Misspelling Words On Purpose
Jun. 20th, 2006 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badstarSo...I'm on an email list (several of them actually, but for now- one in particular) where I had mentioned the book I just posted a review for and also happened to make a comment that it drives me berserk to see words purposefully misspelled to make a point or further an agenda, examples in question: the misspelling of "woman": "womyn", "wimmin", and worst/cheesiest of all "wombyn" (Someone else suggested "we-moon", which made my eyes bleed).
...and of course I was admonished for saying such things because "some need it to determine their own empowerment" (actually accused of putting down people, which I never did). Sorry but I'd have to say that if someone *needs* purposeful misspellings and can't find their "empowerment" through more substantial means, there's a problem.
I agree that a LOT of gross injustices have been commeitted...and continue to be committed, and something needs to be done, but something this superficial is not going to help anyone. Call me crazy, but purposefully misspelling a word isn't going to provide anything besides perhaps a momentary "so there", you can't tell me that your status is being equalized because you spell it "womyn" or "herstory" and I hypothesize that it may be more detrimental than helpful because a lot of people just aren't going to take you seriously if you insist on misspelling a perfectly valid word. (Myself included)
(By the way, here's a bit of etymology:
A Dictionary Of Euphemisms And Other Doubletalk, by Hugh Rawson, has this (among other things) to say about the word "woman":
"Woman" itself has a curious history, which may be of some consolation to female readers, since it shows that they are not, linguistically at least, derivatives of the other sex. "Woman," superficial appearance to the contrary, does not come from "man," but from the Old English "wif-mann," where "wif" meant "female" and "mann" meant a human being of either sex. As late as 1752, the philosopher David Hume could use "man" in the original sense, when contending that "...there is in all men, both male and female, a desire and power of generation more active than is ever universally exerted." What happened as the language evolved, of course, was that males gradually arrogated the generic "mann" to themselves, while the old word for female, "wif," was diminished into wife, [...] Today, some men still insist that when they use "man" in such constructions as "The proper study of Mankind is Man," or "Man is a tool-making animal," they do not intend to imply that their sex is the superior, but they are fighting the tide of our time.)
The word "woman" does not opress women.
And hey...I wonder how many feminists actually know that the word "vagina" was a Latin word for "sword sheath"???
...and of course I was admonished for saying such things because "some need it to determine their own empowerment" (actually accused of putting down people, which I never did). Sorry but I'd have to say that if someone *needs* purposeful misspellings and can't find their "empowerment" through more substantial means, there's a problem.
I agree that a LOT of gross injustices have been commeitted...and continue to be committed, and something needs to be done, but something this superficial is not going to help anyone. Call me crazy, but purposefully misspelling a word isn't going to provide anything besides perhaps a momentary "so there", you can't tell me that your status is being equalized because you spell it "womyn" or "herstory" and I hypothesize that it may be more detrimental than helpful because a lot of people just aren't going to take you seriously if you insist on misspelling a perfectly valid word. (Myself included)
(By the way, here's a bit of etymology:
A Dictionary Of Euphemisms And Other Doubletalk, by Hugh Rawson, has this (among other things) to say about the word "woman":
"Woman" itself has a curious history, which may be of some consolation to female readers, since it shows that they are not, linguistically at least, derivatives of the other sex. "Woman," superficial appearance to the contrary, does not come from "man," but from the Old English "wif-mann," where "wif" meant "female" and "mann" meant a human being of either sex. As late as 1752, the philosopher David Hume could use "man" in the original sense, when contending that "...there is in all men, both male and female, a desire and power of generation more active than is ever universally exerted." What happened as the language evolved, of course, was that males gradually arrogated the generic "mann" to themselves, while the old word for female, "wif," was diminished into wife, [...] Today, some men still insist that when they use "man" in such constructions as "The proper study of Mankind is Man," or "Man is a tool-making animal," they do not intend to imply that their sex is the superior, but they are fighting the tide of our time.)
The word "woman" does not opress women.
And hey...I wonder how many feminists actually know that the word "vagina" was a Latin word for "sword sheath"???
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Re: hehe
Date: 2006-06-21 06:13 pm (UTC)Re: hehe
Date: 2006-06-22 11:50 am (UTC)Re: hehe
Date: 2006-06-22 05:08 pm (UTC)tres drole
Date: 2006-06-22 07:34 pm (UTC)