Impudent Sisyphus

transstingray:

: And, a note on why I think “womyn” is a ridiculous word that makes you sound like you don’t know what you’re talking…

tiogar:

keepyourcorsetstight:

The logic is “women didn’t come from men! We don’t need the word men in our title!”

Well, according to many many sites, originally “man” meant human. That’s why in older text we see things like all people being referred to as “man” or “mankind.”

Boy humans were called “werman” and girl humans were called “wifman.” This is why “werewolf” is a word that means half man half wolf.

Then, at some point, English took those words and made them it’s own by changing “wif” to “wo” and dropping the “wer” from “werman.”

So, no, the word “woman” didn’t come from “man.”

“Woman” and “man” came from “werwif” and “werman,” which both came from the same root, “man.”

Using the word “woman” doesn’t mean you’re like a man but lesser. It just means you’re a female human.

Using the word “womyn” means that you’re getting offended by a word without knowing anything about it’s history or what it means because “that’s what all the cool feminists are doing!”

And that is why I will laugh at you and possibly unfollow you if you use it.

Edit: And don’t you dare tell me “the bible says woman means someone made from a man!” or whatever. It says that because that’s how we translated it to English. “Werman” and “wifman,” and their English versions of “man” and “woman” were, obviously, around before we used those words in the English translation of the bible.

PRAISE LADY M

(another note: “womyn” is often used to exclude trans women, so it carries an even shittier connotation than “woman”!)

I find it a bit meh in terms of just aesthetics, but it’s the anti-trans connotations that really get my goat.