To the extent that we can know anything concrete about the pre-history and medieval history of language, both @rhysiare and @madmaudlingoes have got some things wrong here. Some notes:
Whatās-his-face is right aboutĀ āsheā evolving from *seo, and maudlin is right that it meantĀ ātheā (at least at that stage it did; before it was a demonstrative. They were all demonstratives before. This is no secret, as pretty much allĀ third person pronouns in allĀ languages derive ultimately from demonstratives). Thatās actually what happened: āsheā derived from a word for ātheā rather than the actual old third person singular feminine pronoun. The reason? The old separate third person masculine and feminine pronouns (*he and *heo/hio in the nominative) were evolving to sound the same, so people couldnāt tell the difference between the two. If youāre thinking to yourselfĀ āThatās great! Third person singular gender-neutral pronoun!ā, I am too! And then what happened? Evidently it was too ambiguous for people, so they went and made a new feminine pronoun out of the old feminineĀ ātheā, *seo. Lame. Probably men feeling too insecure about themselves; wanted to be sure they could distinguish themselves. We couldāve avoided the necessity of usingĀ ātheyā in the singular if weād just evolved one single third person singular animate pronoun, but nbd.Ā āTheyā works fine. So, to recap: maud is slightly mixed up about the evolution ofĀ āheā andĀ āsheā, but rhyās conclusion is either total speculation, or just plain wrong (or right for the wrong reason, but weāll get to that in point 3 below).
Letās just sidestep the wholeĀ āDid it mean human in general or masculine man in antiquityā argument and ask a different question: What if women were the linguistic default? Itās notĀ āsupposedā to happen if you follow Linguistic Universals, but the great thing about Linguistic Universals is theyāre mostly bs. Itās mostly just linguists sayingĀ āWell, I havenāt seen x in a language, so I bet a language can NEVERĀ have x!ā Whatev. Even though itās quite common for masculine to be the default, I know of one language where that isnāt the case: Moro. In Moro, you have words like (using IPA) [udŹi]Ā āboyā and [Åeɾa]Ā āgirlā with plurals [lĒdŹi]Ā āboysā and [ɲeɾa]Ā āgirlsā. As far as we saw, there isnāt a word that meansĀ āchildā (gender-neutral), so what word is used for a mixed group of boys and girls? Thatās right: [ɲeɾa]. MeansĀ āgirlsā orĀ āchildrenā. Same with the words forĀ āmanā and womanā vs.Ā āpeopleā. Itās basically the complete opposite of languages like Spanish and French. So! Whatās the cultural result of it? Turns out the culture is still patriarchal. Conclusion: Thereās aĀ lot of misogyny in the history of humanity. Language didnāt cause it, and language canāt change it. Random stuff like this just happens, and people will fasten onto it because humans love coincidences and puns.
Most importantly, why did anyoneĀ bring up either diachrony orĀ synchronic language use? This graphic has nothing to do with that and everything to do with orthography. You know what would totally undo this graphic? If we spelled the feminine words above as follows: shi, womon, femell, humon, persin. Seriously, of those, the ONLYĀ one where the two word pieces are pronounced the same isĀ āfemale~maleā. The rest: [ŹiĖ] vs. [hiĖ]; [ĖwŹ.mĒn] vs. [ĖmƦĖn]; [ĖƧu.mĒn] vs. [ĖmƦĖn]; [ĖpʰÉ.sÉØn] vs. [ĖsŹĖn]. If weāre talking about modern language use in the way academic linguistics talk about it, weāre talking about speech only, since most ignore the fuck out of orthography. I donāt even know why it came up, since the original graphic is basically the equivalent ofĀ āThereās noĀ āIā inĀ āteamāā orĀ āWhen you assume you make anĀ āassā out ofĀ āuā andĀ āmeāā or Bart on The SimpsonsĀ pointing out thatĀ āadulteryā has the word āadultā in it. Itās a clever visual or audio pun. It doesnāt need to make historical sense to make its point. At the same time, something like this doesnāt say anything important about language qua language: more about orthography and humans finding patterns in things. (Like why has no one talked about the animal inĀ ācarpetāāthe little pet that apparently lives exclusively in your car?)
Also, when it comes to cultural misogyny as reified in language, these are not the examples to bring up! Please bring up examples from feminine pejoration, which is absolutely a real thing that happens in just about every language on the planet (Iām tempted to say every language, but will hedge for safety). This is the process whereby two words, one masculine and one feminine that are otherwise identical, end up taking on two different meanings. A very simple example will help to illustrate: master vs. mistress. Clearly related (the latter is the feminine version of the former); clearly canĀ be male and female versions of the same thing, and yetĀ in EnglishĀ āmistressā most commonly refers to a woman a man cheats on his spouse with. Can you useĀ āmasterā to refer to a man a woman cheats on her spouse with? Nope. How aboutĀ āwenchā originally just meaningĀ āgirlā and coming to be an insult used exclusively with women? Or the animal terms hound/dog vs. bitch and whatās happened to them? And consider even milder things like prima donna. Why isnāt there an equivalent word deriving from male tenors?Ā These things donāt happen by accident. This is the regular and crosslinguistic result of cultural misogyny. Itās real, it happens everywhere, and it can be undone. But donāt think that changing the language will change the culture. It doesnāt work that way. The language changes because the culture has changed. Language is a reflection of us. If we decide that we as a society want to be different, we will be, and our language will change with us.
Important takeaways here are:
Cultural misogyny is widespread and real.
Language reflects culture, it doesnāt shape it.
Oh, and whenever I see this āmisandryā noise crop up, let me just sayā¦