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.
NICE. How about himaphrodite?
ReplyDeleteOoh I like that. That's going the other way though (female pronoun replaced by male pronoun). Maybe another post...
ReplyDelete