We can appreciate someone trying to fight the good fight for women’s rights, but we also understand the importance of fact-checking. It’s important for your arguments to be backed by facts, otherwise, they’re immediately going to be dismissed by the opposing side.
This is exactly what happened to a Tumblr user who refers to herself as Feminist Chewbacca.
In an attempt to reveal the roots of our patriarchal society through an analysis of the English language, Feminist Chewbacca posted this word art on her Tumblr page.
While she had the right intentions in looking towards the historical and linguistic reasons that women are still fighting for equal rights today, Feminist Chewbacca may have been a little too aggressive with her caption for the word art.
“Men fabricated the idea that they are the default sex to compensate for their biological inferiority and general superfluousness. This is not just the ‘natural order’ this is the language of a patriarchal culture.”
Someone should let Feminist Chewbacca know that it’s never a good idea to fight fire with fire. Especially if you haven’t checked your facts.
Not long after posting, another Tumblr user who goes by mitosisyourtosis commented on the word art post with some eye-opening and informative linguistic information.
As it turns out, Feminist Chewbacca was not looking deep enough into the origins of the supposed patriarchal words of the English language. Claiming to be a professional linguist, mitosisyourtosis sets the record straight. Check out the truth-bombs they drops on the post.
As it turns out, “he” and “she” are only similar by coincidence as they both come from Old English words that evolved from Proto-Germanic words. So, it could be argued that this isn’t an instance in which the masculine is being inserted into feminine words.
The word “man” used to mean both “humanity/human-being.” Miosisyourtosis argues that phonological changes in the English language throughout history have no basis in the patriarchy.
According to this argument, it seems as though there are a lot of coincidences in the English language!
Who knew the word “human” comes from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning earthly beings? While mitosisyourtosis does acknowledge that the word “man” branches from the word “human” in many languages, they argue that that is not enough evidence to prove that the English language is rooted in patriarchy.
So, it turns out that “son” and “person” are not related to other than both being words in the English language. The argument that this is a patriarchal word is completely dismissed by miosisyourtosis here.
What do you think? Does miosisyourtosis’ fact-based argument convince you that the English language isn’t patriarchal, or do you think there might have been something to Feminist Chewbacca’s argument? Let us know in the comments!
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