What’s your definition of womxn?

[BabyTeeth]

The Wellcome Collection are doing an event about about ‘the ways that womxn are included, excluded, catalogued and classified.’
wellcomecollection.org/events/W5e9eyYAACUAMqcz

Rather than explain what womxn means, they link to the Urban Dictionary definition.
www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=womxn

If you’re using a word and aren’t sure if everyone reading will know what it means you could explain it rather than link to a site where anyone can write the definition.

IMO.

Still says fucking womxn on eventbrite.

How are you supposed to pronounce it?

Apart from ‘f-u-c-k-o-f-f.’

Bowl 😂🤣😂

Perhaps Ocado can include this in their adverts 😀

I’m so not in the mood for this nonsense today. Weirdly, when there’s so much going on that’s probably objectively “worse” for women by various measures, this particular example of fuckwittery has really got to me.

I invite the Wellcome staff, and anyone else advocating my erasure in the name of inclusivity, to get tae fuck.

I didn't know about the Metro ad. That really cheered me up.

I think the correct pronunciation is 'boh-laux'

I think the annoying thing about this is that the whole history of women, which their archive documents, deals with women viewed through the lens of their reproductive capacity, female sexual organs and hence subordinate social status in society.

Women understood as women historically.

It is anachronistic to apply a made up word to women in the past.

If anyone can supply me with an example where the female sex or even transsexual or transgender people have been referred to as ‘womxn’ in any of the Wellcome Collection at all, I will stand corrected.

Okay, badly phrased, should read ‘the whole history of women, a part of which their archive documents’ - not meaning to imply that the Wellcome Collection documents the whole history of women 🤦‍♀️

bollox

I don't understand why we don't just let them use womxn, if it means we can use women. Isn't it better that they make up a new word for all people who think they are a tiny bit womanly, than try to change the meaning of woman to include them?

I would embrace it, start the mantra that trans women are womxn. I kind of feel like we needed a new word to distinguish and this one has come along from the TRA side, so not being imposed by GC people but a compromise...

... suspects I'm missing something...

Aaand here's the BBC using the debacle as an opportunity for this beauty of an article: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45810709

One of the groups that the term was supposed to include was trans women. But campaign group Trans Media Watch said it would never use that term.

Chair Jennie Kermode said: "We would generally just write women in the usual way because we feel it's important for people to recognise that trans women are women.e we feel it's important for people to recognise that trans women are women.

"Trans women aren't a special, separate category"

The only other 'formal' spokesperson quoted is Dr Clara, who is an academic specialising in -, queer theory.

So that's two spokespeople on queer theory, and no official spokesperson from the old-school category 'woman'.

Oh for Fucks Sake there is another thread, just started, some galley in Nottingham is using this bollox word. sorry don't know how to link.

Pawsome because the event is about women in the archives, not specifically trans people identifying as women. So it is not a descriptor of transwomen solely. It is a word intended to mean everyone who does not identify as or is not male. For some reason, women of colour were also thrown in as having previously been excluded from the definition of women too.

Or something. Mainly it was just shoddy from an academic professional organisation to link to Urban Dictionary to explain half the population.

Change DNA? Wow, I really will be able to become a cat! 😂

I'm no fan of Jordan Peterson but his TV discussion with several academics, most of whom were specialists in Queer Theory, and who asserted facts that approximated to, "The word woman has been contested for over 50 years" was quite an eye-opener. (I hated it so much that I didn't bookmark it and I regret that now.)

Wellcome were amazingly stupid in the first instance so I'm glad that they properly apologised and didn't go down the weaselly "we're sorry that you feel offended" route.

^^This. Wellcome are one of the UK’s biggest scientific funders FFS. Well done that they said sorry and publicly- that was absolutely the right thing to do. But their Trustees should be asking questions of heir staff about this.
Why are Wellcome Collection so eager to man-please? Who has been advising them?

I’m not even going to go there with the idiocy of using Urban Dictionary definitions.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/the-word-woman-is-under-attack/

www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/oct/10/wellcome-collection-excoriated-over-term-womxn-promotional-material

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/10/womxn-row-companies-worry-word-women-excludes-transgender-people/

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45810709

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/womxn-women-womyn-feminist-dictionary-13395596

I can't find it, but I know it involved Nicholas Matte - Prof. in Transgender Studies - who is responsible for the gem, It's not correct that there's such a thing as biological sex...That's a very popular misconception.

It's cis-normative to have the false belief that there's such a thing as male and female etc. Snippet from video:

I'd missed the historic bit, my google just showed it as a more inclusive form of woman. I still don't mind people making up a word to mean, "not male," which isn't the word female.

Obviously they shouldn't try and make parallels with black women but I don't think I'd be fussed if non natal women and their supporters started calling themselves womxn. It would actually help a lot of issues to have an extra word.

Am being that poster who not RTFT

Also breaking the rules around SPAG

You spelt woman wrong, go write out 100 times I am a woman without penis

Ffs just imagining the phonics teaching of womxn and that spelling test!

How the fuck is it pronounced? Womretum? I got common southern accent if that helps

Pawsome agree with you about the extra word - indeed part of the backlash to Wellcome came from trans people arguing that transwomen are women so no extra word needed.

citiesofbismuth
Change DNA? Wow, I really will be able to become a cat!

....aaaand thats how BrundleCat was born!

What do you even say to some earnest but very stupid young person who believes that humans will soon be able to change DNA? Other than possibly "go watch The Fly and reflect on what happened to Jeff Goldblum".

“Other than possibly "go watch The Fly and reflect on what happened to Jeff Goldblum “ “

You have no idea how badly I needed that LOL

Erm, actually I think dna can change and in such as way as to be inheritable.epigentics? I think it’s like a bodies way of adapting to environmental changes. Don’t think we are anywhere near being able to change sex however.