On feminists and ants

In her lone entry thus far, the Kafkaesque K wikis up some difficulty:

Well, I took it upon myself to test out El Borak's statement (that "feminism" has a sufficiently robust definition that one can talk about it without defining it - El B). I typed "feminism" into Google, and opened up the first link: Wikipedia, a source that Vox himself has turned to in this debate. Wikipedia's definition begins:

Feminism is a diverse collection of social theories, political movements, and moral philosophies, largely motivated by or concerning the experiences of women....

...we see that feminism may be composed of differing social theories, political movements, and philosophies...Wikipedia lists, further down in its entry, subtypes of feminism.

Aha! Feminism is not a blanket term that can stand on its own. Not all feminisms are the same. When the term "feminism" is bandied about, readers need to know what type of feminist the writer/speaker wishes to invoke. They need to do this in order to understand what, exactly, is being argued.

Unless, of course, one is not talking about specific "types" of feminism at all.

The question K forgets to ask in her shock at the discovery that feminists don't all look alike is this: why then are these diverse groups all considered feminists? What essence do they share that this blanket term applies to each of them? 'Feminism' must have a meaning outside the specific subgroup(s) using it, because they are relying on it to define who they are. And that meaning might be found precisely where I said, the dictionary, for those who are so unfamiliar with the political landscape that they do not recognize feminism when they see it.

When one is talking about a contemporary social movement *in general terms*, then the specifics of the subgroups within that group don't come into the argument. It is the very thing they have in common that is under discussion, not the attributes which differentiate the subgroups.

Insisting that one need know what subspecies of feminist is being 'invoked' is like demanding that before you can do anything about the ants in your kitchen, you must determine which of the 12,000 species you are having trouble with. The truth is that it doesn't matter which: once you note that what is crawling across your counter is an ant, it's not necessary to wiki before you reach for the Raid.

UPDATE: K follows up on the discussion:

I might also point out to El Borak that an important difference between ants and feminists is that he wouldn't reason with an ant before exterminating the ant. No matter now many times you tell an ant that it does not belong in your kitchen, the ant is still going to come back.

And no matter how many times I tell a feminist she DOES belong in my kitchen...

I'm kidding, okay? Sorry. Sometimes I just can't help myself...

But she makes a good point: "Feminism is more than just a word, and we need more than just a dictionary definition to understand its compexity." This is absolutely true, but one does not need to understand or reference its complexity to talk about it in general terms any more than one needs to understand the complexities of the bat mitzvah to talk generally about Judaism.

Then she makes my point, by quoting a Fox News article about something called Christian Feminism: "Feminism can be defined as the belief that women should be liberated as individuals and equal to men. It is only natural for there to be disagreement over what a personal ideal like "liberation" means and how a basic concept like "equality" should be defined. Indeed, it would be amazing if every woman who cared about liberation and equality came to exactly the same conclusions."

What's that? It's a pithy one-line definition of feminism - showing it can be done - followed by an admission that going deeper than that will get you no further.

If the feminists themselves cannot agree "how a basic concept like equality should be defined" - while accusing Ole' El B of thought crimes for not agreeing with the something they cannot define - if they are broken into a plethora of competing subspecies arguing over definitions and means for accomplishing their general goal, then talking about that general goal in general terms and summing it up with the general title is a reasonable way to get to the argument rather than arguing endlessly about definitions. Which was the origin of my refusal to define feminism any more than my dictionary does in the first place.