Saturday, January 29, 2005

woman

words are important to me, they are my friends. one of the things on my wish list is the visual thesaurus - it's a beautiful way to bring a word to life. version 3 just came out and i was trying it out. i always try to think of testing a word that will give me a graphic understanding, an image of where that word lies in the web of our language. i've of course done 'emerging' and 'sideways'. today, i tried 'woman' and was sickened by it's results.

is it any wonder we have difficulty finding and owning ourselves with definitions like this?

-an adult female person (as opposed to a man)
-a person who belongs to the sex that can have babies
-woman as a class
-a human female who does housework
-a female who plays a significant role (wife or mistress or girlfriend) in the life of a particular man

i want new definitions. i want to be defined apart from the work i do, the children i have born and the role i play in the life of a man. is that wrong?

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