-all".^[21]

In a 2019 Styles article published in The New York Times, journalist Breena Kerr stated that while womxn was difficult to pronounce, it was "perhaps the most inclusive word yet".^[35]

On March 1, 2021, the streaming platform Twitch used the term womxn to promote events celebrating Women's History Month. The event was announced through Twitter, which led to immediate backlash from various users who considered the term transphobic for implying that trans women are not women but a separate category (womxn). Twitch removed the tweet and apologised, stating that they wanted to use the word to acknowledge the shortcomings of gender-binary language and that they would use the term "women" moving forward.^[18]^[19]

References

^ ^a ^b D. Hatton. "Womyn and the 'L': A Study of the Relationship between Communication Apprehension, Gender, and Bulletin Boards" ^(abstract), Education Resources Information Center, 1995.
^ ^a ^b Scupin, Raymond (2012). Cultural anthropology: a global perspective (8th ed.). Boston: Pearson. p. 96. ISBN 978-0205158805.
^ ^a ^b Neeru Tandon (2008). Feminism: A Paradigm Shift
^ "womyn, n." OED Online.
^ "womxn, n." OED Online. March 2023. Retrieved 30 April 2023.
^ Spector, Nicole (8 April 2019). "'Male gaze', 'imposter syndrome' and 'womxn' among Dictionary.com's new words of 2019". NBC News. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
^ "Definition of womxn". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 3 May 2024.
^ Topping, Alexandra (10 October 2018). "Wellcome Collection excoriated over use of term 'womxn.'". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
^ Wharton, Jane (27 November 2018). "Students replace word women with womxn because term 'men' is offensive". Metro. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
^ ^a ^b J. M. J. Marvuso et al, "Overcoming Essentialism in Community Psychology", in Floretta Boonzaier, Taryn van Niekerk (eds.), Decolonial Feminist Community Psychology (2019, Springer, ISBN 9783030200015), page 12
^ ^a ^b ^c Molloy, Parker Marie (July 29, 2014). "Equality Michigan Petitions Michfest to End Exclusionary Policy". The Advocate.
^ "What They Call "Womyn-Only" Space is Really Cisgender-Only Space". The TransAdvocate. May 21, 2012.
^ Vasquez, Tina (March 20, 2016). "It's Time to End the Long History of Feminism Failing Transgender Women". Bitch.
^ Merbruja, Luna (2015-05-12). "3 Common Feminist Phrases That (Unintentionally) Marginalize Trans Women". Everyday Feminism.
^ Kerr, Breena (2019-03-14). "What Do Womxn Want?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-06-20.
^ Asia Key (27 March 2017). "Woman, womyn, womxn: Students learn about intersectionality in womanhood". The Standard. Retrieved 2019-01-31.
^ "Womyn, wimmin, and other folx - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Archived from the original on 2019-01-25. Retrieved 2019-01-31.
^ ^a ^b "Twitch backtracks after outcry for using 'gender neutral' term 'womxn'". BBC. March 2, 2021. Retrieved March 2, 2021.
^ ^a ^b Kelleher, Patrick (March 2, 2021). "Twitch apologises for using the word 'womxn': 'We're still learning'". Pink News. Retrieved March 2, 2021.
^ López, Quispe. "Stop using the phrase 'womxn' to be trans-inclusive. It can be offensive to trans women and non-binary people". Business Insider. Retrieved 2024-11-22.
^ ^a ^b ^c Regan, Alex (2018-10-10). "Should women be spelt womxn?". BBC News. Retrieved 2020-08-03.
^ Scupin, Raymond (2012). Cultural anthropology: a global perspective (8th ed.). Boston: Pearson. p. 96. ISBN 978-0205158805. (for derivation of 'woman' from 'man')
^ "wīfmann": Bosworth & Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898–1921) p. 1219. The spelling "wifman" also occurs: C.T. Onions, Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford, 1966) p. 1011
^ Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition, entry for "woman".
^ Merriam Webster, entry for "man".
^ In Latin similarly, there is "homo" or "hominis" then "vir" or "viris" and "mulier" or "mulieris"; respectively meaning "man" (gender-neutral) then "adult male" and "adult female".
^ Spender, Dale. Man-Made Language.
^ Miller, Casey, and Kate Swift. The Handbook of Non-Sexist Language.
^ Walpole, Jane Raymond (1974), "Eye Dialect in Fictional dialogue", College Composition and Communication, 25 (2): 193, 195, doi:10.2307/357177, JSTOR 357177
^ Rickford, John; Rickford, Russell (2000), Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English., New York: John Wiley & Sons, p. 23, ISBN 0-471-39957-4
^ "Eye Dialect by Vivian Cook". Homepage.ntlworld.com. Archived from the original on 2012-10-23. Retrieved 2012-06-13.
^ Bolinger, Dwight L. (Oct–Dec 1946), "Visual Morphemes", Language, 22 (4): 337, doi:10.2307/409923, JSTOR 409923
^ DOST: Woman Archived 2013-05-11 at the Wayback Machine
^ ^a ^b ^c Peters, Mark (9 May 2017). "Womyn, wimmin, and other folx". Boston Globe. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Kerr, Breena (14 March 2019). "What Do Womxn Want?". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
^ Luis, Keridwen (2020). "Keridwyn Luis". Brandeis University. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
^ "Womyn". Oxford English Dictionary.
^ Weber, Shannon (2015). "Lesbian communities". In Whelehan, Patricia; Bolin, Anne (eds.). The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality (1st ed.). Wiley.
^ "Lesbian Nation". The New Yorker. 2009-02-23. Retrieved 2023-02-05.
^ Eugene V. Gallagher, W. Michael Ashcraft (2006). Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America.
^ Maconie, Stuart. Pies and Prejudice: In search of the North. Edbuty, 2008. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-09-191023-5
^ Buck, Kate (11 October 2018). "Why are people getting so angry at changing the spelling of 'woman' to 'womxn'?". Metro.uk. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
^ EndPlay (2017-01-21). "Seattle women's march estimates 50,000 attendees after Trump inauguration". KIRO. Retrieved 2019-01-31.
^ Guy, Jack. "Women or 'womxn'? Students adopt inclusive language". CNN. CNN. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
^ Lencki, Maria (10 January 2019). "'Woman,' 'womxn' or 'womyn': Campus feminist groups opt for alternative spelling". The College Fix. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
^ "Should women be spelt womxn?". BBC News. 2018-10-10. Retrieved 2024-12-01.
^ Guy, Jack (27 November 2018). "Women or 'womxn'? Students adopt inclusive language". CNN. Retrieved 23 June 2020.