I’m a laid-back, non-preachy vegetarian; I even make meat for my husband’s dinners, and have hand-made sausage before as well. But damn, if I never hear some of the lame anti-veg jokes again (PETA = People Eating Tasty Animals, “If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat”, etc.), it’ll be too soon. I’ve only been a vegetarian for a decade, so at this point one might get a rolleyes or raised eyebrow from me. Maybe in 30 years I’ll be ready to burst a blood vessel; I can’t say for sure.
Radical feminist here.
I think “womyn” is stupid - agree that it’s probably a generational thing.
But yes, Phil was being bratty. It’s no different than saying the vegetarian comments Ferret Herder mentions - it’s tiresome and disrespectful and more than a little irritating. What’s a woman to do when she hears that shit? Laugh it off (remember - you’re being annoying)? Tell you to shut up? You are having a laugh at the expense of something that someone else takes seriously.
I once got dirty looks in one of my seminars when I rolled my eyes upon hearing that there’s a raging debate about whether it should be “post-colonialism” or “postcolonialism.” (Man, imagine the headlines. “Po-Co Activists Firebomb PoCo Headquarters Over Contentious Hyphenation Issue”) But I did then listen to the arguments for each side and concluded that, while to “debate” it was a bit silly and overblown, there was a point to the discussion, however insignificant it seemed to me - just as there is a point to the “woman”/“womyn” thing.
Sometimes the discussion is as important as the conclusion. When you dismiss the importance of it you’re just being disrespectful.
Well, you could take George Carlin’s suggestion, and run into the meeting and cry out, “Hey! How would one of you cute cupcakes like to cook me a nice meal and give me a blowjob!” The point being that, even if their views make good sense, a lot of people take themselves too seriously.
All extremists should go take a long walk off a short pier.
Well done Philosophr, sometimes tyou gotta jump into a tigers den just to know hopw well you can stand by your convictions. especially when one of them came out with
“and you teach at one of the most liberal schools in Connecticut…pathetic…”.
Ah yes. Liberal = must agree with you.
Get yourself a No Ma’am t-shirt to wear the next time.
"It was one of these womyn-with-a-y productions. Do you know what these are? …There’s this whole lesbian sect that thinks you have to take the ‘man’ out of ‘woman’… so they spell ‘woman’ w-o-m-Y-n. These womyn have too much time on their hands.
"And then they can’t agree on how it’s spelt. Is it ‘w-o-m-o-n’? Is it w-i-m-m-i-n? It’s like, I’m not a lesbian, I’m a thesaurus!
“Here’s my favourite: w-o-m-B-a-n. Wooooooomban.” - Lea Delaria
You know, the whole womyn-with-a-y thing has never bothered me, but I guess I just don’t take it terribly seriously. Sort of like spelling it grrl, except for grown-ups. I guess it’s more significant for some people.
eehhh…Baldwin -
:eek: My mother is in that group… did you read that part?
ummm? Are you one of those Liberal rts profs who has little clue about real life? 
I can see making the smart-ass comment. One’s personality often drives one to make less than optimum choices regarding one’s personal safety. However, whay are you ranting about it, here? If you know that they are humorless and you know that they are going to be outraged, then pulling that chain is simply mean. They may even deserve to have their chains pulled, but pulling their chains and then getting mad that they behaved in the exact way you predicted does not exactly speak highly of your awareness.
Anyone else think he needs a NO MA’AM shirt?
And not least because nobody actually pronounces the words woman and women as they are spelled. Womyn just further complicates matters.
Naw! I’m one of those liberal arts profs who prefers to enjoy life and grow old with a little tact.
I know I was out of bounds, but rattleing a chain is not really a capital offense now is it. I do not in any way feel I was being mean. I was joking around. My wife is a feminist yet she did not act offended when I got home and told her what happened. If there is one thing my wife and I have for each other that would be mutual respect for each other’s views.
What you are asking me Tom is why I didn’t bite my tongue. Maybe at the time I didn’t want to. Then again, Then again I didn’t feel I was being mean either. I’m not out to be that way anyway…
Not out to be mean? Seems to me rattling somebody’s chain over an issue they firmly believe in when they are meeting in private and talking amongst themselves is, in fact, mean-spirited. What were you out to do, other than express your opinion in a derisive (and may I say completely unfunny way)? It seems pretty clear that you had firmly established that the group had little to no sense of humor before you even opened your mouth that night. I think if you were totally honest, you got the exact reaction you were expecting and wanting.
And womyn is just silly.
You know, I grew up when women didn’t play most sports – heck, the longest race we were allowed to run in track was the 400, and forget having teams for anything but field hockey or pathetic girls’ rules basketball – and had to be twice as good as men to get into law school or med school or the higher levels of the corporate structure, and on and on and on. I’m not quite up there with your mom’s generation, Phlosphr, but I was old enough when things started changing for the better that I remember what it was like first. When I grew up, a girl simply DID NOT DREAM of being president, for example. It was so far beyond unthinkable that we simply didn’t think it.
And a strong anti-man contingent developed out of the early women’s movement. We don’t need no steenking men! Women can do it ALL! We can have it ALL! (What we often discovered was that when trying to do it all, we frequently ended up with only a half-assed version of any of it, but I digress.) And it’s because MEN are keeping us down!
Hey, men and women ARE different! That’s a simple fact of biology! And if these women want to change the world, they need to have raised their daughters AND sons to view humans as different-but-equal! Hating men is just turning the tables – and pointless crap like how to spell it, women or womyn, personifies people who are more concerned with detail than substance.
Want to change the world for the better? Changing the spelling of a word won’t be the way to do it. Here’s a good example of how to do it: A physician of my acquaintance about ten years ago was at an NIH meeting and suggested that maybe they should include some women in ALL medical research studies since we were vastly underrepresented (if represented at all) in most of them. He was sneered at by others there, but a congressional staffer heard about it, took it to his boss, who jumped on the bandwagon, called together a caucus of women from both political parties and both houses – and within three days, the requirement to include a certain percentage of women in all medical research was enacted into law.
And he’s a MAN.
Now, THAT is how to equalize things. Granted, most of us can’t be lucky enough to be in a position to have that big of an impact, but by raising our sons to respect the abilities of all humans, while realizing that there still are physical differences hardwired into the sexes that it’s not unreasonable to take into account, maybe things will continue to improve. Because they really HAVE come a long way. Apparently nobody has told these women that.
All that being said, I wish I’d been there to see their faces when you baited 'em like that! Gotta love it!
Amen! I was brought up in a family of hard working middle class roman catholics. My father and mother led a very egalitarian lifestyle with one another. And 25 years into a seemingly good marriage my father flew the coup with a woman he had had an affair with. This turned my mother into the man hating, mistrusting person she is today. My father on the otherhand is living large with a wife OLDER in fact than my mother was.
This group is an out for her and others feelings who have been hurt. Involved in the womens movements in the 60’s this group revitalizes her heart to come extent. She is no where near as radical as the other women, but she certainly has a place to vent about her misgivings regarding the male race.
My wife and I live a very egalitarian life with one another. Just about 50/50 with everything but the cooking. I am home earlier so I do most of the cooking. Now that I am off for the summer (my first summer off in my tenure at that school) I do almost all of the cooking. Our views are shaped by the visions in our heads of what is good and what is not. My chain rattling to my mother’s group may have shown my ability to be uncouth, but should not reflect on my person as a whole. I like to joke I have a sense of humor I joke quite a bit. And every woman in that room knows it. Those comments were justified in that I promted them. But come on now, if my mother can laugh a little I feel I was in the clear.
I remember waiting to talk to one of my college professors. I’d gotten there a little early, and she wasn’t in her office yet, so I was waiting in the hallway, reading all the flyers stapled to the wall. That’s when I noticed the name tag on the door opposite my prof’s. It belonged to one Ehlana Dykewomon. Ever since that day, I’ve been terrified of meeting Mz. Dykewomon, because there is simply no way I’d ever be able to keep a straight face when we were introduced. And I’m pretty sure that’d be the last thing I ever laughed at again.
Sure, they’re all feminists-until it’s time to finish the back porch.
I got myself in trouble during a discussion like yours, Philophr when I pointed out that if women wanted to change the word to avoid patriarchal male domination, then “womyn” is an exceptionally bad choice, as “Y” is the chromosone that makes one male.
Effectively they were changing the meaning from one male symbol to another.
This brought a moment of silent contemplation from the group, with several appreciative comments directed my way.
Then I pushed my luck and said jokingly that they oughtta keep a man around so at least one person in the group would have a brain.
That didn’t go over so well.
Speaking on behalf of womyn:
…nah, I can’t do it, but I do notice that so far no one has weighed in in support of that word (by the way is womyn both singular and plural?).
I understand what Ferret Herder is saying about losing your sense of humor over a “joke” about your lifestyle you’ve heard hundreds of times. But at very most, the OP’s statement deserved a roll of the eyes and a “we’ve heard it, move along.” The pile on was way over the top.
Loosen up ladies!
And I’m do’in a damn fine job on that back porch too Thurgood. But I like doing work outside and with my hands because during the school year I can’t do as much. I’m always at school or grading papers…or coming up with lectures. I’ve not used the same lecture for the 6 years I’ve been there. I don’t want to start now, but the temptation is always there. (never is a loose term, sometimes of course I do I just want to be slightly more colorful each time I discuss things l know the class hates…like chi-square 
Mz. Dykewomon hhmmmm. are you sure it wasn’t a joke.
And scylla - thats pretty good. I like that. But as I’m sure you know, we both should have held our tongues… There’s a time and a place.