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

Dance Seems very time-consuming.

It's amazing we still exist as a species. Not knowing who can impregnate whom, or having common language to communicate with.

Sumerian cuneiform had a word for woman. Munus.
sumerianwotd.livejournal.com/9817.html

MrsTerryPratchett - that's what the sculptures were for. Not having words for women, they had to make the sculptures.

Every time they wanted to say woman, they held up a sculpture. When they meant old woman, they turned it upside down.

Did all those people thousands of years ago making the sculptures of huge-breasted, big-arsed fertility goddesses really not have a name for what they were predicting? Really?

In the case of something like perception of different shades of blue

See now that is interesting. In many other languages there is no word for pink. Pink is not a colour on its own, it’s just light red. However some languages have different names for light and dark blue and perceive them as two different colours, just like English speakers do with pink and red.

Are there any languages that don’t have male and female pronouns?

Old English has a great many words for women, at all stages of life from virgin to queen.

They even had words for women who brewed beer and wove cloth.

My favourite: aglæcwíf
a wretch of a woman vile crone

If there was no word for women, how did they know who to shove in the red tent once a bleeding month?

Puella et puer

Femina et vir

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

In the case of something like perception of different shades of blue, possibly not - yet whether we perceive the difference or not, the wavelength tells the truth.

I started scanning the Old Norse dictionary in Ánláf's link (Favourite word so far - arm is 'handleggr'). It's interesting to see where there are multiple words for the same concept (battle, brave...). Wandering OT but the subject of the OP wasn't as interesting as the Norse tbh

I believe that 'arse wipe' was a word in the 12C. Maybe.

What have they been doing at universities over the last ten years?

Lobotomies?

Sometimes people have babies, and then there's another group of people who look different who never have babies. We don't need words for the first group, obviously, in fact most of us hadn't noticed that such a group existed, we'd assumed that everyone could get pregnant and it was just coincidence that the ones with the dangly bits and the beards never did.

(Life prior to the 13th century, according to 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.

That's the polite version of saying how much I dislike these types of reality star activists.

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

Does it work with other words too? If there wasn't a specific word for rain that's sudden and heavy can we assume that either that didn't happen or people just didn't notice that sometimes water falls from the sky?

anlaf that's the best thing I've read for a long time.

It's taking linguistic shenanigans to new heights to suggest that people didn't know what men and women were before mediaeval words were coined for them.

anlaf. Fucking beautiful.

When did we lose the 4cases then? (Language Nerd)

(special mention to Alice who remembers the words in Anglo Saxon rather than furtively googling like me)

Hi, I'm a 12th century wyfman and my pronouns are:
Ho, hir

My nam is Ánláf and I am víking and met my enda in AD941
My pronouns are hē / hine / him / his

(We hafa Dative case in Old Norse)

I can still tell the víf from the jarl though, amirite?

It doesn't matter who wore the heels, we all know who wore the trousers

The fact that men used to wear heels and now heels = sexy womanly woman is an argument that what's associated with which sex in terms of clothes etc is socially constructed, and can therefore be deconstructed, evolve over time, etc. Which means that wanting to wear heels doesn't mean you have any sort of inner womanly essence - maybe you're just stylish, maybe you identify as a 17th Century aristocrat and would be happier with some frills and a nice pair of breeches too.

Does he think that everyone who disagrees with him about innate genderfeels wants men to dress like lumberjacks? Because if so that's pretty funny. And sad, but also funny. Isn't he in his 30s? You'd think he'd be aware that the 80s and the New Romantics happened, and that most of the eeevil woman he wants to enjoy our Erasure did, but many preferred Adam Ant.

I actually had to learn Anglo Saxon back in the dark ages (last century anyway)

Anglo Saxon femine:
Nom - Heo, hio
Acc - hie, hi
Gen- hire
dat- hire

I can confirm masculine is different:
He
hine
His
him

If it's all so 'made up' why do shon and co care so much about their pronouns?

Anyway, does this mean we can now use 'heo' for Shon instead of 'she'? Can't object...

These novaramedia intellectual types really do throw a glaring light on the state of equality of opportunity in this country

Who can tell. But it's probably some form of 'manly Godman from manland' as it's only women who get told who and what they are