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

[VickyEadie]

www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/9ba1l5/this_tumblr_post_that_claims_words_like_girl_and/

And there were no languages other than English, presumably.

The guy's intellect knows no beginning.

What about female?

When will people realise female is just a set of physical and genetic characteristics and our biochemistry is also different to males.

Women are not a bit of oestrogen. One thing that really irritates is that women have hormonal fluctuations each month and over the course of a lifetime (see teenage years, menopause and pregnancy). We don’t just take a whack of oestrogen and then become female.
Women also have testosterone floating about.
We are not a bit of lipstick and eye make up. Perhaps that is too complicated for some.

I was also amused by Shon's comments about pink and blue - as if it means or proves anything at all.

I love the comments on the site, particularly 'my version of progress looks like the dark ages. .

Surely the fact that at times in the past high heels and dresses have been considered "male" clothing, just goes to strengthen the argument that we need to broaden the definiton of what it means to be a man rather than presuming that behind a wish to wear such items is a deep-seated desire to change gender?

www.factmonster.com/science/animals/animal-names-male-female-and-young

The guy's intellect knows no beginning.

Snort!

I don’t know anything about Anglo-Saxon, but I do know that there were words for ‘woman’ and ‘she’ in Ancient Greek and in Latin, as well as Brythonic and Old Welsh, all of which predate the 12th century.

Wanker

Surely the fact that at times in the past high heels and dresses have been considered "male" clothing, just goes to strengthen the argument that we need to broaden the definiton of what it means to be a man rather than presuming that behind a wish to wear such items is a deep-seated desire to change gender?

Yes! Leaving SF's appalling ignorance of languages aside, SF appears to think these points make some sort of 'gotcha!' case for transactivism.

In fact, they largely do quite the opposite.

I don’t know anything about Anglo-Saxon, but I do know that there were words for ‘woman’ and ‘she’ in Ancient Greek and in Latin, as well as Brythonic and Old Welsh, all of which predate the 12th century.

Wanker

Yep. Of course, a load of SF's fans have lauded this bollocks under the thread.

I don’t know anything about Anglo-Saxon, but I do know that there were words for ‘woman’ and ‘she’ in Ancient Greek and in Latin, as well as Brythonic and Old Welsh, all of which predate the 12th century.

The same is true for Old Irish.

Is there a language anywhere that doesn’t distinguish between female and male humans and animals?

That person seriously thinks there were no words for "the sort that has the babies" and "young one of the sort that has the babies" in ?UK before 13th century?

Well
A. That's clearly nonsense and
B. Shows up a lot of the thinking, casually presenting the idea that women & girls used to have no words for them. This isn't the "enjoy your erasure" person is it?

Surely the fact that at times in the past high heels and dresses have been considered "male" clothing, just goes to strengthen the argument that we need to broaden the definiton of what it means to be a man rather than presuming that behind a wish to wear such items is a deep-seated desire to change gender?

Well quite, just look at the number of young girls (22%) who are self harming with one of the leading causes being the constant push of gender stereotypes. Their agenda Faye promotes pushes gendered stereotypes more than anything else I have ever encountered.

Male/ female is something humans knew before language. All mammals know male/ female. Reproduction is the main imperative in all animals, plants, isn't it?

The idea that the human race only bothered having words or ways of referring to women / girls recently is mind bogglingly misogynistic.

Yes, 'man' used to be neutral, woman was 'wifman' and 'man' was 'werman'. (Let's resist the temptation of 'transwomen are wermen', probably would be badly misinterpreted!)

I don’t know anything about Anglo-Saxon, but I do know that there were words for ‘woman’ and ‘she’ in Ancient Greek and in Latin, as well as Brythonic and Old Welsh, all of which predate the 12th century.

Yes to this... and the Romans had a diminutive for penis, mentulla, which seems strangely appropriate here for reasons I can't quite put my finger on...

Just as bad a linguist as a biologist.

Wimman or wifman seems to be Old English for woman. Then there is ides for virgin.

Apart from anything else, how did the Anglo-Saxon and medieval church know who to ordain as a priest, and who should live in a monastery and who a nunnery if they didn’t have words for man and woman?

Hilarious it needs more publicity so people can truly appreciate these towering intellects.

Modern english word emerges at the start of when modern english started to develop shock.

Modern English (sometimes New English or NE as opposed to Middle English and Old English) is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, which began in the late 14th century and was completed in roughly 1550.

The words probably WERE invented around that time. But it doesn't mean that there weren't alternatives for the same thing prior to that.

The language changed significantly in this era, with dropping letters from the alphabet to make 26 being a good example of the extent of the change. Spelling was unstable because of the high illiteracy rates and because printing hadn't been invented yet in Europe, so mass reproduction wasn't possible.

English has been relatively stable, particularly in the last 300 years, because of print become widespread and required the establishment of standards so everyone could understand - and because we stopped getting invaded!

Some people are a crisp butty short of a picnic.

TBF, I've a good deal of sympathy for taking the piss out of someone being huffy about a gender-nonconforming boy on the basis of their 'traditional beliefs' - just it was poorly done.

Good old Wikipedia:

In Anglo-Saxon England, there were many laws related to marriage.[4] Some historians[which?] profess that the law that neither widow, nor maiden was forced to marry a man that she disliked as being a sign of equality; however, Aethelberht's law contradicts this in as much as a man is legally allowed to steal another man's wife as long as he pays him reparation.[1] Once married, a woman was to situate herself as the object of her husband's subjectivity, she was to become the object of his protection and the property, although she still remained the owner of her property.[3] The Church saw that married women had no authority and were to stand under the lordship of men. Therefore, under the church they were not able to teach, witness, take an oath, nor be a judge.[7] In marriage, a male often developed his sphere of influence through his wife.[3] Although women were seen as such under the church, there were laws that protected them in the public sphere when married. Divorce was rare, and the only documented ones were in times of adultery.[5] A woman that commits adultery by sleeping with a man that was not her husband while he was still alive was subject to give what she owned to her husband.[1] Æthelraed's 1008 code states that widows shall remain unmarried for 12 months after the death of her husband, at which point they have the freedom to choose.[1] This was likely the case to allow for the widows have time to think and not make any rash decisions which may have led to relationships or commitments.

Amazing they managed to have any marriage laws at all really, given that they couldn’t decide who fitted in to the class of those who owned property, and those who were property.