Tl;dr: intersectional alternative spelling of "woman"/"women" meant to include transwomen and non-white women

Pronunciation: unknown

Etymology: "Woman" refers to any adult human female. 2nd Wave Feminists determined "woman" to be misogynistic because it included the word "man" and invented the alternate spelling "womyn." TERFs and other old school feminists took ownership of "womyn" to explicitly exclude transwomen as mid-2010s activists developed their Intersectional value system. The activists invented "womxn" to explicitly include transwomen and non-white women. It is possible that non-white women needed to be specifically included because Intersectional ideology believes any feminism that doesn't explicitly focus on non-white issues is "white feminism"

Unintended implications: that transwomen and non-white women aren't included in the word "women"

Popularity: "womxn" passed "womyn" in Google Trends in 2018

A more inclusive spelling of "women" that includes any human who identifies as a female, femme, agender, girl, lady or queen. Some non-Christian feminists prefer womxn because they don't believe they are the extension of men, like in the Bible story of Adam and Eve.

A word I saw at my university's gym that made me realize the West has fallen.

It is an alternative version of the word "woman" created by the same who told latino people that they are now latinx.

A term initially coined by feminists meant to separate women from the patriarchy by removing the relationship of the words 'women' and 'woman' from 'men' and 'man', and by extension, the patriarchy.

Recently, the term has been used in an attempt to include minority groups of women, like women of color, disabled women, etc. Most prominently, it has been used to include trans women, and just as controversially, if not more, non-binary and femme identities.

The inclusion of all of these identities (except for non-binary) through an alternative version of women, implies that they aren't really 'women', but 'womxn', while people still refer to females as women. This is extremely othering to trans women specifically, because it spreads the idea that they are not actually women. It is also problematic, as women are the group of people identifying as female, and non-binary is NOT the same as woman, so it shouldn't be included within the word 'womxn'. Sure, the word is separated from masculinity, but definitely not from women, which is casting a too wide net to be so closely tied with women, since non-binary identities aren't just women but more inclusive.

Please stop using this word, as it is very othering, and invalidates the identities of trans women and non-binary PEOPLE (not women NOR womxn).

A self Identifier afab or femininely presenting people use to describe their experiences with sexism any binary woman would face while clarifying that they don't identify as a woman.