From: wolfe@wolves.uucp (G. Wolfe Woodbury)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan,alt.feminism
Subject: Feminism (again-groan) (was: books to avoid)
Summary: Another semantic misunderstanding
Date: 5 Oct 92 01:23:16 GMT
Followup-To: alt.feminism
Organization: Red Wolfe @ The Wolves Den
X-Md4-Signature: 04432a73d3f247d45a4141fc793ccc4b

[Note: followup redirected to alt.feminism - we are beyond its useful
life in this group. -Wolfe]

ba@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (B.A. Davis-Howe) writes:
>conib@peri.gvg.tek.com (Coni Britten) writes:
>
>>Dear WenD:
>><9209292228.AA19288@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> ST801706@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU writes:
>>>book is ultra-ultra-ultra feminist, as in the brand of feminism
>>>where all women are perfect and all men can sink into a swamp and
>>>die.
>
>>As a feminist, I have to object to your equating feminism (with ultras
>>attached or not, it's still feminism you're referring to) as being anti-male.
>>At any level.  This concept is definitely what folks like Jerry Faldwell
>>and Rush Limbaugh want people to believe -- they both repeat this bogus
>>"aspect" of feminism quite a bit.
>
>Well, by this definition, Z. Budapest is not a feminist. I wonder how she would
>like to be told that.  Coni, you are imposing *your* idea of feminism on all
>of feminism.  WenD made it very clear that sie was not referring to all of 
>feminism but to one extremist end of it.

Ho-hum, is it time for another "is not/ is too" war?  If so, take it
over to alt.feminism, here is some flame fodder....

Z. Budapest *is* a feminist, AND a female chauvinst.  I would still
chastise WenD for falling into a linguistic trap by equating female
chauvinism with "feminism" *per se*.  It makes no real difference that
she over characterized it as "ultra-ultra", the anti-male attitudes
among women, while they may be associated with "feminism", have their
own name.

This is, of course, according to an informal or "politically correct"
definition of feminism.  It ignores secondary or tertiary definitions of
feminism/feminist that are constructed as parallels to racism/racist or
sexism/sexist.  As I pointed out previously, one of the formal
definitions of racist is "one who practices racism".  When looking at
the definition of racism, one sees that "racialism:racial preference" is
in the formal definition set.  The inescapable result of the definitions
is that *any person* of *any race* can be a racist.

The same is true of feminism/feminist.  By parallel construction (which
is where the word was coined from), feminists are *by definition*
engaging in sexual preferral.  This should cause just as much a negative
reaction as using "racist" as an epithet, but it doesn't.

Of course, there is a flaw in this argument. :-)  It makes the common
mistake of using formal definitions and misapplying something that is
meant to be applied to *some* part of a group by applying it to *all* of
a group.

One of the joys of language (and in particular english/american) is that
words are multi-valued, and meaning depends on the *full* context of the
speech (written or verbal) in which it is embedded.

One the one hand, it is correct to identify the anti-male positions of
some people with the word "feminism", and on the other hand, is it
imprecise, because the user of the word should realize that the word is
being used in a manner that may be easily misinterpreted.

(BTW: I did find it "very clear" that WenD was referring to a particular
use of the word in its most negative sense.  She added the necessary
clarifying statements to properly peg the definition. )
-- 
G. Wolfe Woodbury @ The Wolves Den UNIX, Durham NC         [use the maps!]
UUCP: ...duke!wolves!wolfe                            <Standard disclaimers>
Domain: wolfe@wolves.durham.nc.us   wolfe%wolves@cs.duke.edu
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