It’s hysterical when people incorrectly assume the origins of words. What’s even more hysterical is when the made-up origins align with people’s wrong assumptions. Sometimes people manipulate words and make adjustments to them so they fit their assumptions. Wait until you read about the etymology of words such as person, man, woman, which some people think they’re sexist and were invented by men, which as we are going to see is totally false from an etymological standpoint. This phenomenon is fairly common and it actually has its own name: folk etymology. Extreme cases of this include the feminist movement that demands that the word history be renamed her-story.
One victim of folk etymology is the Tumblr user known as Feminist Chewbacca, who accused the English language of showcasing patriarchal domination in society. She used the artwork below that resonated with her beliefs. She wrote the following comment: “men fabricated the idea that they are the default sex to compensate for their biological inferiority and general superfluousness,”
It was not long before someone with exactly the right knowleg set, aka a linguist, replied with a qualified and detailed response that disolved those wrong etymological assumptions. We have the fully detailed answer below. Read through it and let us know what you think.
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