Wellcome collection womxn exhibition

[NotZenEnough]

I think there are printing workshops. It might be really fun to do some rad fem printing.
wellcomecollection.org/events/W5fKOiYAACYAMt8T

The printing workshop is on Thursday 16th October

If only someone could go along and print 'womxn don't have penixes" over and over.

Why on earth do they use the racist Urban Dictionary as a source? Who thought that was a good idea?

How do you even pronounce that? “Wimm-ex-in”?

It seems their decision to use 'womxn' is making waves. Even the 'it's nice to be inclusive and nice' types I follow on Twitter seem to be objecting to this. Funny, because it doesn't seem to be driven by any actual trans people, just women who are tying themselves in knots trying to be inclusive but only ending up alienating women.

twitter.com/ExploreWellcome/status/1049688153848762368

The participants:

Ria Hartley - "Black Queer Artist Activist Academic Self-Married Relationship Anarchist Vunerably Strong Neurodiverse Unapologetic Joyful They/Them"

Donna Haraway 'feminist' 'transhumanist' who wrote in 1985 '"there is nothing about being 'female' that naturally binds women"'

F*Choir - 'We don’t assume anybody’s gender, origin, sexuality. We practice intersectional feminism.'

Lesley Hall - Wellcome collection archivist, historian. Mainly seems to write on women's sexuality.

If we spelled it 'womxxn', we'd get in trouble, right?

Much better spelling (if anyone wants an unpronounceable word) which is inclusive of all women.

x is commonly used to denote an unknown, or a variable. Absolutely useless substituted into a word, meaningless drivel.

XX has a definite, objective connotation.
WomXXn.

I've got a lot of time for Haraway, who's a really fascinating writer, even if I often disagree with her. but Ria Hartley sounds like some mass of narcissism.

why can't people see that the 'men' and 'other people - and possibly things - lets not be exclusionary - who aren't men, or at least not really manly men' as categories is really damaging to women.

or is it about vowels? are vowels not sufficiently intersectional? shouldn't it be wxmxnz?

I get the point of replacing Mr/Ms with Mx, but what is changing the a/e in woman/women supposed to achieve?
Is this supposed to include people who don't know how many of themselves there are?

It's to distance the word from its etymology suggesting females are a subset of humans, the default being men.

Partly, I suspect, because if "transwomen are women" (it's in the word) then logically "women are men" (it's in the word), and round and round we go.

Maybe we need a new word for all sheroes - XXmen ? (Yes, I'm being silly ... I didn't start it!)

OR we can just relegate the males to the subset. So females can be known as "wo", and males can be "menwo"

(Sorry, I meant "mxnwo").

It's to distance the word from its etymology suggesting females are a subset of humans, the default being men.

Or rather, from a mistaken understanding of etymology. Which was,
Man = human
Wifman = woman
Werman = man

Both men and women were a subset of human. But somewhere along the line, surprise surprise, blokes became the default.

Oh, and the etymology of 'female' doesn't derive from 'male' either, apparently.

How do you even pronounce that? “Wimm-ex-in”?

Just what I was wondering?

I like the suggestion of womxxn.

I’m a huge science fiction fan but I draw the line at speaking fucking Klingon.

No human tongue can pronounce ‘womxn.’

We have vowels for a reason.

The urban dictionary(!) definition they link to says ‘womxn’ is “More intersectional than womyn because it includes trans-women and women of color.”

what.

Womxn is a bit more than that.

Womyn = 70s term for 'women' that doesn't include 'men'. Essentially XX. See 'womyn born womyn' etc. There is a 'womyn's centre' that recently changed it name, because 'womyn' is now deemed to be transphobic.

Latinx - 2000s term to combine gendered Spanish noun Latina & Latino to multi-purpose Latinx

So 'womxn' has two messages:

1. fuck TERFs - because it's a dig at the explicitly terfy 'womyn' by changing the letter x to y.
2. by including the letter 'x' we're like super-mega-ultra-intersectional, because the word 'women' isn't inclusive enough of non-white people. Something like that anyway.

Essentially they are saying 'look, aren't we ever so woke, we are EXPLICITLY including women womxn of colour and transwomen' with the use of this magic letter x.

I'm sure there are other reasons they will tell you X is used, e.g., reference Malcolm X where X I believe was a repudiation of 'slave names'.

How do you even pronounce that? “Wimm-ex-in”?

It's a word designed to be seen and not heard. Know your place, womxn.

Is now a good time for identification of which of these apply? (Even if it's women rather than men promoting this rubbish in this instance):
https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/6kkeni/theerulesoffmisogyny/

How the hell does 'women' not include women of colour?

womskn

There, that's not so hard to pronounce.

Oh wait, it should be ks not sk

womksn

How the hell does 'women' not include women of colour?

It's pretty racist, dehumanising and divisive of them to insinuate that the term for adult human female doesn't include women of colour.

I do wish women would stop being complicit in this divide and rule.