A feminist glossary

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Fred in Skirts
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A feminist glossary

Post by Fred in Skirts »

This is a little long but really informative.

A feminist glossary because we didn't all major in gender studies

The basics

Feminism: Belief in and desire for equality between the sexes. As Merriam-Webster noted last month: "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities." It encompasses social, political and economic equality. Of course, a lot of people tweak the definition to make it their own. Feminist activist bell hooks calls it "a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression."

Patriarchy: A hierarchical-structured society in which men hold more power.

Sexism: The idea that women are inferior to men.

Misogyny: Hatred of women.

Misandry: Hatred of men.
A little deeper

Hostile sexism: The one most people think about. Openly insulting, objectifying and degrading women.

Benevolent sexism: Less obvious. Kind of seems like a compliment, even though it's rooted in men's feelings of superiority. It's when men say women are worthy of their protection (off the sinking boat first) or that they're more nurturing than men (therefore should raise children). It's restrictive.

Internalized sexism: When the belief in women's inferiority becomes part of one's own worldview and self-concept.

Misogynoir: Misogyny directed toward black women.

LGBTQ: The acronym for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer.” Some people also use the Q to stand for "questioning," meaning people who are figuring out their sexual or gender identity. You may also see LGBTQIA. I stands for intersex and A for asexual/aromantic/agender (sometimes also "allies").

Cisgender: A term used to describe a person whose gender identity aligns with the sex assigned to them at birth.

Transgender: A person whose gender identity differs from the cultural expectations of the sex they were assigned at birth.

Gender fluidity: Not identifying with a single, fixed gender.

Non-binary: An umbrella term for people who don't identify as female/male or woman/man.

Women of color: Women who aren't white.

Title IX: Protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.

Victim-blaming: When the victim of a crime or harmful act is held fully or partially responsible for it. If you hear someone questioning what a victim could have done to prevent a crime, that's victim-blaming, and it makes it harder for people to come forward and report abuse. Groups working to eradicate abuse and sexual assault are clear: No woman is guilty for violence committed by a man.

Yes means yes: A paradigm shift in the way we look at rape, moving beyond "no means no" toward the idea that consent must be explicit.

Male gaze: A way of looking at the world through a masculine lens that views women as sexual objects.

Privilege: The idea that some people in society are advantaged over others.

On the Internet

Bropropriating: Stealing an idea from a woman and putting it into the world as your own.

Manterrupting: When a man interrupts a woman, especially excessively. Examples: During the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards when Kanye West grabbed the mic from Taylor Swift, who had just won an award and was trying her best to accept it, to let everyone know "Imma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time.” Or, during September's presidential debate when Donald Trump interrupted Hillary Clinton 22 times in the first 26 minutes. Or when Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell interrupted Elizabeth Warren’s recitation of Coretta Scott King’s 1986 letter against Jeff Sessions, but allowed Bernie Sanders to read it the next day.

Mansplain (verb) mansplainy (adjective): When a man explains something to a woman in a condescending way when he either 1) doesn't know anything about it or 2) knows far less than the woman he is talking to. Sorry, if you already knew that.

Manspreading: When men take up excess space by sitting with their legs far apart. This is such an actual thing that in 2014 New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority launched a campaign to get guys to close their legs to make more room on the subway.

Feminazi: A derogatory term for a radical feminist.

Woke: Rooted in black activist culture, it means you're educated and aware, especially about injustice. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Ca., has told young people to "stay woke." If you're thinking about it in the context of women's rights, look at the #SayHerName campaign, which works to raise awareness for black women who are victims of police brutality.

Types of feminism

Intersectional feminism: If feminism is advocating for women's rights and equality between the sexes, intersectional feminism is the understanding of how women's overlapping identities — including race, class, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and disability status — impact the way they experience oppression and discrimination.

Transfeminism: Defined as "a movement by and for trans women who view their liberation to be intrinsically linked to the liberation of all women and beyond." It's a form of feminism that includes all self-identified women, regardless of assigned sex, and challenges cisgender privilege. A central tenet is that individuals have the right to define who they are.

Women of color feminism: A form of feminism that seeks to clarify and combat the unique struggles women of color face. It's a feminism that struggles against intersecting forms of oppression.

Empowerment feminism: Beyoncé's Formation comes on at the club, and you and your friends hit the dance floor hard. Empowerment feminism puts the emphasis on "feeling," though some feminists would argue feeling amazing is not a great gauge of how society is actually supporting your self-expression and flourishing. Sheryl Sandberg's perpetually controversial Lean In, which focuses on how women can make changes to achieve greater success in the workplace, is another example of empowerment feminism.

Commodity feminism: A variety of feminism that co-opts the movement's ideals for profit. Ivanka Trump has been accused of peddling this brand of feminism, using her #WomenWhoWork campaign to sell her eponymous lifestyle brand.

Equity feminism (conservative feminism): Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, is a champion of what she calls "equity feminism." In her view, "equity feminism" is focused on legal equality between men and women, while "gender feminism" focuses on disempowering women by portraying them as perpetual victims of the patriarchy. In the words of President Trump's advisor Kellyanne Conway: “I look at myself as a product of my choices, not a victim of my circumstances, and that’s really to me what conservative feminism, if you will, is all about.”
Waves of feminism

*Some feminist scholars are moving away from "waves" since it can give the appearance that feminists aren't always actively fighting inequality. But if you see them, here's generally what they're referring to:

First wave feminism: Kicked off with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention to discuss the "social, civil, and religious condition of woman" and continued into the early twentieth century. It culminated in 1920 with the passage of the 19th amendment — giving women the right to vote.

Second wave feminism: Began in the 1960s and bloomed in the 1970s with a push for greater equality. Think Gloria Steinem, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Betty Friedan. It was marked by huge gains for women in legal and structural equality.

Third-wave feminism: Beginning in the 1990s, it looked to make feminism more inclusive, intersectional and to allow women to define what being a feminist means to them personally.
"It is better to be hated for what you are than be loved for what you are not" Andre Gide: 1869 - 1951
Always be yourself because the people that matter don’t mind and the ones that mind don’t matter.
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Re: A feminist glossary

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Fred in Skirts wrote:Women of color: Women who aren't white.
You don't say.... :P

Can I go on a limb here and assume that the definition of white women is "women who are not of color"? :lol:
Manterrupting: When a man interrupts a woman, especially excessively.
Whoever came up with that needs to witness an argument at MY house! :lol: One wife, one 17 year old daughter, and even the damned cat is female... :wink: :D
Sexism: The idea that women are inferior to men.
"I'll take Femnazi for $100 Alex"... The idea that men are inferior to women...
... "What is truth?"...
... correct... /sarcasm :alien:
Male gaze: A way of looking at the world through a masculine lens that views women as sexual objects.
At first thought this was male glaze.... you don't wanna know... :wink: :!:
Yes means yes: A paradigm shift in the way we look at rape, moving beyond "no means no" toward the idea that consent must be explicit.
:?: So what does yes mean again? Gheeze... asking a woman out is like questioning a magic eight ball... "TRY AGAIN LATER" :shock: :cheese:
Manspreading: When men take up excess space by sitting with their legs far apart. This is such an actual thing that in 2014 New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority launched a campaign to get guys to close their legs to make more room on the subway.
Manspreading: What men must do to not pinch their balls because they're afraid to wear a skirt! :mrgreen:

Sorry, I couldn't tell if this was serious or not... I've been hanging with Pete, my RV neighbor for two hours and I'm feeling a little loopy... :eye:

I'll go to bed now! :)
-Andrea
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Daryl
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Re: A feminist glossary

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Fred in Skirts wrote:This is a little long but really informative.

A feminist glossary because we didn't all major in gender studies
It must be a good list because it makes me want to argue with it!

Sexism is defined as only prejudice against women but in fact the term really refers to prejudice based on sex and doesn't reference either sex. Using the tortured logic of "the oppressor cannot be the oppressed", which is actually disproved by intersectionality (another thing brought to us by feminism itself), feminists argue that men cannot be victims of sexism because their class is the source of it. (Note that race activism asserts the analogous idea with respect to racism.) The reasoning is junk. They are trying to remove the individual sense of the word and replace it with only a class sense, but in so doing they are committing the same offence they are trying to label with it: prejudice based on sex.

This understanding of the term "sexism" is at odds with common understanding and the dictionary, but once you understand how feminists are trying to change the language you can at least understand what they actually mean when they use it in ways that leave you scratching your head trying to figure out what they just said.

Much like that sentence.

The other term from the glossary that leaps to the front of my mind is "yes means yes". "Yes means yes" is shorthand for the idea that people having sex need to secure not only consent but also clear, explicit and ongoing consent while they engage in sex. Clearly someone was at a loss to figure out how to distinguish herself in gender studies because everything worth doing had already been done. Rather than giving up she picked the last remaining fruit on the tree of sophistry, a fruit ignored by even the intellectual giraffes because it smelled so bad and was so shrivelled. It made a little news, but only on the campuses of universties with sophistry departments, and was promptly ignored by every real person who actually has sex with another real person. Real sex-having people know that "may I continue" is not what real sex-having people say during sex, but rather "don't stop".
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Re: A feminist glossary

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I am glad someone has had the you know whats to start tearing this thing to shreds.
I believe it was written by one of Moonshadow's Femnazis. When I first read it I thought it was one of those tung in cheek pieces but realized it was a for real article. I decided to post the whole thing to see if there was going to be any reaction and so that it would be fully understood where each of the dafynitions came from.

Keep up the good work!! :lol:
"It is better to be hated for what you are than be loved for what you are not" Andre Gide: 1869 - 1951
Always be yourself because the people that matter don’t mind and the ones that mind don’t matter.
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Re: A feminist glossary

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Fred in Skirts wrote:I am glad someone has had the you know whats to start tearing this thing to shreds.
I believe it was written by one of Moonshadow's Femnazis. When I first read it I thought it was one of those tung in cheek pieces but realized it was a for real article. I decided to post the whole thing to see if there was going to be any reaction and so that it would be fully understood where each of the dafynitions came from.

Keep up the good work!! :lol:
Heh, always happy to do some mansplaining. :D

Moonshadow has feminazis? He has my sympathy!

I don't actually blame rank and file feminists for swallowing this stuff whole, especially if they take women's studies courses (now equality-washed as "gender" studies) where it is dished out as if it's real knowledge of the real world. You need the credit, you learn it. We're all catching on now. It'll be a dead field in 10 years, I reckon, along with creation science.
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Re: A feminist glossary

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Fred in Skirts wrote:I am glad someone has had the you know whats to start tearing this thing to shreds.
I wasn't even going to dignify it with a response.

Anybody with a lick of intelligence should be able to spot the original author's bias and ignorance.
Daryl wrote:You need the credit, you learn it. We're all catching on now. It'll be a dead field in 10 years, I reckon, along with creation science.
That, or it's a prerequisite for graduation.

On Creation Science, I'm not so sure; there's almost an entire human generation out there now who don't have the mental tools necessary for critical thinking. I'm worried that we're going to be seeing more of that sort of silliness rather than less. Viz, for instance, "Intelligent Design". If the human species is the creation of an intelligent designer, it's not saying much for the intelligence of the creator.

As I once commented before I renounced the notion of gods, "Take the platypus, for instance. The existence of that critter is proof positive that not only do the gods have a sense of humour, they also do drugs." I also made an entirely similar crack back in the 1990s when first confronted with the Proteus aircraft: "Engineers should not be allowed to consume mind-altering substances."
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Re: A feminist glossary

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crfriend wrote:
Fred in Skirts wrote:I am glad someone has had the you know whats to start tearing this thing to shreds.
I wasn't even going to dignify it with a response.

Anybody with a lick of intelligence should be able to spot the original author's bias and ignorance.
Daryl wrote:You need the credit, you learn it. We're all catching on now. It'll be a dead field in 10 years, I reckon, along with creation science.
That, or it's a prerequisite for graduation.

On Creation Science, I'm not so sure; there's almost an entire human generation out there now who don't have the mental tools necessary for critical thinking. I'm worried that we're going to be seeing more of that sort of silliness rather than less. Viz, for instance, "Intelligent Design". If the human species is the creation of an intelligent designer, it's not saying much for the intelligence of the creator.

As I once commented before I renounced the notion of gods, "Take the platypus, for instance. The existence of that critter is proof positive that not only do the gods have a sense of humour, they also do drugs." I also made an entirely similar crack back in the 1990s when first confronted with the Proteus aircraft: "Engineers should not be allowed to consume mind-altering substances."
Well, I confess to being an optimist, and Canadian. The debates we have here aren't the same ones you have there. Creation science is utterly off the radar here, and was never much on it. I know a board member of a Christian school who was once concerned that a science teacher they'd hired was trying to teach creation science, by stealth and against policy. That doesn't sound like the Christian schools I hear about in American debates. The young people I meet do mostly have critical thinking skills. I find many people my own age more easily swayed by rhetoric than reason.
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Re: A feminist glossary

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I think some of the definitions are OK. All interest groups tend to have a bias and if you are not a member of the club, you don't have to live by their rules.
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Re: A feminist glossary

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Daryl wrote:Moonshadow has feminazis? He has my sympathy!
Just a small assortment of them, not to worry though, I keep a shock collar on them for when they get out of hand... :lol:

Just don't stare into their eyes, otherwise you're liable to be turned into a pillar of salt! :bom:
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Re: A feminist glossary

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denimini wrote:I think some of the definitions are OK. All interest groups tend to have a bias and if you are not a member of the club, you don't have to live by their rules.
Except that they are actively trying to make their rules the law of the land, and have already done so in many areas.
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Re: A feminist glossary

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moonshadow wrote:
Daryl wrote:Moonshadow has feminazis? He has my sympathy!
Just a small assortment of them, not to worry though, I keep a shock collar on them for when they get out of hand... :lol:

Just don't stare into their eyes, otherwise you're liable to be turned into a pillar of salt! :bom:
Heh. Of course what really happens is that they put the shock collar on you.
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Re: A feminist glossary

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I was the victim of sexism during s recent job interview. Seems that as a chap I cannot be caring or nurturing to others.

I did spend 10 years looking after my late Mother in Law during her illnesses, little things such as chronic renal failure, heart disease, gangrene and after hrr leg was amputated. My son was also at special school because he was so far behind his peer group at school, there had to be someone home to look after him aftet school.

The whole thing was an driven by economics, my wife earned more than I could and also by the fact I was more caring and could accept the frailty of said Mother in Law.

Strangely when my wife became ill last year I again dusted off my carers hat and nursed her back to health.

However for some men cannot care for others!
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Re: A feminist glossary

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stevelous wrote:I was the victim of sexism during s recent job interview. Seems that as a chap I cannot be caring or nurturing to others.

I did spend 10 years looking after my late Mother in Law during her illnesses, little things such as chronic renal failure, heart disease, gangrene and after hrr leg was amputated. My son was also at special school because he was so far behind his peer group at school, there had to be someone home to look after him aftet school.

The whole thing was an driven by economics, my wife earned more than I could and also by the fact I was more caring and could accept the frailty of said Mother in Law.

Strangely when my wife became ill last year I again dusted off my carers hat and nursed her back to health.

However for some men cannot care for others!
Man, this is what we are working to change, both in the men's rights movement and in our little universe in here. Good on you for being a caregiver. Shame on the sexists in your interview. Did that person overtly equate being male with not being nurturing, or was it obvious in a more oblique way?
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Re: A feminist glossary

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Interesting topic.

As a man who has been an RN with a BSN for 24 years, I can certainly appriciate the idea of being in the minority. Sadly, many of my experiences over the years have not been pleasant as find constant backstabbing, internal bickering, and ineffective communication and pettiness. As a crossdressing member of this group I am also aware of the bias of third wave feminism with regards to what they consider transexuals and their issues with the same.

I have an issue with a group that during second wave considered itself compassionate and inclusive is now totally dismissive of transexuals. If you consider, in a sense whatever the motivation, at the core, (by their definition) these individuals want to escape the dreaded male oriented patriarchy. But yet, they reject such people and accuse them of misogyny.

Consider Camille Paglia's recent words on the issue:

"And in 2014, Gender Hurts, a book by radical Australian feminist Sheila Jeffreys, created a heated controversy in the United Kingdom. Jeffreys identifies transsexualism with misogyny and describes it as a form of "mutilation. . .

In a democracy, everyone, no matter how nonconformist or eccentric, should be free from harassment and abuse. But at the same time, no one deserves special rights, protections, or privileges on the basis of their eccentricity. The categories "trans-man" and "trans-woman" are highly accurate and deserving of respect. But like Germaine Greer and Sheila Jeffreys, I reject state-sponsored coercion to call someone a "woman" or a "man" simply on the basis of his or her subjective feeling about it. We may well take the path of good will and defer to courtesy on such occasions, but it is our choice alone."[1]

Things were so much easier before a new round of women, er-a feminists, have decided to change the totality of the paradigmn and turn on former allies. I see contemporary feminism as nothing but a victimization ideology which seeks to blackmail society into additional unwanted and unneeded progressive "reforms."

1. http://www.weeklystandard.com/camille-p ... le/2008464
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Re: A feminist glossary

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whorton wrote: "And in 2014, Gender Hurts, a book by radical Australian feminist Sheila Jeffreys, created a heated controversy in the United Kingdom. Jeffreys identifies transsexualism with misogyny and describes it as a form of "mutilation. .
And this, friends, is how religions are created... So I gather by the title of the book, "Gender Hurts" that this might be something to tear down the patriarchal gender roles that plague our society, and then calls transsexuals misogynist... Sheila Jeffreys.... is and idiot.
In a democracy, everyone, no matter how nonconformist or eccentric, should be free from harassment and abuse.
Image
You're thinking of the principle of which our country is founded, a democratic Republic, bound by a federal and various state constitutions that in theory, grant us certain inalienable rights- mainly the right to direct our own personal fates and futures provided we bring no harm on others, that we are "free", free from unreasonable government seizure, free to due process of law, equal treatment under the law, freedom to pray to what ever God we want, or no God at all, free from the religious views of others, etc....

A true democracy is when 51% of the population control the other 49%.

Democracy is what crucified Jesus...

Democracy is what burned witches and other heretics....

And our constitution was written to avoid this type of treatment... and yet we're about to ball it up and burn it.... all in the name of God... 'magine that.... :roll:

Isn't it interesting that democrats are known for minority rule and republicans are known for majority rule? Almost seems like the terms are reversed to me. And I'm just waiting on a politician to run that doesn't "rule" at all, but just does what the government is supposed to do, protect the country and keep the streets paved.

*Ive been waiting two weeks to use that meme somewhere... * :lol: 8)
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