in 19th-century renderings of Black American English, without any feminist significance. Contemporary usage In the United States The usage of "womyn" as a feminist spelling of women (with womon as the singular form) first appeared in print in 1976 referring to the first Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. This is just after the founding of the Mountain Moving Coffeehouse for Womyn and Children, a lesbian feminist social event centred around women's music. Both the annual "MichFest" and the weekly coffeehouse operated a womyn-born womyn (cisgender women-only) policy. Womyn's land was another usage of the term, associated with separatist feminism. Z. Budapest promoted the use of word wimmin (singular womon) in the 1970s as part of her Dianic Wicca movement, which claims that present-day patriarchy represents a fall from a matriarchal golden age. These re-spellings existed alongside the use of herstory, a feminist re-examination and re-telling of history. Later, another wave of female-produced music was known as the riot grrrl movement. The word "womyn" has been criticized by trans activists due to its usage in radical feminist circles which exclude trans women from identifying into the category of "woman" and consequently prevent them from accessing spaces and resources for women; the term wombyn has been particularly criticized for this since it implies that a woman must have a womb to be a woman. In the United Kingdom Millie Tant, a fictional character in the British satirical comic Viz, often used the term wimmin when discussing women's rights. Similar terms "Womxn" has been used in a similar manner as womyn and wimmin. Due to transgender women's perceived exclusion from the usage of these respellings, an "x" is used to "broaden the scope of womanhood," to include them. The Womxn's March on Seattle chose the spelling of its title for this reason. See also Feminist language reform Gender-neutral language LGBT linguistics We'Moon Womyn-born womyn Womxn References Further reading Sol Steinmetz. "Womyn: The Evidence," American Speech, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 429–437 Feminism and the arts Feminist terminology Women-related neologisms 1970s neologisms Nonstandard spelling Feminism and transgender