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From: schoi@teri.bio.uci.edu (Sam "Lord Byron" Choi)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: response to question about "womyn"
Message-ID: <9103110943.aa18622@orion.oac.uci.edu>
Date: 11 Mar 91 17:43:20 GMT
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Organization: University of California, Irvine
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kleinj@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:

>"Womyn" commonly refers to lesbians--especially radical lesbian/feminists--
>who refuse to use the word "men" in their identity.  'Nuff said.

>[Would any straight women who use the spelling "womyn" care to respond?  - MHN]

I'm not a straight woman, but I feel I can respond based on what I've hear
from a friend of mine who was the editor of the feminist paper on campus
a couple years ago.  I also inferred it, it's not that difficult when you think
about where feminists are coming from.

I suppose traditionally, French feminists would be more adamant about
this spelling because they are much more into the theoretical aspect
of gender discourse.

Although I don't know the entomology of the word
there is in the word "woman" the word "man."  The implication is that
the word "woman" is a derivative of the word "man."  This reinforces
the notion that Simon de Beauvoir brought up in _The_Second_Sex_
that in this society, when a woman has to define herself, she must
first define herself as a woman.  Her point is that no man would have
to say this.

For example, in literature classes, when you study Gertrude Stein,
you wouldn't think it unusual if the professor said in introducing
the lecture on one of her books, "Stein was an important woman
writer of the modernist movement who..."

The point of this is that you would think it weird if that same professor,
in introducing a lecture on William Butler Yeats said, "Yeats was an
important man poet of the early twentieth century who..."

Do you see the point?  Thus getting back to the word "woman" the
connotation seems to be that a woman is something different from
a man.  There's nothing wrong with this except for the fact that
the statement comes from the perspective of a man who is saying,
"I, a man, am the norm.  A woman, is that which deviates from the
norm."

The spelling "womyn" eliminates the possible entomological and
linguistic connection to "man," and thus, so the claim goes, liberates
the womyn from the androcentric language structures of our
language, placing womyn on an equal level as men linguistically
as an alternative rather than a derivative, and thus empowers her
to define herself in her own discourse.

If you don't buy this form of argument think about the example above.
Yeats is a poet.  Is Stein a poet?  Poetess?  A woman poet?

Sam Choi
schoi@teri.bio.uci.edu
(Does the University of California give a shit about what I say?
I think not...)