Being on the executive board for several organizations I’ve been running the social media pages for quite some time. When thinking of new content to post sometimes you can run across topics where you’re not sure what wording to use or what could be inclusive in any aspect. Something that was brought to the attention that I used as a teaching point to a larger audience through one of those social media pages is the wording of the original word “women”.
“Womyn” and “womxn” are two very commonly used substitutes to avoid the suffix of -men in the word “women”. When first used it had good intentions and came from a quite progressive time in the world but as language and time has evolved and passes more explanation on why these terms are not as useful to have been explained.
I read an amazing article by Kat Griffin called “The Label of “Womxn” is Doing The Opposite of What You Want” that was shown to me by a peer. I think it does a great job explaining exactly why this is something that should be more widely known. Sometimes being an ally to the LGBTQ+ community means constantly learning and correcting yourself if there are things that you never knew before. Especially if you have people in your life who are in the community you want to be as educated as possible and not just in a performative way.
A big part of her article does a great job explaining the details of why specifically those variations of the word just don’t work as a gender-inclusive label. I highly suggest you look it up, I wanted to take the time to briefly educate those through something I learned but not regurgitate the whole article. Hopefully, this prompts any reader to go learn some more!