Herstory

I read a book recently (or maybe it was the internet; I don't remember) where the author talked about how history has been male dominated and asked the question, "what happened to herstory?" Well, if you want to play that game...

I used a short regex to find all the words in my computer's dictionary file which started with "his", "man", and "male". I chose a few to systematically replace with "her", "woman", and "female", with slight hand-tuned adjustments for spelling. Here are some particularly funny ones (with commentary).

NOTE: Before you yell at me to say that not all feminists do things as pointless as wordplay, I know. I'm using the word "feminist" (and related terms) below to refer to those who do play these games.

  • femalefactor - female criminals; also, the critical element behind every successful man
  • femalevolent -  things like the silent treatment; also, witches
  • herpanic - what Spanish women would do if they found out about this change
  • herred - past tense of the sound female snakes make
  • womanager - your female boss
  • womanatee - another name for baby tees
  • womandrake - a shapely plant
  • womaneuver - the special way females handle vehicles
  • womangled - what every women's hair is when they wake up
  • womanhole - *ahem*
  • womania - what Freud and folk psychology called "hysteria" (hersteria?)
  • womanifold - laundry; not to be confused with "womanifolds"
  • womanipulate - actually, this is the etymology of the word "manipulate"
  • womanservant - subject of a lot of male fantasy
  • womanslaughter - it seems like the unmodified version fits the feminist movement better

We can, of course, go further. See if you can identify the original word for these:

  • abdowomen - the medical name for a pregnant belly
  • accompaniwoment - another word for escort
  • antidisestablishwomentarianism - the longest word in the English language
  • Archeredes - a virtually-unknown female ancient Greek mathematician
  • ewomancipation - the process of women obtaining political rights and equality under the law
  • hashersh - why feminism feels good
  • homomorphersm - another word for lesbianism
  • husbgyny - the domestication of women
  • hywoman - a membrane around the penis which breaks on first sexual intercourse
  • multidiwomensional - the idea that women cannot be rated on a single scale
  • portwomanteau - a famous species of wine grape
  • rowomantics - the behaviors of the female crew team
  • serapher - another word for angel
  • whersical - this list
  • womenstruate - actually, I have no clue what this means

I'll all for feminism, but really: there are more important things to talk about than sewomantics. Also, study etymology.

PS. Also see the ad fenimam logical fallacy.

2 comments :

  1. NICE. How about himaphrodite?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ooh I like that. That's going the other way though (female pronoun replaced by male pronoun). Maybe another post...

    ReplyDelete