Thanks for the feedback on the term feminism, I take your points regarding its usefulness in conversations like this. It does activate culture war framing to many that hear it. I will just say though that I don’t feel I’m fighting against 100 years of sex war framing, I think early feminists were righteous and those who opposed them were…
Thanks for the feedback on the term feminism, I take your points regarding its usefulness in conversations like this. It does activate culture war framing to many that hear it. I will just say though that I don’t feel I’m fighting against 100 years of sex war framing, I think early feminists were righteous and those who opposed them were anti gender equality in a very obvious way, and in a way that I think was negative for society as a whole. I do think people should put their limited experience with feminism aside and believe me, the person who has clearly studied this stuff and is summarizing the relevant info for you, when i explain what feminism has been and means as a general term. That doesn’t negate your arguments for not using the term in conversation etc. though, from a strategic point of view, but yeah, I think if I were you I’d believe me about what feminism is. Anyways, I don’t actually use the term that frequently in my articles for that reason, and your feedback may result in me doing so even less, but I do continue to personally identify with it for reasons explained above. Most importantly that I’m building off of people who were feminists and who saw their work as part of feminist scholarship.
If you must use the term feminist, you should at least give it some kind of modifier to distinguish the way in which you are using it. Mary Harrington's "reactionary feminist" is a good example of a modification that disarms most of the pre-conceptions people tend to have about feminism. But again, I think it would be better than this still to simply drop the word feminist entirely, or to otherwise specify that feminism is not the primary lens through which you are viewing any given topic.
This is why, despite considering myself a Christian and considering that my guiding worldview, I often write articles that do not use the word "Christian" or any sort of religious lens at all. I don't insert it unless it is particularly relevant, specifically because I want my writing to be accessible to everyone including non-Christians. It's counter-productive to get bogged down having to deal with people's numerous assumptions about Christianity if there are other, more widely shared points of reference that I can use instead.
Yeah, I agree with that, but if there were a bunch of people in your subculture who were always writing about “what does being a Christian mean?” And making guesses like… “I guess it means people who promote non-violence and family values” wouldn’t you feel motivated to write an article explaining … “well actually it’s about belief in Christ”?
I’m going to go over the axes that are relevant to disagreement between feminists, and to what gender equality means in practice in the next piece. But I describe my blog as having a sex-realist, pro-liberty, positive-sum feminist perspective which I’ll explain more in the piece.
Absolutely--if your article is about disagreements within feminism itself, well yes, of course you're going to use the word "feminist" a lot in that article. And it will be the same if I were to write an article justifying why I am Russian Orthodox and not any of the other varieties of Christian.
But when I write about anything other than Christianity itself, I generally reach for secular arguments first and religious justifications only as an afterthought, if at all. This is because anyone and everyone can recognize the former as a common point of reference, but the degree of people who share a common point of reference with me on the latter is quite limited.
Thanks for the feedback on the term feminism, I take your points regarding its usefulness in conversations like this. It does activate culture war framing to many that hear it. I will just say though that I don’t feel I’m fighting against 100 years of sex war framing, I think early feminists were righteous and those who opposed them were anti gender equality in a very obvious way, and in a way that I think was negative for society as a whole. I do think people should put their limited experience with feminism aside and believe me, the person who has clearly studied this stuff and is summarizing the relevant info for you, when i explain what feminism has been and means as a general term. That doesn’t negate your arguments for not using the term in conversation etc. though, from a strategic point of view, but yeah, I think if I were you I’d believe me about what feminism is. Anyways, I don’t actually use the term that frequently in my articles for that reason, and your feedback may result in me doing so even less, but I do continue to personally identify with it for reasons explained above. Most importantly that I’m building off of people who were feminists and who saw their work as part of feminist scholarship.
If you must use the term feminist, you should at least give it some kind of modifier to distinguish the way in which you are using it. Mary Harrington's "reactionary feminist" is a good example of a modification that disarms most of the pre-conceptions people tend to have about feminism. But again, I think it would be better than this still to simply drop the word feminist entirely, or to otherwise specify that feminism is not the primary lens through which you are viewing any given topic.
This is why, despite considering myself a Christian and considering that my guiding worldview, I often write articles that do not use the word "Christian" or any sort of religious lens at all. I don't insert it unless it is particularly relevant, specifically because I want my writing to be accessible to everyone including non-Christians. It's counter-productive to get bogged down having to deal with people's numerous assumptions about Christianity if there are other, more widely shared points of reference that I can use instead.
Yeah, I agree with that, but if there were a bunch of people in your subculture who were always writing about “what does being a Christian mean?” And making guesses like… “I guess it means people who promote non-violence and family values” wouldn’t you feel motivated to write an article explaining … “well actually it’s about belief in Christ”?
I’m going to go over the axes that are relevant to disagreement between feminists, and to what gender equality means in practice in the next piece. But I describe my blog as having a sex-realist, pro-liberty, positive-sum feminist perspective which I’ll explain more in the piece.
Absolutely--if your article is about disagreements within feminism itself, well yes, of course you're going to use the word "feminist" a lot in that article. And it will be the same if I were to write an article justifying why I am Russian Orthodox and not any of the other varieties of Christian.
But when I write about anything other than Christianity itself, I generally reach for secular arguments first and religious justifications only as an afterthought, if at all. This is because anyone and everyone can recognize the former as a common point of reference, but the degree of people who share a common point of reference with me on the latter is quite limited.