For many years, both as “an adult female human being,” aka a
woman (according to the Oxford English
Dictionary [OED]), and an English
teacher, I have been interested in gender neutral language. Over the years, I
have become accustomed to using “humankind” instead of “mankind” to refer to
general groups of people although I still cannot say “personhole cover” with a
straight face. When my daughter was a teenager, we dubbed one of our favorite
Italian foods “personicotti” as our nod to gender neutral cuisine. At this
point, I find it jarring to hear of “manning” instead of “staffing” a position. Sometimes, however, situations call for gender specific language. The recent
Women’s Marches around the world advocated for womankind, for women’s rights,
as well as for humankind.
Recently, I began reading Miriam Gurko’s The Ladies of Seneca Falls: The Birth of the
Women’s Rights Movement. What serendipity to be reading this work at this point
in history, when “herstory”--read that as women’s rights--is in grave danger.
In Gurko’s book, I ran across a word referring to “the
nature of women,” as Merriam-Webster on-line defines “womanity.” Of
course, I know “humanity,” although I have never seen “manity” used, so
“womanity” caught my eye. Gurko describes reactions in various newspapers to
the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention: “A typical editorial called the convention
‘the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of
womanity.’”
Since I never recall seeing “womanity” used, I Googled the
word. Of the multiple pages of hits, most of the links for “Womanity” referred
to a not inexpensive women’s fragrance. Around page three, I started finding
other references to “womanity” that carried their own sweet fragrances.
AWID (Association for
Women’s Rights In Development) is an international organization fighting for
women’s human rights. It presents the Womanity Award to someone who has worked
to prevent domestic violence against women. The
Womanity Foundation works to empower girls and women. “Womanity--Women in Unity” is “a weekly
programme . . . which celebrates prominent and ordinary African women’s
achievements.” I found three different publications entitled “Womanity
Magazine,” one in Spanish, one in Greek, and one in Hungarian. Finally, I found
a book, The Mysteries in Womanity: An
Expository Revelation to the Sacred Divinity of Womanhood, by Apostle
Adebayo Adeniyi, dated June 2011, but is out-of-print.
Next, I consulted my OED
and was a little surprised to find the word, defined as “the normal disposition
or character of womankind,” with a reference found from 1843. It seems,
“womanity” was used briefly around the middle of the 19th Century--usually
in a derogatory sense--and then it fell into oblivion. Let’s clear the air. I
would like to see the word get back into common usage as something other than a somewhat
pricey fragrance, a word that women and men—humankind—can use proudly.
LAGNIAPPE: While
researching “womanity” in the OED, I
ran a word new to me, ”womanthrope,” meaning “a hater of women,” or misogynist.
Oscar Wilde used the word 1891. An author named Coldstreamer used it in 1902. Out
of curiosity, I looked up “misanthrope” to find “a hater of mankind, a
man-hater.” With womanthrope and misanthrope as companion words, what word
would be the companion of misogynist?