The words womxn/womyn/folx etc

I found something from the precipitating incident. It was Twitch, a medium for watching people play computer games, that ended up in the doghouse, for an International Womxn's Day Promotion. It's not exactly written from a feminist perspective, but the important thing is that it has screenshots of it all as it happened.

Twitch Apologizes For Attempt To Refer To Women as Womxn Following Backlash From LGBTQ+ Community - Bounding Into Comics

At some point the idea that "womxn" had been invented by TERFs looked like it was gaining some traction, which could have finally spared us all, but it seems like it was a bit of a stretch too far, alas.

like watching a mob perform in some sort of synchronised gaslighting championships

I actually snorted at that

'Womxn' used to be the term du jour for trans activists and self-identified trans allies, and it was obligatory to use it to signal your allyship. Publications such as Pxxx News used it. And then the Fire Nation attacked everything changed.

Back in the autumn of 2020, TedxLondon, a London branch of TED Talks (?), explained the term womxn thus:

Why we're using 'womxn'

No, that's not a typo: 'womxn' is a spelling of 'women' that's more inclusive and progressive. The term sheds light on the prejudice, discrimination, and institutional barriers womxn have faced, and explicitly includes non-cisgender women.

It proved unpopular and they got ratio'd into the cellar.

A little bit after that, we had a bit of DARVO, as the Brains Trust that is the trans activist social sphere realised that they were othering themselves from being women. The next time someone with a public platform (I can't remember who it was now) used it, they got attacked for using an exclusionary term. It was like watching a mob perform in some sort of synchronised gaslighting championships. However, it got the message out there. As a lurker, I knew the message had been received, when P××k News were caught editing their old articles to remove all the usages of "womxn".

Wtaf

How do you pronounce womxn?

It reminds me of Perdita X Dream, real name Agnes Nitt from Terry Pratchett. The X makes you MUCH cooler and less pedestrian.

There seems to be a weird thing at the moment around creating these new words for groups with an "x" in them.

Womyn was in use by Feminists and Lesbians in the 60s.

Just by been watching Miriam Margolyes, and she mentioned it

I have been told that womxn was initially created to be 'inclusive' to trans women, so it must have come from the handmaidens? But I have also been told that many TRAs don't like it now as it's a reminder that they needed to be included in the first place rather than having always been in the group. Some sites use it to really mean 'non-men' which is the most insulting thing of all to me as I don't identify as a 'non-man', but supposed to include every kind of trans and nonbinary and also boring ordinary women.

The 'womyn' is much older. Others may know more about it, but I think it was created by second wave radical feminists so that the word 'women' didn't include any 'men'.

I have no idea where 'folx' came from. It seems a pointless respelling of 'folks'.

As an aside, most Latinas and Latinos dislike the new US term Latinx which has been created within small social justice circles and did not arise naturally from the ground level but has been assigned to the masses from above.