Shon Faye thinks the words "girl", "woman" and "she" were "invented" in the 13th century

(I can do polysyllables too. But my thoughts on this are mostly monosyllabic. To whit: fuck the fuck off to the far side of fuck. Monosyllables for the win, right?!)

Indeed!

If it doesn't have a name, does it even exist?

Isn't that what Shon Enjoy Your Erasure Faye is trying to achieve?

AAK! Boris makes my skin crawl, so I'm not cosigning! But there is no difference, is there? Dazzle the audience with verbal pyrotechnics. That's it.

Boris is more likeable and persuasive.

(That may be the most unkind thing I've ever written on MN.)

Alas I have nothing clever to add to language discussions but visited Petworth House a couple of days ago which has a huge art collection. I was much taken with these shoes and garters and imagining DH tottering about in them. I assume the stockings were silk. Wonder if they shaved their legs for a better fit?

There is that, yeah. Though hey, not editing almost made that sentence read like something someone in love with "theory" might produce!

I want people to communicate with people rather than beat them into submission on account of being too embarrassed to admit that they don't understand what I'm trying to say.

Depends on whether or not it's in your interests for people to actually understand what you're trying to say!

Lang, the alliteration in that sentence is breathtaking.

Teehee! But what is, say, the difference between Shon and Boris Johnson in terms of elite delivery of message?

That's the funny thing, I actively make an effort not to write that way because I want people to communicate with people rather than beat them into submission on account of being too embarrassed to admit that they don't understand what I'm trying to say.

I always thought that postmodernism had a fundamentally patriarchal 'might is right' understanding of power.

Couldn't agree more. And, harnessed to the hyper-individualist postmodern religion of gender identity, power will obviously default to extant structures. Which is why Shon, an elite white XY, gets the deferential platform of acknowledged authority.

(I can do polysyllables too. But my thoughts on this are mostly monosyllabic. To whit: fuck the fuck off to the far side of fuck. Monosyllables for the win, right?!)

Anlaf, that's brilliant.

In the interests of full transparency, I don't actually remember any of my Anglo Saxon, but I do still have my trusty "Guide to Old English" and never leave the house without it.

Anglo Saxon has loads of fantastic words, including one for those speaking after a man's death

It doesn't have 'pregnancy' but it does have 'eacnung', so we can stop panicking about the fact that pregnancy literally didn't exist until after the French arrived.

The AS for man is wer - as in werewolf (I'm thinking wolf in sheep's clothing in the changing room...)

Maiden, woman and daughter all derive from AS. Girl is also an AS construction so probably does too. Shockingly, there are no native speakers left with whom to check.

Someone mentioned the 4 cases. After the Norman conquest, English was a lesser language - not much written etc - and it was influenced by the French. So it was simplified and grammar adapted in some aspects on French lines. We didn't actually lose the Genitive though but because personal pronoun forn is the same as Accusative, we don't think about it. So we say "her dog" and not "the dog of her". We also say "Sarah's ball" where the 's formation reflects the fact that good old Anglo Saxon genitive usually ended in es and we are missing out the e.

Lang, the alliteration in that sentence is breathtaking.

Errol, well, quite.

Yet the reality behind the words does not change. The current accepted meaning of 'woman' is still 'adult human female'. Perhaps the meaning of that word will shift, against the wishes of those to whom it currently applies

I'm not sure that this was Shon's point. I don't think it was merely linguistic or about tradition - I think she was actually saying that there is no 'reality' of woman - it is what 'we' decide it is (in language, law, custom, etc.). But then even as a baby undergraduate I always thought that postmodernism had a fundamentally patriarchal 'might is right' understanding of power.

But it is the essence of this that is at the heart of self-ID and which drives a lot of the gender studies tosh in the academy - it's not just Shon.

Yes. And not confined to this issue either. It's at the heart of class politics across the board. Shut out the voices of ordinary people by requiring polysyllabic pyrotechnics as a prerequisite for authoritative speech. It's what Oxbridge is for.

• Shon is going to roll their eyes soon and tell us we've missed their point, which was a cunning dig at some conservative types who use the word 'traditional' to back up their choices.

Which we clearly didn't, as my child Jesus in a frock post says.

Shon's 'point' was, I think, that traditions change. Which is true, which is one of the reasons 'gender' is no basis for anything substantive such as legislation. Words evolve and get redefined too - so, once there was 'man, wifman, werman' where now we have 'human, woman, man'. And apparently 'knave girl' and 'gay girl' instead of boy and girl. 'Gay' is of course a word which has mutated again within my lifetime - perhaps reflecting a historical association with 'femininity'?

Yet the reality behind the words does not change. The current accepted meaning of 'woman' is still 'adult human female'. Perhaps the meaning of that word will shift, against the wishes of those to whom it currently applies. Yet there will still be adult (and child) human females who require specific rights to redress the discrimination and violence upon them which stems from their physical reality. Another convenient word would have to evolve to replace the degenerated word 'woman'.

This is what elite education confers you know - over-articulacy, under-intelligence. They just blind you with word salad

But it is the essence of this that is at the heart of self-ID and which drives a lot of the gender studies tosh in the academy - it's not just Shon.

Got to be honest, that types who are as deep as an Adam Sandler film whilst pretending to be a French language art house film just ain't my cup of tea.

Quite. Cocteau, they ain't.

This is what elite education confers you know - over-articulacy, under-intelligence. They just blind you with word salad.

I'm actually gobsmacked by that quote from Shon about the definition of 'woman'. Throughout the centuries men have declared that women have defective virtue (Aristotle), no souls (was it Jerome, Augustine or the council of Macon or someone??), were closer to evil than men (the whole Eve and Pandora thing), have limited intellect, were property, should be burnt upon the death of our husbands, etc. and so on and now some clown suggests we don't even exist, (we are just what, shifting signifiers??), but because he identifies as one of us then we are 'transphobic' if we argue against our own erasure and risk being censored even here, on a site for women, if we protest too much? Well fuck me.

I am thoroughly enjoying the linguistic primer aspect of this thread. Who would have thought TRAs’ pronouncements would prove to provide such fertile ground for discussion?

I was always impressed by Jesus’ kind intervention to cure the woman suffering an issue of blood. Presumably her pronouns were normal for a female in Aramaic. And I bet he didn’t try to foist a bloody Mirena on her first .

Clearly an elaborate game of eeny meeny miney mo @AornisHades

No other possible explanation.

It's a miracle DH exists. His family managed to broker marriages in the 11th century in such a way that they ended up with heirs. And allowed some of them to inherit castles and stuff. God alone knows how they allocated which ones were castle inheriting types or not.

Shon is going to roll their eyes soon and tell us we've missed their point, which was a cunning dig at some conservative types who use the word 'traditional' to back up their choices.

Shon is going to be oblivious that they and all their TRA chums are building a philosophical edifice on exactly the same constructed notions of tradition.

Shon is a simple sort.

Andrós is ancient greek for man. Guné is ancient greek for woman. We are going back to 9th century BC here. Humans have had written words for man and woman for at least 2800 years.

'Bat' and 'ben', one means 'daughter' and the other 'son'. It was completely impossible to know which one to use until fairly recently.