Best of Week: Womyn

I don’t consider myself a active feminist, though I do support equality. For instance, I wouldn’t have been bothered by the titles Man and Woman in the Venn diagram on the board. When Alyssa suggested that we change woman to womyn, I was intrigued. It constantly occurs to me that the word woman is just an addition to the word man, and this is the first innovative spelling solution I have seen. By replacing the A or E with Y, you eliminate the connection to man or a male root. Next, I loved our battle towards finding the plural of womyn. I thought it was ingenious of Albert to say that it is already plural such as words like fish or deer. Lastly, I think it is very important to continue the use of this spelling in order to influence others to change their frame of mind, similar to Jane’s defying of the Victorian social view of women, oops I mean womyn. By using this spelling in our pieces of writing, I think the Academy can start a very large trend, without over advertising the cause. This fits my views because, as I said earlier, I am not a very active feminist. Therefore, by putting the new word into use (taking action) we have a longer lasting effect than if we just told people to change their minds (talking about it). It would be very interesting to see how far we could take this, maybe even worldwide, especially since so much technology is available. I can only foresee two extremes. Either our campaigning will have a huge effect or very few people will be influenced, which would be disappointing. Well, those are just my thoughts sparked from the excitement during class. This is pretty much all a reflection of form is content!