"Man was originally a gender neutral word for person, with woman basically being "wife person" and males having a separate word, "wer". The gender neutral on its own eventually became mostly synonymous with "wer" and then eclipsed it in usage, which could be a separate instance of linguistic sexism, but the issue with "woman" is more the "wo" than the "man"."
The etymology is basically right (it was "wer"/"werman" for men and "wyf"/"wyfman" for women and "man" for everyone, which I do think is an excellent pronoun system), but I don't think it's correct to divorce the gendering of "man" from the perceived issues with "woman", and conclude that the "wo" is the real problem. After all, the "wyf" part of "wyfman" wasn't an issue when "man" wasn't gendered.
That said, I'm skeptical that "wom*n" and "womyn" and other such forms will be successful. Assuming for the sake of argument that this sort of linguistic evolution is worth pursuing for its own sake, as opposed to when it's incidental to clarity (e.g. cis/trans), those words are still derivative of the derivative.