General Discussion

Demovictory9

(33,961 posts) Fri Dec 13, 2024, 07:42 PM Dec 13

'You have to be kidding': MAGA melts down as Spelling Bee accepts new word: womyn

https://www.rawstory.com/maga-2670451159/

The Scripps National Spelling Bee’s annual list of study words for third graders drew the ire of conservatives fuming over its embrace of the feminist variation for “women.”

The 2024-25 study list posted on school district websites includes the term “womyn” as an approved option for spelling “women” that third graders who want to compete in the national spelling competition can use, Fox News Digital reported.

While the spelling list noted that “women” is the “preferred spelling,” allowing the option for third-grade students to spell “womyn” in the competition lit up MAGA world.

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“Question for the National Spelling Bee: What is a womyn? Kristen Waggoner, the president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, asked her X followers.

X user Dean Cramer opined that the change comes “because ‘womyn’ doesn’t have ‘men’ in the word.”

“Changing the spelling of ‘women’ to ‘womyn’ in a spelling bee? This isn’t progress, it’s ideological nonsense,” The Calvin Report wrote. “Leave language and kids out of this agenda.”

6 replies

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Highlight:

'You have to be kidding': MAGA melts down as Spelling Bee accepts new word: womyn (Original Post) Demovictory9 Dec 13 OP

I like it! SheltieLover Dec 13 #1

MAGATS our outraged about almost everything. SharonClark Dec 13 #2

Where have these cretins been? "Womyn" has been around for years! CurtEastPoint Dec 13 #3

They only get outraged on cue. Dave Bowman Dec 13 #4

At least since the 1980s, to my recollection Emrys Dec 13 #5

No problem, dopo. They're going to make MAGAt a word too. But you'll have a cow Wonder Why Dec 13 #6

SheltieLover

(60,247 posts)

1. I like it!

Reply to Demovictory9 (Original post)

Fri Dec 13, 2024, 07:58 PM

Dec 13

Let's face it folks, between the two sexes, who was most likely to birth the other, men or womyn?

SharonClark

(10,351 posts)

2. MAGATS our outraged about almost everything.

Reply to Demovictory9 (Original post)

Fri Dec 13, 2024, 08:05 PM

Dec 13

They’re racist and sexist little snowflakes.

CurtEastPoint

(19,226 posts)

3. Where have these cretins been? "Womyn" has been around for years!

Reply to Demovictory9 (Original post)

Fri Dec 13, 2024, 08:37 PM

Dec 13

Dave Bowman

(3,856 posts)

4. They only get outraged on cue.

Reply to CurtEastPoint (Reply #3)

Fri Dec 13, 2024, 08:56 PM

Dec 13

Emrys

(8,053 posts)

5. At least since the 1980s, to my recollection

Reply to CurtEastPoint (Reply #3)

Fri Dec 13, 2024, 09:30 PM

Dec 13

It's a brave or stupid soul who tries to inject etymology into this sort of debate, but ...

The word woman is derived from the Old English word wīfmann ('woman-person'), which is formed from wīf (the source of wife), then meaning 'woman', and mann (the source of man), then meaning 'person, human', originally without connotations of gender. Man took on its additional masculine meaning in the Late Middle English period, replacing the now-obsolete word wer. This has created the present situation with man bearing a dual meaning—either masculine or nonspecific.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_spellings_of_woman

As a hangover from this, I've worked on books where the author and/or publisher wanted us to avoid using "man" in the sense of "mankind". "Humanity" might have been an alternative, but would have fallen foul of the same sensitivities.

It reminds me of a good-natured dispute I had with a young feminist in the 1980s, when she insisted the word "boisterous" was sexist because it was derived from the word "boy" and implied that females couldn't be rowdy and spirited and rough. Etymology didn't help me in that one either.

The same Wikipedia article quoted above goes on to observe, "The word womyn appeared as an Older Scots spelling of woman in the Scots poetry of James Hogg," so anyone unwise or unlucky enough to get into an argument with a MAGA type could point out that it dates back to the turn of the eighteenth/nineteenth centuries.

Wonder Why

(4,718 posts)

6. No problem, dopo. They're going to make MAGAt a word too. But you'll have a cow