>On Fri, 10 Mar 1995, Kylie Matthews wrote:
>
>> It's all about the root of the word. -- man. We are not men. Therefore a
>> lot of women/womyn prefere to not use men or man and instead use womon or
>> womyn. There are a lot of other variations as well. It is along the same
>> lines as changing the title chairman to chair.
>
>I must take issue with this. Changing chairman to chair is simply making
>the word gender neutral. Changing women to womyn is butchering the
>spelling while NOT changing to root from which it came. This seems to me
>to be the worst part of both worlds. The problem of course is that we use
>the words "man" and "men" to refer to humans in general and to refer to
>males in particular. Changing the spelling of women to womyn does not
>alter this at all. The inherent belittlement still exists in the
>language. One alternative which I saw some time ago (and cannot for the
>life of my remember where) was to continue to refer to people as human or
>man kind but to change the way we refer to BOTH genders in particular. I
>think the use was "mal's" and "fem's." I rather like this change as it
>eliminates the real problem of referring to males and humans as men and
>females as something different. Again, changing the spelling does not
>help this, the distinction of females from humans remains (perhaps
>worsened by removing the common root).
I don't understand why you are for changing the title of a woman to 'fem'
but are against what womyn want to call themselves. Could this be the old
control thing again? You want to own the language the structures etc. Is
that it? If not then perhaps you might want to at least think about our
case.
The other thing is that (as has been shown in quite a few studies and no
study has found otherwise) the majority of people who read the word 'man'
and 'men' when they are supposed to be generic don't in fact think of both
sexes they only think of men. We would not be asking for gender
inclusive language if we were already included in the world but we are not!
Because of this we assume a subordinate position, that of less than. We
are not. Therefore we demand inclusion, we have a right to it.
>> I am not suggesting that womyn are not human but I am suggesting that womyn
>> are not the adjuct of men, nor are we subordinate, nor are we less
>> important.
>
>I could not agree more with this. Which is why I think the mal and fem
>references suggested above are attractive.
Who cares whats more attractive, surely the issues of social justice are
more important? Or if its social justice for others perhaps youre not as
interested?
I know that I sound really hard line here but when you experience
oppression and the smug satisfaction of males who have the system working
for them - you can get a little that way.
We cannot give up until we have equality and then we must be vigilant to
safeguard it.
Kylie.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The thing women have got to learn is that nobody gives you power. You just
take it. -- Roseanne Arnold.
