That's what I mean by suspicion: scrutiny, not dismissal. What, e.g., are the narratives in play, that enable someone to speak that casually, yet confidently, about a thing they're prima facie demonstrating a flawed understanding of?

I'm a "women are people too" feminist. I really have no interest in being your whipping boy regarding "man-hating bull-dykes" or whatever such bullshit. It's not accurate. It's not interesting. It's not even novel.

And yet, near-enough every time this stuff comes up, someone expects me to defend a position I neither hold, nor agree with.

Is it any wonder these kinds of stories get flagged off the front page?

Personally I'm a believer in equal rights regardless of gender, colour, beliefs or passion for collecting garden gnomes.

The term "feminism" implies that it pertains specifically to female rights. Perhaps "social egalitarian" is a more apt description for someone wanting equal rights for all, to clarify any difference.

Now, excuse me while I go and barricade myself into this hut in the woods before the pitchforks arrive.

My understanding is that "feminism" doesn't imply more rights for females, but rather highlights where they believe inequalities lie. Same reason people have adopted the phrase "Intersectional Feminist" so as to draw attention to where equality (even among women) is lacking - to those of color or less economic privilege.

Just like saying "Black Lives Matter" doesn't imply that African Americans lives matter more than others, you are using specific words to focus the application of a general idea (lives matter, equality is good, etc.) to a where you may think it is lacking.

The phrase "Black Lives Matter" is Ronseal. Which is to say that "it does what it says on the tin" - in the sense that the phrase exactly explains what you're campaigning for - equal consideration and rights for black lives.

The phrase "feminism" implies female rights, and (at least linguistically) nothing more. Now, it may be that feminists and non-feminists don't see the phrase as meaning that, which I understand to be your point, but I think that's where this becomes much more nuanced.

Anecdotally I have known self-described feminists who were very much about equal rights - but I have also encountered several (admittedly fewer) who were openly pro-female and anti-male.

Edit: removed anecdotal stories as they're just that: anecdotal.

I think there's a bigger discussion to be had here for all of us, and I really hope getting confronted with stories like this has the silver lining of bringing it about.

To take things out of the abstract, consider 'women in STEM'. In college girls do not enroll in STEM with anywhere near the rate boys do. And this receives immense media attention and coverage. However, there has been a sharp and increasing imbalance in girls:boys in college enrollment as a whole. In 1979 they became the majority. And the share of that majority has constantly increased. We're starting to push towards girls outnumbering boys in college by 2:1. And some education is, in general, leagues ahead of none. Yet this receives next to no media attention. And when it's mentioned the person is immediately pegged as some sort of a bigot or extremist as the connotation implied by labels such as men's rights activists.

And for what it's worth, I don't think there should be focus on this, but neither do I think there should be a focus on getting any gender/race/group/age or whatever into anything. I am an egalitarian and I think we should focus exclusively on providing equal opportunity so much as possible, but without pushing people into things. Norway is arguably the most gender-equal nation in this world, and one of their findings was when they directed girls towards fields girls did not regularly participate in, there was a mild but constant increase. Practically as soon as that push was relinquished, the numbers diminished to 'pre-push' times. On a smaller scale, like a good egalitarian I also pushed my wife into pursuing computer science over her previous interest in sociology during university. She excelled, as did I. Now years after that when we both have really our choice of whatever we want to do, she works with people -- and I work with code. I have no regrets bringing her into computer science, but it does make one wonder if it was truly the best decision. People are pliable enough that you can fit square pegs into round holes, but we also tend to be like sponges and after all that contorting that square peg contorted to fit into that round hole is eventually going to go back to being a square because that's what it wants to be.

[1] - https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_303.10.a...

That it is named "feminism" in this specific incarnation is an ephemeral and uninteresting detail. If this is genuinely your only sticking point, then call yourself a social egalitarian and stop demanding other folks conform to your private nomenclature. If, as it seems is more likely, this is a fig leaf to push back against what you see as the loss of privileges held by white men in society? Too bad: you're assuredly losing these, as they come at a high cost to everyone else.

"obviously the movement for intersectional social and economic equality would arise from some group other than rich white men?"

I'm not rich. I never said I was white (as it happens I am, but that's neither here nor there - why are you trying to start a racial argument?)

And why is your statement obviously correct as you put it?

"stop demanding other folks conform to your private nomenclature"

I didn't demand anything at all. Did you even read what I wrote? My point was the term is applied ambiguously, making the meaning unclear.

"this is a fig leaf to push back against what you see as the loss of privileges held by white men in society? Too bad: you're assuredly losing these, as they come at a high cost to everyone else."

This is a dramatic, well-crafted response.. to something that was never said in the first place.

None of this is even the most ridiculous part of your comment, which is surely the over-arching notion that any opinions you feel over your own privileges and how you've arrived at them are shared by everyone else on the internet who you assume is of the same skin colour and gender.

I believe very strongly in actual equality, as do most people describing themselves as feminists that I've spoken to, as I stated.

In short - please don't misconstrue my statements in an effort to make me look intolerant and bigotted. It debases a valid discussion, and I personally find it deeply offensive.

Now as I don't like to be confrontational about something so serious I would like to end by saying something kind; I'm proud of you that you used the words intersectional, ephemeral and nomenclature correctly in your post.

Oh?

> I'm not rich. I never said I was white (as it happens I am, but that's neither here nor there - why are you trying to start a racial argument?)

Well, I don't see me saying or implying you were, merely pointing out the incentives of the disenfranchised promote protest where the incumbents do not.

> I didn't demand anything at all. Did you even read what I wrote?

I did, actually! Let's quickly look at this telltale paragraph:

> > The term "feminism" implies that it pertains specifically to female rights. Perhaps "social egalitarian" is a more apt description for someone wanting equal rights for all, to clarify any difference.

So I'm left here with one of 2 conclusions:

1) Either this guy is parroting a common anti-feminist praxis.

2) This guy has no clue about the space and discourse, simply not realizing that in fact "intersectional feminism" is simply a historically faithful term for this "egalitarianism" he likes.

Personally, I don't believe you accidentally stumbled upon your argument. I think you made it in bad faith. That you immediately came back and demanded that I pretend to acknowledge your figment of neutral tone is confirmation, because what a rational person would do when confronted with a misunderstanding of magnitude 2 is try to work out how their communication went wrong. They would not (as an example) say, "Are you trying to start a racial argument?"

But on the off chance that this is all a massive misunderstanding: you're parroting an argument that is often used by people to derail and defuse the actual arguments presented by intersectional feminism by bikeshedding over the name. Please think on this, because in a modern 2018 internet when you do this (in a forum full of posts like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17759924) your voice is indistinguishable from theirs.

And if you disagree that "Feminism" captures your intent, please point to actual policy and not nitpicking about the name. Nitpicking about names is at best unhelpful.

Your latter assumption is correct, though - I'm not familiar with the discourse. "Intersectional feminism" is not a term I was familiar with, and having Googled it, it does appear to be what I was referring to. I say this cautiously, as Googling something is hardly going to give me a rounded understanding - but I intend to read up on it more.

"That you immediately came back and demanded that I pretend to acknowledge your figment of neutral tone is confirmation"

I really do not want to argue with someone over the internet about a topic like this, so it's the last time I'll quote. I just wanted to point something out to you.

For the second time, I've demanded nothing of you, and I don't understand why you keep using that word. You've again assumed malice when I really don't see that I've given you reason to.

I can't switch tabs right now to read the article you linked as I'm on a mobile and my phone will lose this comment, but I will read it as soon as I'm done posting here.

I don't agree or disagree that "feminism" captures my point. My point is that the term covers broad ideas that aren't always internally compatible, as you've pointed out.

"Intersectional feminism" does appear to cover my view on the topic (again, not familiar with the term before 20 minutes ago, so.. pinch of salt until I'm more up-to-speed on the topic).

Once I've read up, I'll be more aware of the terminology for the future, so thanks for the link.

Respectfully though, when you say my voice is indistinguishable from what I can only assume is going to be some fairly rough anti-women and/or LGBTQ speech, I'm going to be offended by it. I don't see where I've been irrational but maybe I'm just blind to it, I asked why race was being brought up as I genuinely don't see why skin colour needed to be mentioned at all.

UPDATE: I've read the comment you linked to. I've honestly nothing to say about it, or more to say to you on this topic. Good luck to you.

There is almost certainly a more accurate name. But changing the name would accomplish so little that sparring over the name feels like a distraction rather than progress.

What I'm saying is rather that the term itself encompasses a broader array of views than we're discussing here. I think to simplify it to "equal rights" isn't exactly congruent to what every adherent to the term holds as it's sole meaning.

B) In what way does "more rights" inhere in the term "feminism"?

I find The history of the different feminist factions to be very interesting and in particular I find the split between equality feminism and difference feminism to be one of the more significant event that illuminate much of the inconsistency of the movement that we see today. The older equality feminism view was that men and women are significant more alike than different and should thus be treated as identical androgynous humans, while difference feminism view men and women as different but deserving of equal power. The modern feminist factions are largely descendants of the difference feminism view so we get occasionally modern feminist that claim that women can not be sexist since men has more systemic power than women. It follows a kind of logic if one look at gender as uniform groups that wield power.

Still all those factions exist and so do the older equality feminism even if its just a minority today. The sad thing is when infighting occur, the common suggestion is that the other side is automatically far-right for not agreeing. I would suggest that this is why "the modern feminist movement" is starting to see more like a uniform set than different factions.

[citation needed]

When it comes to actually numbers I would like to think that most people would agree to view women and men as androgynous humans for all practical purposes unless it involves the sliver of domains where sex difference actually can be proven to have a large impact, and then being skeptical since most such finding that I have read get later reversed and attributed to culture and bias. I will assume you are one of those and thus give you an up vote.