*sighs*

[conuly]

I know some people like to say "womyn" instead of woman. I know WHY they do this too, and I won't say anything, even though I think it's stupid. But to defend your use of woman by saying it's a man with a womb... that's ignorance.

Man: Original meaning? Human. Germanic word
Woman: Original form? Wif-man, or "woman human".
Werman: Meaning? Man human (think werewolf).
Human: From Latin humanus, cognate with homo (not the homo in homosexual, the one in homo sapiens)

Note that the "wo" in woman is the same root as the "wife" in wife.

Wife: Akin to OHG wIb, wife.
Womb: Akin to OHG wamba, belly.

As you can see, woman has NOTHING TO DO with womb-man. So please don't spread that around, especially when a few minutes with a dictionary can dispell any such silly notion.

Comments

Re: It's also insulting and annoying!

[conuly]

Yeah, I thought of that too, but this person thought of it as a plus. You're a man... but you've got this cool thing in you! So I kept my mouth shut on that and focused on basic etymology.

Phalocracy

[staircase-wit.livejournal.com]

The fact that the mystification/worship of the phallus is the same thing as the mystification/worship of the womb is something lost here?

Sure, I'll be the first to admit that reproduction is innately cool, and part of the human spiritual experience. (I'm not saying childfree people are uncool or unspiritual however). (Nor am I saying "every sperm is sacred," though I may be singing it). But defining a person gonadally seems too reductionistic. The thing is, although certain gender roles seem to be inate (gay men and hetrosexual women seem to run historical preseveration societies, according to NPR), almost every task in a Western technological culture is gender neutral.

Now, the one evil thing I do just to annoy conuly is refering to male postal carriers as "mailmen" and female postal carriers as "femailmen."