Womxn

This alternative spelling of women started being used in the 1976 and is a way in which the suffix of “man” or “men” can be omitted. The new spelling is in protest of the idea that women are subsets to men and that this omission reinforces the notion that women are their separate entities.

It is interesting to note that this is not the only variation of the word and that there are multiple ways of alternative spellings for it  (Womyn, womban and wimmin) however, academics and feminists feel that by adding an “X” to the spelling that it becomes more  gender and trans inclusive (key 2017 :1).

After reading about this information I felt that I wanted to make a simple artwork addressing the spelling. For this work I just wrote the word “womxn” several times and placed it into a format of a poster. This work was shown as part of the exhibition in Digifest and during this time I had multiple people (all men) come up to me and ask about this work and why is the words spelling is in that manner. It is evident that many people in Durban are still an aware of how language can be gendered, and this art work brings awareness to it.