Merriam-Webster’s
Definition of “Femininity”
I came across this article on the Huffington Post website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/merriam-webster-changed-their-definition-of-femininity-because-of-this-womans-tweet_us_582c7272e4b01d8a014b7e54?section=us_women
Ali Segel was looking for submissions to use in her zine
assignment when she discovered Merriam-Webster’s definition of “femininity”. The example sentence the dictionary used
said: “She managed to become a female CEO without sacrificing her femininity.”
Segel uploaded this picture to Twitter and stated, “I
decided to tweet it out because yeah, that’s nuts!,” she told Cosmopolitan.
“Can you imagine: ‘He managed to become a CEO without sacrificing his
masculinity.’” Merriam-Webster responded to her tweet apologizing and removed
the offensive example.
At the end, Segel screenshotted her Twitter conversation and
quoted “When u use ur femininity to change the dictionary”
In my opinion, Segel definitely made a great change in terms
of reaching out to Merriam-Webster to remove the sentence. However, I do not
understand the severity of the sentence. I definitely believe a better sentence
could have been used as an example for the word “femininity”, but I am
not understanding the entire harm in the sentence. I honestly feel bad for not seeing
it. Would someone respectfully mind clarifying or giving their opinions on this
article? Thanks!
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