Is it "womxn" now?

In late 2016, shortly after the election of Donald J. Trump, feminists in Seattle met to discuss their branch of the Women’s March.

The march’s name, which would be printed on all local promotion materials, soon came up as something that could be updated.

“Our organizing group is superdiverse, and one of the core organizers, who is a nonbinary person, proposed that we use the word ‘womxn’ to make sure that everyone felt included,” said Elizabeth Hunter-Keller, the communications chair for what became known as the Womxn’s March Seattle. Ebony Miranda, the organizer who proposed using “womxn,” said her understanding of the word was “women and those affected by misogyny, or women-related issues.”

Ms. Hunter-Keller said: “There were a lot of, for the most part, white women, who wondered why we had to use the ‘x’ and asked us about it. But when we talked to them online, most were totally understanding.”

According to Keridwen Luis, a professor of sociology at Harvard University, feminists have tinkered with “woman” and “women” for decades to address a recurring annoyance.

“Wimmin,” after the Old English original, was one of the first alternative words to show up in the 1900s. Then “womyn” popped up and gained steam in the 1970s along with the occasional “wombyn.” To some, “womyn” seemed to include everyone, and still does. To others, like the organizers of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, the feminist answer to Woodstock, it was only for “womyn-born-womyn,” Ms.

Luis said. While hard to pronounce, “womxn” was perhaps the most inclusive word yet, using an “x” to tinker with the word’s literal approach to gender in a similar way as “Latinx,” which has become an ungendered alternative to Latino and Latina.

But even “womxn” has its haters. In October, a London museum and library called Wellcome Collection sent out a tweet that included the word. In response, hundreds of followers, including many women, tweeted back with complaints. “I’ll be a womxn when men become mxn,” one user tweeted angrily. The Wellcome Collection said at first that it had used the word to show that its space welcomes diverse perspectives, but subsequently issued an apology.

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