The Politics of Language

I've been thinking a lot about language lately, both how we use it, and how it is used to describe us. Why the title Womanhouse? What is the significance of linking together 'woman' and house' into a neologism that linguistically manifests something already abstractly (and stereotypically) understood in our society? What are the differences between 'home' and 'house,' and how may we understand the variables between them as a transgressive maneuver on the part of the FAP artists who developed Womanhouse?
Our language is structured in such a way as to code various terms as gendered, even though we don't always grammatically mark our words, as in say French and German, with an indication of their gendered status. Instead we use suffixes (-ess...as in prince/princess or tiger/tigress) and qualifiers to relay our intended meanings. Artist is one of those words in our language that we don't mark via an -ess ending (artistess is just cumbersome), so instead we quailfy/mark it: artist/woman artist. We don't say or write man artist, as what is implied is that the artist is already male (yep, we do say male artist, which just reaffirms the biological attachment of the male body to the professional status of artist).
Yet I don't mean to suggest that the qualifier 'woman' added to artist is entirely negative. There are strong positives maintained through the adoption of 'woman artist' as a platform on which to come together (The National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Clara Database of Women Artists are two amazing educational resources banded under the label). When we recognize that the term 'woman' is a construction (i.e. socially defined), we gain awareness of the transformative possibilities of the title Womanhouse. The FAP artists denied the biological attachment to the home that the term 'female' suggests, instead using the terms in away that calls attention to their constructed, imposed, and socially regulated meanings. 'Woman' and 'house' are artifical, just like the stereotypical placement of the female within the realm of the domestic, which ultimately brings awareness to the pseudo-naturalization of female/home.
-Marissa Vigneault