Herstory

Sorry to be picky, but "history" with "his" replaced by "her" is "hertory".

I think we as those who communicate in the English language (I doubt that stuff like this occurs in any other language, at least not with this frequency) should be careful not to put a band-aid on society's problems by making up different words for things. Too often what happens is someone comes up with a more "politically correct" name for something, or a group of people, or whatever, and then eventually that word starts being used in an offensive way, and then the cycle begins again when another new politically correct term is invented.

All these new words would not be needed if people treated others with respect by default instead of of being forced into it by laws and rules. The problem is that the natural human reaction is to treat people who are perceived as different less favourably than those who are perceived to belong to the same "group". People use the excuse that they are "protecting their own" far too often.

If people could value differences instead of feeling threatened by them then maybe women in previous centuries would have been given a chance to make history themselves, and that goes for others who are referred to by carefully-chosen politically correct terms as well.

Sorry to be picky, but "history" with "his" replaced by "her" is "hertory".

I think we as those who communicate in the English language (I doubt that stuff like this occurs in any other language, at least not with this frequency) should be careful not to put a band-aid on society's problems by making up different words for things. Too often what happens is someone comes up with a more "politically correct" name for something, or a group of people, or whatever, and then eventually that word starts being used in an offensive way, and then the cycle begins again when another new politically correct term is invented.

All these new words would not be needed if people treated others with respect by default instead of of being forced into it by laws and rules. The problem is that the natural human reaction is to treat people who are perceived as different less favourably than those who are perceived to belong to the same "group". People use the excuse that they are "protecting their own" far too often.

If people could value differences instead of feeling threatened by them then maybe women in previous centuries would have been given a chance to make history themselves, and that goes for others who are referred to by carefully-chosen politically correct terms as well.

I’m not sure it’s natural, as you say, to treat people who are perceived as different less favourably. You don’t see a baby rejecting somebody, say for example, from a different racial background. I think people learn to act like that because they believe they’re different to other people. 

Who is forced into something by laws and rules? You don’t have to follow laws and rules. I don’t. Not the man made laws anyway. I treat those as guidelines for people who don’t want to think for themselves therefore they don’t apply to me so they have no impact on my life whatsoever. 

DragonCat16 said:

Sorry to be picky, but "history" with "his" replaced by "her" is "hertory".

You have not read my post carefully:
"the word's etymology is a punning alteration of 'history' (fancifully reinterpreted as 'his story'..." [my emphasis].

I believe you are trying to read too much into my posting. New words have always been made up in English (as have new senses) for various reasons. During the period 1750 to 1799, for example, the OED reports 46,484 new words and senses.

The modern sense of 'feminism' dates back to at least 1895 (that surprised me) and the OED's first recorded use of the word (in a different sense) is 1841.

Checking that (so-called) modern phrase 'politically correct', I find recorded usage dating back to 1936:
"H. V. Morton In Steps of St. Paul vi. 211   ‘Galatians’, a term that was politically correct, embraced everyone under Roman rule."