Another Short History of Linguistics (20)

It seemed in the early years the character of woman 女 changed time to time. It could be like our time that in different angles, a camera catch different beauty. For when they invented character, the feudalism was yet so strong. Or we may say, to the same symbol, different generation found out different beauty so they record their feeling in that symbol. Some scholar believe this symbol just represent two big breast of female. I don’t believe it, for there were too many symbols to represent gender already why we need it again? And breast is not the organ that represent the gender the best, some male has big breast too. Besides the word 女 has another meaning that is daughter or young girl. It should be the representative of women’s beauty.

This was carved on a bone, museum number is 乙1378：

Some scholar believe this figure is from the special sleeve of Chinese women, in Chinese term it is called 水袖 water sleeve.

Pic from: http://www.niyu360.com/goods-370.html

But I don’t believe it, for at that time people didn’t have so much cloth to do it. In the history, sometimes cloth even meant civilization for instance衣冠南迁 (cloth moved towards south) means civilization moved south.

So the gender expressed by cloth is not a good choice.

In history, the male of Scotland wear skirt, how can we use it as a permanent symbol for gender?