womxn

English

Etymology

From women +‎ -x-. Respelled both to avoid containing men (compare womyn), and to use x (like e.g. Latinx), intended to convey that the word has a broad scope.

Pronunciation

• (singular) enPR: wo͝oʹ-mən, IPA^(key): /ˈwʊ.mən/
• (plural) enPR: wĭʹ-mĭn, IPA^(key): /ˈwɪ.mɪn/
• Homophones: woman, women

Noun

womxn (plural womxn)

1. (rare) Feminist spelling of woman.
   • 2018, Julie A. Gallagher, Barbara Winslow, Reshaping Women's History: Voices of Nontraditional Women Historians, University of Illinois Press, →ISBN:

     A womxn whose ability to carry out this work is through the grace of Anishinaabe mxn and institutions? A womxn without a grove of birch whose bark may be harvested without fear of negative consequences?

   • 2019, Lara Medina, Martha R. Gonzales, Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices, University of Arizona Press, →ISBN, page 294:

     “Coyolxauhqui Canto” by Cristina Gorocica, a song written in offering to the moon, documents the moment of recognition when a womxn's body undergoing a metamorphoses to accommodate the growth of life is mirrored back in the phases of [the moon].

Noun

womxn

1. (rare) Feminist spelling of women.
   • 2017, Koleka Putuma, Collective Amnesia, →ISBN, page 44:

     Twenty-One Ways of Leaving:
     […]
     19. The womxn in their thirties.
     The womxn with wrinkles at the edges of their eyes.
     The womxn who spell lonely with ambition.
     The womxn in their thirties.
     The womxn who do not bring up your age at the dinner table.
     The womxn who bring up your accolades at the dinner table.
     The womxn who make love to you
     and introduce you at the dinner table
     like they have not been intimate with your sheets.
     Oh honey, run.
     No.
     The other way.

   • 2017, Devon Peña, Luz Calvo, Pancho McFarland, Gabriel R. Valle, Mexican-Origin Foods, Foodways, and Social Movements: Decolonial Perspectives, University of Arkansas Press, →ISBN, page 443:

     She was born in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico, and migrated with her family in the early 1990s to the Pacific Northwest. She is also a hip-hop artist with Batallones Femeninos, a womxn's hip-hop collective based in Mexico, and does multimedia production and autonomous organizing with Shades of Silence. She is currently in the process of applying to film school and to a graduate doctoral program to extend her work of supporting womxn and Indigenous communities ...

   • 2017, Rae Paris, The Forgetting Tree: A Rememory, Wayne State University Press, →ISBN:

     To every person I spoke with on my many trips across the country, to guides/mentors/friends/fam: to Alexis Pauline Gumbs, for living queer Black brilliance and Black love, for creating space to remember Harriett Tubman, and for continuing to create Black Spaces for us rooted in the ways and words of Black womxn; ...

Usage notes

• The spelling has been found in writing since the 1970s. In recent use, it was initially intended to be more inclusive than some earlier respellings and to foreground marginalized people like trans women and women of color (compare mxn); however, the spelling has been criticized as unnecessary and othering of trans women due to not just referring to them as women.

References