unwoman

present singular third person unwomans · participle present unwomaning · participle present unwomanning · participle past unwomaned · past unwomaned · participle past unwomanned · past unwomanned

1. transitiveTo deprive of feminine qualities, or of the status of womanhood; to unsex.

   ‘[…] My love, so please you, shall requite No woman, whether dark or bright, Unwomaned if she be.’

   1844, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Romaunt of the Page”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 163

   4 more examples

   Not all her anxiety for Arthur, not all her personal wretchedness, could unwoman the minister’s mother so much as to make her forgive or overlook Phœbe’s presumption.

   1863, Margaret Oliphant, chapter 21, in Salem Chapel, volume 2, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, page 22

   “He says I am not feminine, that I act like a man, that I’m too aggressive. I say that he unwomans me, because he doesn’t do the man’s work in the home, and I have to—somebody has to! […]”

   1972, Pearl S. Buck, “Thoughts of a Woman at Christmas”, in Once Upon a Christmas, New York: John Day, page 115

   The muslin dress unwomans her, a crude navy blue […] which buttons at the nape of her neck and drops past her knees in stiff irregular folds. Oh it hangs, it hangs, sack bag barrel. Even her waist is not hugged by it and there are no darts in consideration of her breasts.

   1976, Susan Yankowitz, Silent Witness, New York: Knopf, Part Three, p. 141

   To make historical sense of these writers' continual struggle with womanness, consider more closely how unwomaning did and did not work under chattel slavery. […] pregnant workers received no differential treatment, and slave motherhood was not (as Spillers finds in North America) a way for females to become women. […]

   2010 August 18, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature, Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 10

plural unwomen

1. A woman devoid of rights, recognition, or typical female characteristics; a female unperson.

   By allowing herself and her unborn child to be executed, effectively she is permitting an abortion and by extension, becoming an “unwoman.”

   2020, Sarah E. Maier, Brenda Ayres, Neo-Victorian Madness, page 140