PeonForHer
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ORIGINAL: HisPet21
quote:
I define 'feminism' on the basis of the accepted definition within the social sciences, in the way it's taught in schools and colleges...people are so frightened of the term that they'll use words like 'humanist' to describe themselves instead
This, I think, gets at the heart of the issue, Peon. You are defining feminism, and labeling people feminists, according to the Oxford Dictionary definition. The only problem with doing so is that we don't live in George Orwell's 1984, and we don't abide by some modern day Dictionary of Newspeak. We don't live in a world where a select group of individuals, hidden away in a government compound, gets to decide what a word like "feminism" means, and the rest of the world has to adhere to that pre-agreed upon definition upon pain of imprisonment. Language is constantly evolving and changing. No one super special person or group of people gets to decide what a word means. All of society, through their use of a word and the context in which they use said word, ultimately decides what a word means. Sure, according to the Oxford Dictionary, Dworkin may not be considered a feminist, but by proclaiming herself as such, and gathering the support of other self-proclaimed feminists, she is altering the meaning of the term. She is stretching the term "feminism" to include her ideology. That's how language works.
I didn't define it according to the OED, HP, but according to that which is used within the social sciences. There's a big difference and this is implied by that word 'sciences'. We have to isolate words and define them clearly in sciences of any sort. This may be much more difficult in the social sciences than the pure sciences, but it's just as crucial that we make the attempt. Perhaps even more so.
So, how do we define political terms, then? Do we go solely by those who announce themselves as adherents of a given belief? If Dworkin, for instance, is to be taken as the authority on what 'feminism is', then should we also accept what Thatcher said conservatism is, or Bush - with his version of freedom as all of us surveilled, or even what Hitler, as a 'national socialist', thought 'socialism' is? *That* is a route towards the Orwellian newspeak that you talk about. In fact, one of the prime examples of Orwellian newspeak was that depicted by Napoleon the Pig in 'Animal Farm': tyranny by the pigs over the rest of the animals became 'freedom and equality' for those animals. And the majority of those other animals put up with that redefinition either because they agreed, or because they were too frightened to speak against it. Likewise Stalin (upon whom Napoleon was modelled) redefined socialism. We don't need to go with what a majority believes, still less the power that pumps the propaganda at that majority to get it to accept the definition that that power wants it to accept.
If language 'works' as propaganda, then it's working wrongly. I'll go with the scientists in preference to the majority opinion, or even those who consider themselves followers in a given 'ism' therefore authorities on it. Likewise, I'll go with a biologist on his definition of a term like 'heart' or 'lung' rather than some hypothetical majority, who've decided that what I've so far called 'hearts' are now to be called 'elbows'. There *is* a certain level of elitism in that, to be sure, but I do believe that it's the least of all evils when it comes to definitions such as these. The social science definition isn't, though, as you characterise it. It doesn't derive from some cloak and dagger bunch of government officials behind closed doors (in fact, the kind of hate-propaganda stuff I've talked often *does* get produced in exactly that way). The social science definition is open to interrogation publicly.
As a rider . . . I agree with Crazyml. You want to take 'humanist' in preference to 'feminist', that only sidesteps the problem temporarily. As soon as any given 'ism' becomes seen as a threat, it gets villified. Once, a 'socialist' was simply someone who believed in a social world rather than a world of disparate individuals. You couldn't have imagined a more innocuous term. Nowadays, it's difficult to imagine it being used without spitting at the same time.
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RE: Feminism and Submission - 
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