How should we re-define the word "atheist"? It appears that 19% of Americans believe there is no god, but only 4% identify as atheists and 5% as agnostics.
And while the number of people who don't believe in *any* higher power or spiritual force is close to 9%, it's less than half of the self-described agnostics, and only about 80% of the self-described atheists, leaving a substantial number who don't identify as either.
That's a good example. And I think it illustrates a broader point: frequently the what we say a word means diverges from our associations with the word (atheists are sure God doesn't exist or even bad amoral ppl) and when/how ppl use the word can depend on either or both. With feminism things are even more messy.
It seems just as mistaken to start speaking as if the word clearly means what it's associated with as it is for the person tweeting to insist it clearly means their definition. Rather, at least for words where you know ppl have emotional attachment to certain meanings (u can't just wave away the associations) you should just acknowledge the ambiguity and use terms that make your meaning clear.
9% is much smaller than 30% and 57%. Maybe they believe in a non-Christian God and took the question as being specific to the Christian God. Maybe they are a religion that has multiple but not a singular God, so they took the question as meaning belief in a single God. Maybe their religion or belief has no God. Maybe they answered the survey wrong by mistake. Or maybe they just don't know what atheist or agnostic means. With such a small margin there's room for error.
Atheist also isn't defined in a leading fashion that makes theism seem bad. When they change the definition of atheism to "believing that man can be moral without belief in divinity" then we will have an issue.
Sure, I agree that definition for feminism is bad and a political back formation. So don't use it.
I agree that's an absurd definition of feminism (it doesn't even say it requires a particular concern with the way that women are treated as less equally) but the choice isn't to accept that definition or use an equally pointed definition in the other direction.
You can just admit the word doesn't have a clear universal meaning (or that it's associations differ from the definitions ppl give) and just define a new term: like "sex battle feminism" and avoid the issue.
I think that instead of ceding the language and trying to create new words that accurately reflect their true meaning we should just accurately define and use them.
The general public knows the word "feminism" and its meaning. Conventional understanding of the word is in line with Caplan's definition. Allowing the word to be defined away as "people who believe in equality of the sexes" just gives power to the typical Motte and Bailey tactic employed by leftists in general, and in this case feminists. They defend "equality of the sexes" but actually act as if "society treats women more unfairly than men". The redefining of the word seeks to implant into everyone that it is truly the case that they're "defending equality" by plowing ahead with anti-male dogma.
How is "feminists are people who believe women are treated less fairly than men" equally pointed? Sure, maybe you want to throw in a sub clause along the lines of "at that different in fair treatment should be rectified" but still, how is Caplan's definition not appropriate?
Because, it's read as: "feminists are ppl who believe that on net in the United States now women are subject to more unfair treatment than men"
First there are ppl who call themselves feminists bc of concern for women in aces like Iran. There are many ppl who call themselves feminists because they fought battles in the 60s against discrimination against women and/or believe that there is some remaining unfairness against women in certain contexts which needs to be fought against without any belief about whether it's on net worse for women or men (same way being an advocate for Alzheimer's research doesn't require a belief about it being worse than cancer overall).
Ok, so you are aiming for the edgiest of edge cases. Do you have a better definition in mind, one that takes into account the old first/second wave feminists (there is a term for that) and those who are feminists concerned about how women are treated in places the feminist does not live in?
I'd say it's an emotionally loaded term w/o an agreed upon meaning and that the question of what the word means is besides the point. Just pick a new term and use that to describe the actual set of beliefs/actions/policies you want to critisize. Fighting over who defines the term is a surefire way to just bury yourself in a pointless culture war.
Second, I don't think it's an edge case. Amoung many women in their 70s being a feminist is a very important part of their identity because of the discrimination they fought against in the 60s, 70s etc and I've certainly met such women who continue to call themselves feminists even while complaining about what they see as the unjust treatment their sons experience.
And if you don't take a narrowly American perspective I think you'll find a quite broad range of ppl around the world who have no views about the state of gender equality in the US who would call themselves feminists.
Let me add that the linked definition for feminism here needs a bit of tweaking even to match what I think the ppl who quote it would say on reflection:. You would need to add something like: and who believes that it's important to ensure that this fact is reflected in how the genders are treated (maybe even is willing to advocate for it). Perhaps even add something about believing it's important to ensure women particularly aren't subject to unfair treatment.
I think women and men should be treated equally, but I hesitate to apply the label "feminist" to myself because of some of the connotations and the people I'd be associating myself with.
Similarly, I don't think God exists, but I hesitate to apply the label "atheist" to myself because of some of the connotations and the people I'd be associating myself with.
I think an agnostic that believes there's a 30% chance there's a god might reasonably both say 1) that he believes there's not god, but 2) is not an atheist, just a low-% agnostic. How low does the % have to be to make one an atheist? Well the question illustrates the arbitrariness inherent in definitions in general.
Your second link clarified it - of the 19%, 9% "do believe in some other higher power or spiritual force."
This matches the common usage of the word. Many people would say they don't believe in "god," but won't identify as atheist. Atheists are usually definitive that there is no god/higher power.
Not quite - plenty of the people who call themselves atheists or agnostics say they *do* believe in "higher power or spiritual force", which means that for this to add up to the same number, there must be a similar number of people who *don't* believe in such a power or force and yet refuse to call themselves atheist or agnostic.
The chasm of meaning between the dictionary definition and how people actually use the term is what I regularly cite as the best example of the motte-and-bailey fallacy. If feminism really did just meant 'equality of the sexes', virtually everyone outside of the Mullahs of Iran and the like would be a feminist.
Most major religions have historically and recently treated men and women unequally, the Equal Rights Amendment failed to pass, and over half of American men admit they are "uncomfortable" with a woman as president. https://www.good.is/men-uncomfortable-with-female-president
Maybe for many people treating women as equals is more radical than you are willing to admit. That implies that the motte and bailey is that many anti-feminists claim they only oppose their redefinition of feminism, but fight against the one in the dictionary.
I don't disagree with you regarding major religions, I mentioned the Mullahs of Iran only as an illustrative example, not an exhaustive list. The fact that the ERA failed to pass is not necessarily dispositive of my claim, as the amendment was always ambiguous about its implementation, and even today there's a split for its support even among feminists. I'll mostly grant your point about the portion of people uncomfortable with a female president. But even then, someone preferring a man for a given role doesn't mean they also believe in unequal rights, because it could just be a selection heuristic (e.g. "I believe a competent candidate is more likely to be a man than a woman").
I’m curious what you think of the definition of atheism. Etymologically it just means without theism. Most atheists in my experience agree with this. Most also agree with an agnostic idea that one can’t really know but they themselves simply don’t hold any theistic beliefs. Those that do also oppose religion will generally say that is a separate stance. Yet public view is skewed by the loudest voices: strident activists. As a result, many people without theistic beliefs call them selves agnostic or simply non religious and say they are not atheists. Should non atheists be able to define the term or should we ask atheists what they mean by it?
Would I be applying Bryan's criteria consistently if I said
1. Most people say "capitalism" or "the free market" is something other than what the official definitions are.
2. While the "capitalism" and "the free market" have anodyne definitions that everyone would agree with, the reality is there are a certain subset of people, who, calling themselves "capitalists" espouse pernicious theories that are often in conflict with the generic, generally agreeable definitions.
3. Thus, I must write a book saying "Don't Be a Capitalist"?
First good counter argument. I do identify as capitalist.
I think the supporters of an ideology or even non ideology(atheism) like to define their ideologies geberally in the most acceptable and beutiful way. While others, general public, opposers or centrist on the issue would probably judge on the basis of their interactions with supporters of those ideologies and probably feom their worst experiences.
I think it would be perfectly fine to tell people not to be a capitalist using the actual actions of capitalists as the basis for your argument. You just have to make sure that you're not using a tiny minority and generalizing from that. If you define your terms in a reasonable way, no one should have a problem. Somehow, Caplan's definition is being attacked as unreasonable even though it seems to be as non-inflammatory as possible.
P.S. I don't call myself a capitalist precisely because the word does not have a clearly understood definition, no matter what the dictionary says.
Responding to an argument made by an actual human responding directly to Caplan's point, an actual human who is actually a professor at Stanford University, a professor who is quoting the actual dictionary... that's your definition of "straw man".
Wow. I mean, the double irony of completely remaking a definition to suit your argument as a response to an essay about how the definition of feminism has been completely remade to suit the argument, claiming that no one is doing what Caplan says they are doing while obviously doing it yourself... If I hadn't seen your blog I would have said that is some truly excellent satire.
He's definitely not attacking a straw man. He's attacking a relatively widespread view. It just doesn't help that the very ppl he'd like to convince are the ones who are committed to the idea that they are feminists and that's good.
I know a number of women who would agree with most of the substantive points Bryan makes...they still call themselves feminism and say the ppl Bryan attacks are being bad feminists.
It's like publishing a book aimed at veterans saying: "patriotism is bad"...u could convince them that true patriotism means treating other countries as equally important or anything else really but you won't get them to associate the word patriot with a bad thing.
I've never met a self-identified feminist who would be in remote agreement with Bryan; the ideas Bryan is criticizing I am pretty sure are held by the vast majority of self-identified feminists, and prominent writers who identify as feminists but take views like Bryans spend most of their careers fighting rearguards against mainstream feminists who consider them to be anti-feminists.
If you're criticizing aggressive jingoism, maybe it makes sense to differentiate between 'good' and 'bad' patriotism, but if you're criticizing things widely understood as foundational to patriotism, like the idea that individuals have certain natural duties to their country or should care more about the interests of their countrymen than foreigners, then you have to accept that your criticizing patriotism. Trying to play word games and stretch the definition of patriotism to fit that is both disingenuous and probably doomed to fail, since most self-identified patriots aren't dumb enough to be duped into thinking that there's no substantive difference between their view and the one challenging it because it accepts the label.
To be more specific, Ive certainly met a number of self-identified feminists who don't necessarily believe that on net women are treated worse. Certainly, I've never met one who didn't believe there are plenty of types of unfairness that remain for women but, depending how you weight things, it's not hard to come out agnostic on net: eg if you think the harm of potentially being preferentially drafted for war/combat is a particularly big deal (puts life and liberty at risk) or who feel that young men (particularly young minorities) often get a way worse deal.
Since the title of the book convinced me not to buy it I'm only going off a charitable reconstruction of what's been posted on the blog which seems to be all about this net unfairness question. And I think a lot of feminists just areny that interested in this overall balance but in fixing the unfairness that they see.
Interesting, I've never met a feminist who didn't believe women were on net treated much worse than men.
It seems pretty odd that if semantics so unimportant, the title of the book would deter you from buying it. If some wrote something called 'the case against libertarianism' and proceeded to make the case specifically against anarcho-capitalism or minarchism, I, a libertarian, would roll my eyes at the definition, but wouldn't avoid reading it because I didn't agree with the definition of the term, precisely because it really doesn't matter that much. That people have such strong emotional attachments to labels is not a healthy aspect of our political discourse.
Re: what self-identified feminists believe I'd note two things.
First, I agree that not many self-identified feminists would positively say (or even believe): it's just as bad for men as women. I'm saying many simply haven't formed a view to the contrary. It's like asking if ppl who advocate for Alzheimer's research think it's a worse problem than cancer. No doubt some do feel that way but many simply don't have a view because they don't see that as relevant to what they are doing. But they aren't going to piss off their allies who do by standing up and denying that Alzheimer's is a worse problem ... indeed they probably will avoid forming any view one way or another.
I'm not saying it's a majority or even it's at least 10% but I think positively believing this claim about having it worse isn't essentially universal. And why would it be. I know that quite a few feminists believe that many men are significantly harmed by rigid gender roles so see themselves as helping men and women so why invite trouble by contradicting a belief some of your allies passionately believe.
Second, I think the generation (and if u are focused on the us or the world) you are talking to really matters. People who identified as feminists because there was a gross disparity when they made it part of their identity aren't going to renounce that identity because they feel that, while bias against women persists, men also face similar problems.
I'm saying that semantics aren't important to questions about facts and policy. They certainly matter for purposes of signalling political allignment and firing ppl up. If the goal is to get conservatives worked up and politically active Bryan choose the right title. But if the primary goal is to convince ppl like Bryan's daughter of various policy positions rather than to favor the libertarian tribe over the liberal one it's a mistake.
Yes, it's a fine title if your goal is to convince someone that a certain US social movement has been harmful. I'm just not very interested in that but I would be quite interested in a focus on what's true and what policies would be good. And my understanding from Bryan's explanations was that his goal wasn't about getting his daughter to blame certain people or see them as harmful but about not adopting mistaken views.
Why can't we both be against Nazism *and* defend Charles Murray's right to speak and publish his research? If anything that he says is both a) true, and b) would justify Nazism if it *were* true, then we would in fact be living in a universe where Nazism is justified, and should not recoil in horror at it. But I have never heard Charles Murray make any claims which, if true, would justify exterminating market-dominant minorities, invading one's neighbours for lebensraum, or mass sterilization of those deemed unfit. Therefore I am happy to say that anyone who uses Murray's claims to defend Nazism is wrong *because Murray's claims do not justify Nazism*. However, they may inform some other non-Nazi contentious topics, such as whether we should subsidize biotech eugenics, whether we should impose IQ tests on applications for immigration, whether we should concede to race-obsessed activists who demand racial population parity in high-stakes cognitively demanding professions where, if there actually are significant race differences in IQ, doing so will guarantee that the standards of those professions falls and we get more plane crashes, bridge collapses, medical deaths etc than we would if we applied a strict meritocracy that pays no attention to race (or indeed sex).
We need to examine these questions with an open mind if we want to create the best public policy. You seem to be setting up 'differences between demographic groups are caused entirely environmentally' as the null hypothesis, and demanding an impossible-to-meet burden of proof before accepting the possibility that genetics plays any role. Whereas in fact the moderate position is to assume until proven otherwise that genes and environment *both* have a significant influence on the differences in average outcomes between groups, at least to the extent that we have good evidence that they play a role in the variance between individuals within groups.
Though regarding babies, did you ever watch the Dan Freedman experiments on newborns? If this sort of thing is robust (not sure how much effort there's been to replicate it), then it would suggest that there is at least the possibility *something* biological going on in terms of personality differences between ethnic groups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHeSlMui-2k
And as for sex differences, you might be interested in the first episode of the Norwegian series 'Hjernewask' (Brainwash) as an accessible primer, in which the host interviews various scientists about sex differences in young children. The whole thing is fun, but you can skip to 20:25, where Simon Baron-Cohen describes his experiments on one-day-old babies in which boys looked longer at mechanical objects, and girls looked longer at faces, and traces the correlation between in-utero testosterone levels and subsequent empathizing-versus-systematizing interests as children grow up. The whole series is archived by Emil Kirkegaard here: https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2022/01/the-norwegian-hjernevask-brainwash-series-2010/
At any rate, given everything we know about sex differences in behavior in other animals, the university of sex differences in behavior in humans across cultures, the different evolutionary selection pressures affecting males and females, and the physical sexual dimorphism of adult humans, it would be astonishingly unlikely that humans are the one species where the biologically-predisposed behavioral differences between males and females eveolved away to nothing, and then quite coincidentally, we created cultural conditioning, in every human society studied, that reintroduces those same sorts of behavioural differences. The "100 % environmental" crowd are the ones making the extraordinary claim here, not the people who propose that culture shapes and amplifies existing biological behavioral differences.
This is very confused. The dictionary definition implies your definition. Of course, you strangely and awkwardly define it as 'men are treated more fairly' rather than women are oppressed, but I guess your way sounds better for your nonsense thesis. It's obviously an implication of those definitions that women don't have full equality, therefore there needs to be advocacy to reach that equality.
Since you have trouble understanding this. we can make it explicit, and use the definition philosophers use:
i. (Normative) Men and women are entitled to equal rights and respect.
ii. (Descriptive) Women are currently disadvantaged with respect to rights and respect, compared with men […in such and such respects and due to such and such conditions…].
These are not two different definitions; feminism is defined as both claims. The first part derives naturally from every common system of normative ethics - consequentialism, deontology, contract ethics, etc. Consequentialism, for example, leads to equal consideration of interests, which of course implies equality between the sexes.
And the second part is an uncontroversial empirical claim. I guess you deny the second part. Which doesn't help your case, as denying either part is an embarrassing denial of reality.
Also, there are clearly other explanations for why a large percentage of people won't identify as feminist. The only women who deny the second part are right-wing political ideologues. We've made it socially "uncomfortable" to accept feminism, despite it being obviously true. So, you have the "Orwellian situation" exactly backwards, although idk if i would use such hysterical language.
Sorry, Pr. Caplan, but I think you're wrong on this one. The dictionary definition isn't simply "the belief in equality of the sexes", but rather, "advocacy of women's rights on the basis of equality of the sexes". If you believe that the sexes are equal, but you don't advocate for women's rights, then I don't think you're a feminist.
In this case, they're falling back to the anodyne dictionary definition. Cynically, the dictionary writers all being good leftists, that is why the dictionary has it phrased like it is.
For what it is worth.. after a long discussion with my wife, who holds strong views on this (and many topics).. we thought that 'feminism' might accord with the dictionary.. but that a 'feminist'.. is someone who holds the generally unfair view.. ie that a feminist is someone who believes in feminism.. but that we are not there yet....
Also.. (just to put a spoke in the rhetorical wheel..).. what is 'fair'....
the advocacy of men's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.
or
XXX is the belief in full social, economic, and political equality for men?
Since 93% of prison inmates and 90% of people killed by guns are male, it seems to be some room for more "social equality". But there is no word for supporting parity in prisons.
And, since the Oxford dictionary describes "machismo" as:
Machismo:
aggressive male behavior that emphasizes the importance of being strong rather than being intelligent and sensitive
Oxford
What would be the English word for
"aggressive female behavior that emphasizes the importance and necessity of (positive) discrimination (anybody sees the oxymoron here?) favoring women in order to achieve (impose?) the equality of outcomes in the social, economic, and political realms (but only where women actually "score" worse)"
If "feminism" follows the definition provided by Erik, what is the word for the aforementioned behavior? (which definitely exists)
“Defining feminism as 'the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes' is advocacy disguised as lexicology.” True, but the other official definition—a call for social, economic, and political *equality*--gives us a much less bland definition. Do even actual feminists demand *economic equality*--which must mean at least equal wealth and income? That would make them hard-core socialists. And social equality—which must mean equal popularity, prestige, and acceptance in all sorts of informal relationships—is usually not demanded even by hard-core socialists. If political equality were just equal rights to vote and hold office, it would be uncontroversial; but perhaps *being in prison* is a *political* status, and a demand for equal rates of imprisonment would very much be extreme.
My impression is that these official definitions are just *careless and thoughtless*, which gives a slightly different justification for your ignoring them.
>We’re not there yet. I still have no trouble articulating my heretical thoughts.
We are there on the topic of class inequality and racial temperament. Activists clearly seek to put us there on race intelligence (by wiping away concepts of race and intelligence) and sex/gender (men can get pregnant, women have penises -- classic doublespeak right in your face).
In fact, we are partially there on the topic of sex differences, which is why your essay only goes half way. Similarly, in an unauthorized sequel to 1984 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_(Dalos_novel)), Big Brother dies and Oceania is invaded by Eurasia. Ingsoc begins to crumble, but refutations of it are half-hearted and laughable. They include things like "perhaps Outer Party members should be allowed to turn off Telescreen monitoring for 30 minutes a day". This was modeled off of late-Soviet era rebuttals of Communism. I often think about how accurate this depiction is to the real world when I see half-hearted refutations of Liberalism, such as rebuttals of feminism which are still desperate to defend woman's ephemeral "equality", as if "equality" is desirable, historical, or of any moral significance or truth value whatsoever (the reality is that it is merely an oppressive Liberal mind-control shibboleth, like the telescreen in Ingsoc).
It can be part of a series of books: "Don't be a Thespian", "Don't be a Libertarian", "Don't be a Capitalist", "Don't Support Public Goods", and culminating with "Stop Edifying the Masses!"
There is no "actual definition." The editors of Merriam and Webster aren't divinely inspired. Meaning of words is determined by consensus; definitions aren't platonic facts.
If I opposed legal abortion, opposed gender-based affirmative action in all circumstances, opposed public accomodation laws that prevent private discrimination based on gender, believed the wage gap and other disparities are not caused by discrimination but by differences in choices men and women make requiring no correction, would you say I could be described as a feminist? I think most feminists would say no. But that's perfectly consistent with belief in equality between men and women.
An honest feminist will admit that feminism is about a set of specific policy positions and beliefs. To pretend that it is self-evident that all those specific beliefs the characterize feminism are equivalent to abstract belief in equality is an obvious motte and bailey argument. Nearly every ideology defines itself in terms of noncontroversial abstract terms. E.g., 'libertarianism is support for individual freedom. Do you identify as a libertarian? No? Why do you hate freedom?'
Yes. People misunderstanding what a word means is not uncommon, in my experience. Part of what I do as a professor is to correct such misconceptions, rather than amplify them.
Consider the examples in my comment: each of those words is often misunderstood or even politicized.
A few people misunderstanding--sure. Most people who use the word, even the overwhelming majority (“the crowd”), getting it wrong--no. The people rule!
How many of these people *use* the term ‘Arabic numeral’ spontaneously? In contrast, lots of people use ‘disinterested’, ‘begs the question’, etc., in ways that would have been wrong some decades ago; but (I judge that) there are so many of them that they are *no longer wrong*.
How should we re-define the word "atheist"? It appears that 19% of Americans believe there is no god, but only 4% identify as atheists and 5% as agnostics.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/06/10-facts-about-atheists/
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/04/25/when-americans-say-they-believe-in-god-what-do-they-mean/
And while the number of people who don't believe in *any* higher power or spiritual force is close to 9%, it's less than half of the self-described agnostics, and only about 80% of the self-described atheists, leaving a substantial number who don't identify as either.
That's a good example. And I think it illustrates a broader point: frequently the what we say a word means diverges from our associations with the word (atheists are sure God doesn't exist or even bad amoral ppl) and when/how ppl use the word can depend on either or both. With feminism things are even more messy.
It seems just as mistaken to start speaking as if the word clearly means what it's associated with as it is for the person tweeting to insist it clearly means their definition. Rather, at least for words where you know ppl have emotional attachment to certain meanings (u can't just wave away the associations) you should just acknowledge the ambiguity and use terms that make your meaning clear.
9% is much smaller than 30% and 57%. Maybe they believe in a non-Christian God and took the question as being specific to the Christian God. Maybe they are a religion that has multiple but not a singular God, so they took the question as meaning belief in a single God. Maybe their religion or belief has no God. Maybe they answered the survey wrong by mistake. Or maybe they just don't know what atheist or agnostic means. With such a small margin there's room for error.
Atheist also isn't defined in a leading fashion that makes theism seem bad. When they change the definition of atheism to "believing that man can be moral without belief in divinity" then we will have an issue.
Sure, I agree that definition for feminism is bad and a political back formation. So don't use it.
I agree that's an absurd definition of feminism (it doesn't even say it requires a particular concern with the way that women are treated as less equally) but the choice isn't to accept that definition or use an equally pointed definition in the other direction.
You can just admit the word doesn't have a clear universal meaning (or that it's associations differ from the definitions ppl give) and just define a new term: like "sex battle feminism" and avoid the issue.
I think that instead of ceding the language and trying to create new words that accurately reflect their true meaning we should just accurately define and use them.
The general public knows the word "feminism" and its meaning. Conventional understanding of the word is in line with Caplan's definition. Allowing the word to be defined away as "people who believe in equality of the sexes" just gives power to the typical Motte and Bailey tactic employed by leftists in general, and in this case feminists. They defend "equality of the sexes" but actually act as if "society treats women more unfairly than men". The redefining of the word seeks to implant into everyone that it is truly the case that they're "defending equality" by plowing ahead with anti-male dogma.
How is "feminists are people who believe women are treated less fairly than men" equally pointed? Sure, maybe you want to throw in a sub clause along the lines of "at that different in fair treatment should be rectified" but still, how is Caplan's definition not appropriate?
Because, it's read as: "feminists are ppl who believe that on net in the United States now women are subject to more unfair treatment than men"
First there are ppl who call themselves feminists bc of concern for women in aces like Iran. There are many ppl who call themselves feminists because they fought battles in the 60s against discrimination against women and/or believe that there is some remaining unfairness against women in certain contexts which needs to be fought against without any belief about whether it's on net worse for women or men (same way being an advocate for Alzheimer's research doesn't require a belief about it being worse than cancer overall).
Ok, so you are aiming for the edgiest of edge cases. Do you have a better definition in mind, one that takes into account the old first/second wave feminists (there is a term for that) and those who are feminists concerned about how women are treated in places the feminist does not live in?
I'd say it's an emotionally loaded term w/o an agreed upon meaning and that the question of what the word means is besides the point. Just pick a new term and use that to describe the actual set of beliefs/actions/policies you want to critisize. Fighting over who defines the term is a surefire way to just bury yourself in a pointless culture war.
Second, I don't think it's an edge case. Amoung many women in their 70s being a feminist is a very important part of their identity because of the discrimination they fought against in the 60s, 70s etc and I've certainly met such women who continue to call themselves feminists even while complaining about what they see as the unjust treatment their sons experience.
And if you don't take a narrowly American perspective I think you'll find a quite broad range of ppl around the world who have no views about the state of gender equality in the US who would call themselves feminists.
Let me add that the linked definition for feminism here needs a bit of tweaking even to match what I think the ppl who quote it would say on reflection:. You would need to add something like: and who believes that it's important to ensure that this fact is reflected in how the genders are treated (maybe even is willing to advocate for it). Perhaps even add something about believing it's important to ensure women particularly aren't subject to unfair treatment.
You should ask how many people don't collect stamps, and how many identify as non stamp collectors.
I think it's a pretty analogous situation.
I think women and men should be treated equally, but I hesitate to apply the label "feminist" to myself because of some of the connotations and the people I'd be associating myself with.
Similarly, I don't think God exists, but I hesitate to apply the label "atheist" to myself because of some of the connotations and the people I'd be associating myself with.
I think an agnostic that believes there's a 30% chance there's a god might reasonably both say 1) that he believes there's not god, but 2) is not an atheist, just a low-% agnostic. How low does the % have to be to make one an atheist? Well the question illustrates the arbitrariness inherent in definitions in general.
Your second link clarified it - of the 19%, 9% "do believe in some other higher power or spiritual force."
This matches the common usage of the word. Many people would say they don't believe in "god," but won't identify as atheist. Atheists are usually definitive that there is no god/higher power.
Not quite - plenty of the people who call themselves atheists or agnostics say they *do* believe in "higher power or spiritual force", which means that for this to add up to the same number, there must be a similar number of people who *don't* believe in such a power or force and yet refuse to call themselves atheist or agnostic.
The chasm of meaning between the dictionary definition and how people actually use the term is what I regularly cite as the best example of the motte-and-bailey fallacy. If feminism really did just meant 'equality of the sexes', virtually everyone outside of the Mullahs of Iran and the like would be a feminist.
Are you sure about that?
Most major religions have historically and recently treated men and women unequally, the Equal Rights Amendment failed to pass, and over half of American men admit they are "uncomfortable" with a woman as president. https://www.good.is/men-uncomfortable-with-female-president
Maybe for many people treating women as equals is more radical than you are willing to admit. That implies that the motte and bailey is that many anti-feminists claim they only oppose their redefinition of feminism, but fight against the one in the dictionary.
I don't disagree with you regarding major religions, I mentioned the Mullahs of Iran only as an illustrative example, not an exhaustive list. The fact that the ERA failed to pass is not necessarily dispositive of my claim, as the amendment was always ambiguous about its implementation, and even today there's a split for its support even among feminists. I'll mostly grant your point about the portion of people uncomfortable with a female president. But even then, someone preferring a man for a given role doesn't mean they also believe in unequal rights, because it could just be a selection heuristic (e.g. "I believe a competent candidate is more likely to be a man than a woman").
I’m curious what you think of the definition of atheism. Etymologically it just means without theism. Most atheists in my experience agree with this. Most also agree with an agnostic idea that one can’t really know but they themselves simply don’t hold any theistic beliefs. Those that do also oppose religion will generally say that is a separate stance. Yet public view is skewed by the loudest voices: strident activists. As a result, many people without theistic beliefs call them selves agnostic or simply non religious and say they are not atheists. Should non atheists be able to define the term or should we ask atheists what they mean by it?
Would I be applying Bryan's criteria consistently if I said
1. Most people say "capitalism" or "the free market" is something other than what the official definitions are.
2. While the "capitalism" and "the free market" have anodyne definitions that everyone would agree with, the reality is there are a certain subset of people, who, calling themselves "capitalists" espouse pernicious theories that are often in conflict with the generic, generally agreeable definitions.
3. Thus, I must write a book saying "Don't Be a Capitalist"?
First good counter argument. I do identify as capitalist.
I think the supporters of an ideology or even non ideology(atheism) like to define their ideologies geberally in the most acceptable and beutiful way. While others, general public, opposers or centrist on the issue would probably judge on the basis of their interactions with supporters of those ideologies and probably feom their worst experiences.
I think it would be perfectly fine to tell people not to be a capitalist using the actual actions of capitalists as the basis for your argument. You just have to make sure that you're not using a tiny minority and generalizing from that. If you define your terms in a reasonable way, no one should have a problem. Somehow, Caplan's definition is being attacked as unreasonable even though it seems to be as non-inflammatory as possible.
P.S. I don't call myself a capitalist precisely because the word does not have a clearly understood definition, no matter what the dictionary says.
Bryan chooses a strawman - the meanest "feminists" on Twitter, and fights that.
In reality, if you dress a baby as a boy, they are treated differently than if dressed as a girl. The same baby!
More:
https://www.mattball.org/2022/09/equality-repost.html
Thanks all!
Responding to an argument made by an actual human responding directly to Caplan's point, an actual human who is actually a professor at Stanford University, a professor who is quoting the actual dictionary... that's your definition of "straw man".
Wow. I mean, the double irony of completely remaking a definition to suit your argument as a response to an essay about how the definition of feminism has been completely remade to suit the argument, claiming that no one is doing what Caplan says they are doing while obviously doing it yourself... If I hadn't seen your blog I would have said that is some truly excellent satire.
He's definitely not attacking a straw man. He's attacking a relatively widespread view. It just doesn't help that the very ppl he'd like to convince are the ones who are committed to the idea that they are feminists and that's good.
I know a number of women who would agree with most of the substantive points Bryan makes...they still call themselves feminism and say the ppl Bryan attacks are being bad feminists.
It's like publishing a book aimed at veterans saying: "patriotism is bad"...u could convince them that true patriotism means treating other countries as equally important or anything else really but you won't get them to associate the word patriot with a bad thing.
I've never met a self-identified feminist who would be in remote agreement with Bryan; the ideas Bryan is criticizing I am pretty sure are held by the vast majority of self-identified feminists, and prominent writers who identify as feminists but take views like Bryans spend most of their careers fighting rearguards against mainstream feminists who consider them to be anti-feminists.
If you're criticizing aggressive jingoism, maybe it makes sense to differentiate between 'good' and 'bad' patriotism, but if you're criticizing things widely understood as foundational to patriotism, like the idea that individuals have certain natural duties to their country or should care more about the interests of their countrymen than foreigners, then you have to accept that your criticizing patriotism. Trying to play word games and stretch the definition of patriotism to fit that is both disingenuous and probably doomed to fail, since most self-identified patriots aren't dumb enough to be duped into thinking that there's no substantive difference between their view and the one challenging it because it accepts the label.
To be more specific, Ive certainly met a number of self-identified feminists who don't necessarily believe that on net women are treated worse. Certainly, I've never met one who didn't believe there are plenty of types of unfairness that remain for women but, depending how you weight things, it's not hard to come out agnostic on net: eg if you think the harm of potentially being preferentially drafted for war/combat is a particularly big deal (puts life and liberty at risk) or who feel that young men (particularly young minorities) often get a way worse deal.
Since the title of the book convinced me not to buy it I'm only going off a charitable reconstruction of what's been posted on the blog which seems to be all about this net unfairness question. And I think a lot of feminists just areny that interested in this overall balance but in fixing the unfairness that they see.
Interesting, I've never met a feminist who didn't believe women were on net treated much worse than men.
It seems pretty odd that if semantics so unimportant, the title of the book would deter you from buying it. If some wrote something called 'the case against libertarianism' and proceeded to make the case specifically against anarcho-capitalism or minarchism, I, a libertarian, would roll my eyes at the definition, but wouldn't avoid reading it because I didn't agree with the definition of the term, precisely because it really doesn't matter that much. That people have such strong emotional attachments to labels is not a healthy aspect of our political discourse.
Re: what self-identified feminists believe I'd note two things.
First, I agree that not many self-identified feminists would positively say (or even believe): it's just as bad for men as women. I'm saying many simply haven't formed a view to the contrary. It's like asking if ppl who advocate for Alzheimer's research think it's a worse problem than cancer. No doubt some do feel that way but many simply don't have a view because they don't see that as relevant to what they are doing. But they aren't going to piss off their allies who do by standing up and denying that Alzheimer's is a worse problem ... indeed they probably will avoid forming any view one way or another.
I'm not saying it's a majority or even it's at least 10% but I think positively believing this claim about having it worse isn't essentially universal. And why would it be. I know that quite a few feminists believe that many men are significantly harmed by rigid gender roles so see themselves as helping men and women so why invite trouble by contradicting a belief some of your allies passionately believe.
Second, I think the generation (and if u are focused on the us or the world) you are talking to really matters. People who identified as feminists because there was a gross disparity when they made it part of their identity aren't going to renounce that identity because they feel that, while bias against women persists, men also face similar problems.
I'm saying that semantics aren't important to questions about facts and policy. They certainly matter for purposes of signalling political allignment and firing ppl up. If the goal is to get conservatives worked up and politically active Bryan choose the right title. But if the primary goal is to convince ppl like Bryan's daughter of various policy positions rather than to favor the libertarian tribe over the liberal one it's a mistake.
Yes, it's a fine title if your goal is to convince someone that a certain US social movement has been harmful. I'm just not very interested in that but I would be quite interested in a focus on what's true and what policies would be good. And my understanding from Bryan's explanations was that his goal wasn't about getting his daughter to blame certain people or see them as harmful but about not adopting mistaken views.
Why can't we both be against Nazism *and* defend Charles Murray's right to speak and publish his research? If anything that he says is both a) true, and b) would justify Nazism if it *were* true, then we would in fact be living in a universe where Nazism is justified, and should not recoil in horror at it. But I have never heard Charles Murray make any claims which, if true, would justify exterminating market-dominant minorities, invading one's neighbours for lebensraum, or mass sterilization of those deemed unfit. Therefore I am happy to say that anyone who uses Murray's claims to defend Nazism is wrong *because Murray's claims do not justify Nazism*. However, they may inform some other non-Nazi contentious topics, such as whether we should subsidize biotech eugenics, whether we should impose IQ tests on applications for immigration, whether we should concede to race-obsessed activists who demand racial population parity in high-stakes cognitively demanding professions where, if there actually are significant race differences in IQ, doing so will guarantee that the standards of those professions falls and we get more plane crashes, bridge collapses, medical deaths etc than we would if we applied a strict meritocracy that pays no attention to race (or indeed sex).
We need to examine these questions with an open mind if we want to create the best public policy. You seem to be setting up 'differences between demographic groups are caused entirely environmentally' as the null hypothesis, and demanding an impossible-to-meet burden of proof before accepting the possibility that genetics plays any role. Whereas in fact the moderate position is to assume until proven otherwise that genes and environment *both* have a significant influence on the differences in average outcomes between groups, at least to the extent that we have good evidence that they play a role in the variance between individuals within groups.
Though regarding babies, did you ever watch the Dan Freedman experiments on newborns? If this sort of thing is robust (not sure how much effort there's been to replicate it), then it would suggest that there is at least the possibility *something* biological going on in terms of personality differences between ethnic groups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHeSlMui-2k
And as for sex differences, you might be interested in the first episode of the Norwegian series 'Hjernewask' (Brainwash) as an accessible primer, in which the host interviews various scientists about sex differences in young children. The whole thing is fun, but you can skip to 20:25, where Simon Baron-Cohen describes his experiments on one-day-old babies in which boys looked longer at mechanical objects, and girls looked longer at faces, and traces the correlation between in-utero testosterone levels and subsequent empathizing-versus-systematizing interests as children grow up. The whole series is archived by Emil Kirkegaard here: https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2022/01/the-norwegian-hjernevask-brainwash-series-2010/
At any rate, given everything we know about sex differences in behavior in other animals, the university of sex differences in behavior in humans across cultures, the different evolutionary selection pressures affecting males and females, and the physical sexual dimorphism of adult humans, it would be astonishingly unlikely that humans are the one species where the biologically-predisposed behavioral differences between males and females eveolved away to nothing, and then quite coincidentally, we created cultural conditioning, in every human society studied, that reintroduces those same sorts of behavioural differences. The "100 % environmental" crowd are the ones making the extraordinary claim here, not the people who propose that culture shapes and amplifies existing biological behavioral differences.
> In reality, if you dress a baby as a boy, they are treated differently than if dressed as a girl. The same baby!
Who cares?
Good to see you taking semantic argumentation seriously, Bry. Welcome to the party!
This is very confused. The dictionary definition implies your definition. Of course, you strangely and awkwardly define it as 'men are treated more fairly' rather than women are oppressed, but I guess your way sounds better for your nonsense thesis. It's obviously an implication of those definitions that women don't have full equality, therefore there needs to be advocacy to reach that equality.
Since you have trouble understanding this. we can make it explicit, and use the definition philosophers use:
i. (Normative) Men and women are entitled to equal rights and respect.
ii. (Descriptive) Women are currently disadvantaged with respect to rights and respect, compared with men […in such and such respects and due to such and such conditions…].
This is from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-philosophy/
These are not two different definitions; feminism is defined as both claims. The first part derives naturally from every common system of normative ethics - consequentialism, deontology, contract ethics, etc. Consequentialism, for example, leads to equal consideration of interests, which of course implies equality between the sexes.
And the second part is an uncontroversial empirical claim. I guess you deny the second part. Which doesn't help your case, as denying either part is an embarrassing denial of reality.
Also, there are clearly other explanations for why a large percentage of people won't identify as feminist. The only women who deny the second part are right-wing political ideologues. We've made it socially "uncomfortable" to accept feminism, despite it being obviously true. So, you have the "Orwellian situation" exactly backwards, although idk if i would use such hysterical language.
Sorry, Pr. Caplan, but I think you're wrong on this one. The dictionary definition isn't simply "the belief in equality of the sexes", but rather, "advocacy of women's rights on the basis of equality of the sexes". If you believe that the sexes are equal, but you don't advocate for women's rights, then I don't think you're a feminist.
Now do "Libertarianism"!
What youre describing is a motte and bailey situation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
In this case, they're falling back to the anodyne dictionary definition. Cynically, the dictionary writers all being good leftists, that is why the dictionary has it phrased like it is.
For what it is worth.. after a long discussion with my wife, who holds strong views on this (and many topics).. we thought that 'feminism' might accord with the dictionary.. but that a 'feminist'.. is someone who holds the generally unfair view.. ie that a feminist is someone who believes in feminism.. but that we are not there yet....
Also.. (just to put a spoke in the rhetorical wheel..).. what is 'fair'....
Is there anything in your book that I can't get from a Jordan Peterson lecture?
If not, I guess you kicked a hornets nest for no reason.
I still support you but I'd like to know what your adding to the debate.
What would be the English word for:
the advocacy of men's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.
or
XXX is the belief in full social, economic, and political equality for men?
Since 93% of prison inmates and 90% of people killed by guns are male, it seems to be some room for more "social equality". But there is no word for supporting parity in prisons.
And, since the Oxford dictionary describes "machismo" as:
Machismo:
aggressive male behavior that emphasizes the importance of being strong rather than being intelligent and sensitive
Oxford
What would be the English word for
"aggressive female behavior that emphasizes the importance and necessity of (positive) discrimination (anybody sees the oxymoron here?) favoring women in order to achieve (impose?) the equality of outcomes in the social, economic, and political realms (but only where women actually "score" worse)"
If "feminism" follows the definition provided by Erik, what is the word for the aforementioned behavior? (which definitely exists)
“Defining feminism as 'the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes' is advocacy disguised as lexicology.” True, but the other official definition—a call for social, economic, and political *equality*--gives us a much less bland definition. Do even actual feminists demand *economic equality*--which must mean at least equal wealth and income? That would make them hard-core socialists. And social equality—which must mean equal popularity, prestige, and acceptance in all sorts of informal relationships—is usually not demanded even by hard-core socialists. If political equality were just equal rights to vote and hold office, it would be uncontroversial; but perhaps *being in prison* is a *political* status, and a demand for equal rates of imprisonment would very much be extreme.
My impression is that these official definitions are just *careless and thoughtless*, which gives a slightly different justification for your ignoring them.
>We’re not there yet. I still have no trouble articulating my heretical thoughts.
We are there on the topic of class inequality and racial temperament. Activists clearly seek to put us there on race intelligence (by wiping away concepts of race and intelligence) and sex/gender (men can get pregnant, women have penises -- classic doublespeak right in your face).
In fact, we are partially there on the topic of sex differences, which is why your essay only goes half way. Similarly, in an unauthorized sequel to 1984 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_(Dalos_novel)), Big Brother dies and Oceania is invaded by Eurasia. Ingsoc begins to crumble, but refutations of it are half-hearted and laughable. They include things like "perhaps Outer Party members should be allowed to turn off Telescreen monitoring for 30 minutes a day". This was modeled off of late-Soviet era rebuttals of Communism. I often think about how accurate this depiction is to the real world when I see half-hearted refutations of Liberalism, such as rebuttals of feminism which are still desperate to defend woman's ephemeral "equality", as if "equality" is desirable, historical, or of any moral significance or truth value whatsoever (the reality is that it is merely an oppressive Liberal mind-control shibboleth, like the telescreen in Ingsoc).
If you are going to ignore the actual definition and go with the crowd, I look forward to your next book "Don't use Arabic Numerals" (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/arabic-numerals-survey-prejudice-bias-survey-research-civic-science-a8918256.html).
It can be part of a series of books: "Don't be a Thespian", "Don't be a Libertarian", "Don't be a Capitalist", "Don't Support Public Goods", and culminating with "Stop Edifying the Masses!"
There is no "actual definition." The editors of Merriam and Webster aren't divinely inspired. Meaning of words is determined by consensus; definitions aren't platonic facts.
If I opposed legal abortion, opposed gender-based affirmative action in all circumstances, opposed public accomodation laws that prevent private discrimination based on gender, believed the wage gap and other disparities are not caused by discrimination but by differences in choices men and women make requiring no correction, would you say I could be described as a feminist? I think most feminists would say no. But that's perfectly consistent with belief in equality between men and women.
An honest feminist will admit that feminism is about a set of specific policy positions and beliefs. To pretend that it is self-evident that all those specific beliefs the characterize feminism are equivalent to abstract belief in equality is an obvious motte and bailey argument. Nearly every ideology defines itself in terms of noncontroversial abstract terms. E.g., 'libertarianism is support for individual freedom. Do you identify as a libertarian? No? Why do you hate freedom?'
"The actual definition" is something different from what the *crowd* means?
Yes. People misunderstanding what a word means is not uncommon, in my experience. Part of what I do as a professor is to correct such misconceptions, rather than amplify them.
Consider the examples in my comment: each of those words is often misunderstood or even politicized.
A few people misunderstanding--sure. Most people who use the word, even the overwhelming majority (“the crowd”), getting it wrong--no. The people rule!
Did you read the link about Arabic numerals?
For your convenience: here's the headline:
Most Americans say ‘Arabic numerals’ should not be taught in school, finds survey
How many of these people *use* the term ‘Arabic numeral’ spontaneously? In contrast, lots of people use ‘disinterested’, ‘begs the question’, etc., in ways that would have been wrong some decades ago; but (I judge that) there are so many of them that they are *no longer wrong*.
At least one dictionary has added a 2nd definition for literally meaning figuratively.
It is horrible, but it is normal language evolution.