''Womyn'' is one of several alternative political spellings of the English word ''

women A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or Adolescence, adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female hum ...

'', used by some feminists. There are other spellings, including ''womban'' (a reference to the

womb The uterus (from Latin ''uterus'', plural ''uteri'') or womb () is the organ in the reproductive system of most female mammals, including humans that accommodates the embryonic and fetal development of one or more embryos until birth. The ut ...

or uterus) or ''womon'' (singular), and ''wombyn'' or ''wimmin'' (plural). Some writers who use such alternative spellings, avoiding the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

or , see them as an expression of female independence and a repudiation of traditions that define women by reference to a male norm.Neeru Tandon (2008). ''Feminism: A Paradigm Shift'' Recently, the term '' womxn'' has been used by

intersectional Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of adva ...

feminists to indicate the same ideas while foregrounding or more explicitly including

transgender women A trans woman or a transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity, may experience gender dysphoria, and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and so ...

and

women of color The term "person of color" ( : people of color or persons of color; abbreviated POC) is primarily used to describe any person who is not considered " white". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is primarily associated with, the ...

. Historically, "womyn" and other spelling variants were associated with

regional dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

s (e.g. Scots) and eye dialect (e.g.

African American Vernacular English African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urba ...

Old English

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

had a system of

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...

, whereby every

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

was treated as either masculine, feminine or neuter, similar to modern German. In Old English sources, the word ''man'' was grammatically masculine but gender-neutral in meaning. One of its meanings was similar to the modern English usage of "

one 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

" as a gender-neutral

indefinite pronoun An indefinite pronoun is a pronoun which does not have a specific familiar referent. Indefinite pronouns are in contrast to definite pronouns. Indefinite pronouns can represent either count nouns or noncount nouns. They often have related form ...

(compare with ''mankind'' (''man'' + ''kind''), which means the human race, and German , which has retained the indefinite pronoun meaning to the modern day). The words ''wer'' and ''wīf'' were used, when necessary, to specify a man or woman, respectively. Combining them into ''werman'' or ''wīfman'' expressed the concept of "any man" or "any woman". Some feminist writers have suggested that this more symmetrical usage reflected more egalitarian notions of gender at the time.

18th, 19th, and early 20th century uses

The term ''wimmin'' was considered by George P. Krapp (1872–1934), an American scholar of English, to be eye dialect, the literary technique of using nonstandard spelling that implies a pronunciation of the given word that is actually standard. The spelling indicates that the character's speech overall is

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is ...

al, foreign, or uneducated. This form of nonstandard spelling differs from others in that a difference in spelling does not indicate a difference in pronunciation of a word. That is, it is dialect to the eye rather than to the ear. It suggests that a character "would use a vulgar pronunciation if there were one" and "is at the level of ignorance where one misspells in this fashion, hence mispronounces as well." The word ''womyn'' appeared as an Older Scots spelling of ''woman'' in the Scots poetry of

James Hogg James Hogg (1770 – 21 November 1835) was a Scottish poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in both Scots and English. As a young man he worked as a shepherd and farmhand, and was largely self-educated through reading. He was a friend of many ...

. The word ''wimmin'' appeared in 19th-century renderings of Black American English, without any feminist significance.

Contemporary usage

In the United States

The usage of "womyn" as a feminist spelling of ''women'' (with ''womon'' as the singular form) first appeared in print in 1976 referring to the first

Michigan Womyn's Music Festival The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, often referred to as MWMF or Michfest, was a feminist women's music festival held annually from 1976 to 2015 in Oceana County, Michigan, on privately owned woodland near Hart Township referred to as "The L ...

. This is just after the founding of the Mountain Moving Coffeehouse for Womyn and Children, a

lesbian feminist Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards their fellow women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logic ...

social event centred around

women's music Women's music is music by women, for women, and about women. The genre emerged as a musical expression of the second-wave feminist movement as well as the labor, civil rights, and peace movements. The movement (in the USA) was started by lesbia ...

. Both the annual "MichFest" and the weekly

coffeehouse A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café is an establishment that primarily serves coffee of various types, notably espresso, latte, and cappuccino. Some coffeehouses may serve cold drinks, such as iced coffee and iced tea, as well as other non-ca ...

operated a

womyn-born womyn Womyn-born womyn (WBW) is a term developed during second-wave feminism to designate women who were assigned female at birth, were raised as girls, and identify as women (or womyn, a deliberately alternative spelling that challenges the centeri ...

(cisgender women-only) policy.

Womyn's land Womyn's land is an intentional community organised by lesbian separatists to establish counter-cultural, women-centred space, without the presence of men. These lands were the result of a social movement of the same name that developed in t ...

was another usage of the term, associated with

separatist feminism Feminist separatism is the theory that feminist opposition to patriarchy can be achieved through women's separation from men.Christine Skelton, Becky Francis, ''Feminism and the Schooling Scandal'', Taylor & Francis, 2009 ,p. 104 Because much o ...

. Z. Budapest promoted the use of word ''wimmin'' (singular ''womon'') in the 1970s as part of her

Dianic Wicca Dianic Wicca, also known as Dianic Witchcraft, and, to some also as "Dianism," "Dianic Feminist Witchcraft," or simply "Feminist Witchcraft"' is a modern pagan, goddess tradition, focused on female experience and empowerment. Leadership is by w ...

movement, which claims that present-day

patriarchy Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical anthropological term for families or clans controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males ...

represents a fall from a matriarchal

golden age The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the '' Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages, Gold being the first and the one during which the G ...

. These re-spellings existed alongside the use of

herstory Herstory is a term for history written from a feminist perspective and emphasizing the role of women, or told from a woman's point of view. It originated as an alteration of the word "history", as part of a feminist critique of conventional his ...

, a feminist re-examination and re-telling of history. Later, another wave of female-produced music was known as the

riot grrrl Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s within the United States in Olympia, Washington and the greater Pacific Northwest and has expanded to at least 26 other countries. Riot grrrl is a subcul ...

movement. The word "womyn" has been criticized by trans activists due to its usage in

radical feminist Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other ...

circles which exclude

trans women A trans woman or a transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity, may experience gender dysphoria, and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and s ...

from identifying into the category of "woman" and consequently prevent them from accessing spaces and resources for women; the term ''wombyn'' has been particularly criticized for this since it implies that a woman must have a womb to be a woman.

In the United Kingdom

Millie Tant Millicent "Millie" Buckridge Tant is a fictional comic strip character in the British comic '' Viz''. She is a caricature of a left-wing militant feminist. She thinks of herself as a champion of " wimmin's" rights but is often self-centred and d ...

, a fictional character in the British satirical comic '' Viz'', often used the term ''wimmin'' when discussing women's rights.

Similar terms

" Womxn" has been used in a similar manner as ''womyn'' and ''wimmin.'' Due to transgender women's perceived exclusion from the usage of these respellings, an "x" is used to "broaden the scope of womanhood," to include them. The

Womxn's March on Seattle The Women's March on Seattle (stylized as the Womxn's March on Seattle) was the Seattle affiliate of the worldwide 2017 Women's March protest on January 21, 2017. Newspapers including '' The Seattle Times'' said it was Seattle's largest protest m ...

chose the spelling of its title for this reason.

Old English

18th, 19th, and early 20th century uses

Contemporary usage

In the United States

In the United Kingdom

Similar terms

See also

References

Further reading