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In the 1970's the Feminist movement pushed back against the biblical notion that women are just subsets of men. They then chose to replace the "a" in "woman" to a "y." To distance themselves from men and celebrate themselves as independent entities from men. However, many in the movement began to scrutinize against those in the LGBTQ community. "Womyn" became a term of exclusion. They would repeatedly exclude people of color and those who were not cisgendered.  The term "womyn" because just another label for the typical white liberal feminist, and unwittingly reinforced the binary ideology.  Those who were excluded still wished to the challenge the patriarchy adopted a more inclusive term, "womxn." They also made a new term for the faux progressive liberals called "TERF's" (Trans Exclusive Radical Feminists).  While the "womyn" movement wished to challenge the patriarchy, they only subverted their own movement by being exclusionary and hurting those who identify as being female.

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If you're a social media addict like I am, chances are that you must have also come across words like 'womyn' and 'womxn'. And you too, like me, must have stopped to wonder what these words are all about. It was only recently that I unravelled the mystery behind such alternate spellings. And no, they are not typos. In fact, in simple language 'womyn' and 'womxn' are two of the most commonly used substitutes to avoid using the suffix '-men' at the end of the term 'women'.

"Well, that's a bit too much," you might think. The truth is that by avoiding the "-men" or "-man" suffixes, people who use alternate spellings of the word 'women' aim to achieve female independence from patriarchal linguistic norms. "But the change in spelling is unnecessary given that they're not officially part of the English language," you might say. However, people who use the terms argue that the English language constantly fluctuates with standardised dictionaries adding new words constantly. For example, the word 'selfie' was the Oxford Dictionary's word of the year in 2013 - just one example of how new words have come into existence constantly. So let's go back in history and look at these two words. Because ultimately, the development of terms like 'womxn' and 'womyn' symbolise a unique turn in how the second-wave feminism has progressed since its explosion in the 1970s.

The History Of 'Womyn'

The alternative spelling 'womyn' first appeared in a 1975 issue of Lesbian Connection magazine that announced the Wolf Creek Womyn's Festival, or today's WoLF Fest, the radical feminist festival. This gathering occurred from 1976-2015, after which founder and organiser Lisa Vogel announced that the cycle of life for the festival had run its course. This alternative spelling of the word was introduced as a way to avoid the suffix 'man,' in protest of the biblical concept that women are simply subsets of men. It was meant to be a progressive term to demonstrate that 'womyn' are their own free, separate and individual entities.

But even though the goal was to be more inclusive, the festival came under scrutiny from the LGBTQ community for its policy that attendants must be "womyn-born-womyn," which explicitly excluded transgender women. Hence, the word 'womyn' came about to be seen as a clean white, liberal-feminist concept. It became associated with the vein of feminism that did not view trans women as women because they were not born with female genitalia. Today the word is frequently bracketed with another word you might have seen floating around: TERF, i.e. a trans-exclusionary radical feminist.
Also Read: Today I Learnt: TERF And How Trans-Exclusion Is Merely Another Name For Transphobia
History Of 'Womxn'

Post the outrage against the word 'womyn', the term 'womxn' was created to broaden the scope of womanhood by including 'womxn-of-color', 'trans-womxn' and other 'womxn-identified' groups. Dictionary.com, which added womxn to its dictionary in 2019, defines it as "a woman (used, especially in intersectional feminism, as an alternative spelling to avoid the suggestion of sexism perceived in the sequences m-a-n and m-e-n, and to be inclusive of trans and nonbinary women)" The Boston Globe calls the term " a powerful, increasingly popular label, encompassing a broader range of gender identities than 'woman'-or even older feminist terms such as 'womyn' ... a nontraditional spelling for people whose gender identity doesn't fit in the traditional boxes."

To understand it better, consider this example: You might have probably seen terms like 'Latinx' floating around in recent years. As the Boston Globe explains, the x communicates that the person identifies neither as a man, or Latin, nor as a woman, or Latina. Instead, this x allows space for individuals who identify as genderqueer, genderfluid, gender non-conforming, or non-binary. The 'x' in 'womxn' works the same way, and as such, opens up the free-human-woman concept to include trans women.
Also Read: Today I learnt: Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity Are Not The Same
Both these words are not easy to pronounce, and neither is there any singular guide available which can explain their pronunciations. And it is perhaps this element of mystery which additionally strengthens the words' meaning. These words are so hard to pronounce in the mind as one reads it, that it forces them to stop and think. That they are not just easy and nice and recognisable is part of the point that the words are trying to make - since the experiences of the marginalised genders are itself not that easy. The words represent the complexity of gender, 'womxn' more than 'womyn', and at the end of the day, it depends on people what they want to use and identify themselves as. On our behalf, we should be willing to take that extra step to respect other people and their choices, value different traditions and understand the power of language and spelling.
Dyuti Gupta is an intern with SheThePeople.TV. The views expressed are the author's own.

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Today I Learnt: Womxn And Womyn Mean Two Different Things - SheThePeople TV

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If you're a social media addict like I am, chances are that you must have also come across words like 'womyn' and 'womxn'. And you too, like me, must have stopped to wonder what these words are all about. It was only recently that I unravelled the mystery behind such alternate spellings.

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In the Dominican Republic, there are babies with XY chromosomes being classified as "females" at Birth. When these individuals are in the fetus, the mother is unable to produce a certain type of testosterone (androgen) which inhibits phenotypic expression as a baby. Hence the baby is born with what is perceived to be female genitalia. Once they hit puberty, they experience a second surge of the type of testosterone they were lacking in the womb. Their dormant male genitalia descend from their bodies and are able to be classified as "male." This phenomenon usually arrives at the age of 12 (hence the name "guevedoces"). There however are many things problematic about this article. This article clearly displays its heteronormative slant by celebrating the story of Johnny, and how his childhood was filled with hardships when he was perceived as a girl. The story was published alongside a 1970 study that hormones in the womb dictate a child's life than child rearing itself. It fails to explore how the Dominican Republic has a hyper-masculine culture and values its boys over its girls. A child develops a sense of justice from the ages of 4 to 6 years old. A "guevedoces" can spend more than half of their life observing the disparity of treatment between girls and boys. While most people are cisgendered, I believe that there are socioeconomic factors that push these individuals into being boys.

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The discovery of a small community in the Dominican Republic, where some males are born looking like girls and only grow penises at puberty, has led to the development of a blockbuster drug that has helped millions of people, writes Michael Mosley.

Johnny lives in a small town in the Dominican Republic where he, and others like him, are known as "Guevedoces", which effectively translates as "penis at twelve".

We came across Johnny when we were filming for a new BBC Two series Countdown to Life, which looks at how we develop in the womb and how those changes, normal and abnormal, impact us later in life.

Like the other Guevedoces, Johnny was brought up as a girl because he had no visible testes or penis and what appeared to be a vagina. It is only when he approached puberty that his penis grew and testicles descended.

Johnny, once known as Felicita, remembers going to school in a little red dress, though he says he was never happy doing girl things.

Find out more

Watch the second episode of Countdown to Life: The Extraordinary Making of You, Against the Odds, on BBC Two at 21:00 on Monday 21 September, or catch up afterwards on iPlayer.

"I never liked to dress as a girl and when they bought me toys for girls I never bothered playing with them - when I saw a group of boys I would stop to play ball with them."

When he became obviously male he was taunted at school, and responded with his fists.

"They used to say I was a devil, nasty things, bad words and I had no choice but to fight them because they were crossing the line."

We also filmed with Carla, who at the age of seven is on the brink of changing into Carlos. His mother has seen the change coming for quite a while.

"When she turned five I noticed that whenever she saw one of her male friends she wanted to fight with him. Her muscles and chest began growing. You could see she was going to be a boy. I love her however she is. Girl or boy, it makes no difference."

So why does it happen? Well, one of the first people to study this unusual condition was Dr Julianne Imperato-McGinley, from Cornell Medical College in New York. In the 1970s she made her way to this remote part of the Dominican Republic, drawn by extraordinary reports of girls turning into boys.

When she got there she found the rumours were true. She did lots of studies on the Guevedoces (including what must have been rather painful biopsies of their testicles) before finally unravelling the mystery of what was going on.

When you are conceived you normally have a pair of X chromosomes if you are to become a girl and a set of XY chromosomes if you are destined to be male.

For the first weeks of life in womb you are neither, though in both sexes nipples start to grow.

Then, around eight weeks after conception, the sex hormones kick in. If you're genetically male the Y chromosome instructs your gonads to become testicles and sends testosterone to a structure called the tubercle, where it is converted into a more potent hormone called dihydro-testosterone This in turn transforms the tubercle into a penis. If you're female and you don't make dihydro-testosterone then your tubercle becomes a clitoris.

When Imperato-McGinley investigated the Guevedoces she discovered the reason they don't have male genitalia when they are born is because they are deficient in an enzyme called 5-alpha-reductase, which normally converts testosterone into dihydro-testosterone.

This deficiency seems to be a genetic condition, quite common in this part of the Dominican Republic, but vanishingly rare elsewhere. So the boys, despite having an XY chromosome, appear female when they are born. At puberty, like other boys, they get a second surge of testosterone. This time the body does respond and they sprout muscles, testes and a penis.

Imperato-McGinley's thorough medical investigations showed that in most cases their new, male equipment seems to work fine and that most Guevedoces live out their lives as men, though some go through an operation and remain female.

Another thing that Imperato-McGinley discovered, which would have profound implications for many men around the world, was that the Guevedoces tend to have small prostates.

This observation, made in 1974, was picked up by Roy Vagelos, head of research at the multinational pharmaceutical giant, Merck. He thought this was extremely interesting and set in progress research which led to the development of what has become a best-selling drug, finasteride, which blocks the action of 5-alpha-reductase, mimicking the lack of dihydro-testosterone seen in the Guevedoces.

My wife, who is a GP, routinely prescribes finasteride as it is an effective way to treat benign enlargement of the prostate, a real curse for many men as they get older. Finasteride is also used to treat male pattern baldness.

A final interesting observation that Imperato-McGinley made was that these boys, despite being brought up as girls, almost all showed strong heterosexual preferences. She concluded in her seminal paper that hormones in the womb matter more than rearing when it comes to your sexual orientation.

This is still a controversial topic and one I explore later in the film when I meet Mati, who decided from the earliest age that though "he" looked like a boy, Mati was really a girl.

As for Johnny, since he developed male genitalia he has had a number of short term girlfriends, but he is still looking for love. "I'd like to get married and have children, a partner who will stand by me through good and bad," he sighs wistfully.

More from the Magazine

The number of children aged 10 and under who have been referred to NHS support services to help deal with transgender feelings has more than quadrupled in the last six years, the Victoria Derbyshire programme has learned. Here is the story of two of the youngest transgender children in the UK - with permission from their parents and with the support of the children's schools.

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The extraordinary case of the Guevedoces

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The discovery of a small community in the Dominican Republic, where some males are born looking like girls and only grow penises at puberty, has led to the development of a blockbuster drug that has helped millions of people, writes Michael Mosley.

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In Afghanistan, the socioeconomic situation and cultural values intersects to create a unique cultural phenomena. Family w/o boys will impose male gender identities onto females.  The experiences derived from these incidents causes these individuals to question the gender roles put forth for both male and female people. While this video was very informative, it is problematic. In the comments, a user points out that the subtitles are misleading. The video re-contextualizes the situation Wafadar is in, and poses the act of crossdressing a detestable act. The video is from a Turkish media corporation and utilizes terms and micro-aggressions to disparage the situation of the Bacha Posh. Using terms such as "Natural Gender" and "deep psychological scars."

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Bacha posh: The Afghan girls living secretly as boys