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BOY WHO RECENTLY DISCOVERED OPINION-HAVING: First and Second Wave feminism were really great, no problem with those waves at all, love them actually—but modern, Third Wave feminism has really gone off the rails. Modern feminism encourages, like, extreme a priori confidence that women are treated worse than men on average, spreads various “progressive myths”, facilitates routine public body-shaming of ugly men, and militantly ignores the well-documented gender disparities that men fall on the less fortunate side of.
HERMIONE GRANGER: *taps dictionary* But that’s not really feminism, by definition! See, look: according to this authoritative compendium of word meanings I got from the Restricted Section, “feminism” just means “advocacy of equality of the sexes and the establishment of the political, social, and economic rights of the female sex”. So none of that stuff you have a problem with is part of feminism proper! (You’ve got dirt on you nose, by the way. Did you know?)
In some form or other, you’ve heard this conversation play out. Whenever it does, critics of feminism feel like they’ve been short-changed. Surely, they think to themselves, holding back tears after their full argumentative disadulation at the hands of one of Hogwarts’ most promising young witches, in the context of debating the rights and wrongs of feminism, it’s cheating to define “feminism” is such a way that even if 110% of self-identified feminists were openly calling for a sex-based genocide against men, that wouldn’t be a mark against feminism at all, because of the pronouncements of some Oxbridge lexicographer.
Building on this worry, some non/anti-feminists have argued that the dictionary definition of “feminism” is both unhelpful and descriptively wrong, in that—they allege—it doesn’t correctly pick out what “feminism” means to most competent English-speakers.
Take
. In his Don’t Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice—which I’ve only read the first essay of—Caplan argues that the dictionary definition (and related definitions like, e.g., “feminism is the radical view that women are people”) need revising, because they don’t reflect how the label is actually deployed. As Caplan notes,In this careful 2016 survey1, for example, only 33% of men said they were feminists, yet 94% of men agreed that ‘men and women should be social, political, and economic equals’.”
Caplan’s takeaway: if, in 2024, “feminism” really meant what the dictionary says it means, we’d expect the people who agree that men and women should be social, political, and economic equals to be co-extensive with the people who identify as feminists. Since it isn’t, that’s a reason to think the dictionary definition is due for a re-write.
An analogy should help clarify Caplan’s point. I’m a big fan of Hinduism, and I’ve argued at some length that it’s the religion with the best chance of being true. The arguments I employ are the sorts of spectrumy philosophical parlour games that take ages to think through and invariably convince no-one. However, some Hindus threaten to make my job too easy for me, defining Hinduism in such a way that no enlightened religious seeker could ever reasonably deny that they’re a Hindu. For example, the writer Rutvij Merchant defines a Hindu as “[a]n individual who strives to actively discern the existence of the objective Reality otherwise termed as God and attain Him if convinced of His existence, using means that are inherently subjective and dependent on the individual’s own proclivities, beliefs and values”2. Nice try, but even if all Hindus are religious seekers in the way Merchant describes, obviously not all religious seekers are Hindus!
In much the same way, even if accepting the ‘radical notion that women are people’ is a property shared by all feminists, we shouldn’t insist that that’s all it is to be a feminist, when there are plenty of competent English speakers who enthusiastically agree that women are people too, etc., but enthusiastically object to being called feminists. As Caplan concludes:
Any sensible definition of feminism must [. . .] specify what feminists believe that non-feminists dis-believe. Defining feminism as ‘the view that men and women should be treated equally’ makes about as much sense as defining feminism as ‘the view that the sky is blue.’ Sure, feminists believe in the blueness of the sky - but who doesn’t?
With a reservation here and there, I’m on board with Caplan’s argument that feminism should be officially redefined. What I’m not on board with is the definition Caplan opts for. ‘Feminism’, according to Caplan, is “the view that society generally treats men more fairly than women”.
The view that society generally treats men more fairly than women. I think Caplan’s definition is an improvement in some respects, but I still think it’s wack, for at least two reasons.
First, as I pointed out in “Caplan’s Definition of Feminism: Why It’s Wrong and How to Fix It”, Caplan’s proposed definition needs a normative component. That is, an adequate definition of “feminism” has to say something about what feminists are for and what they’re against. It can’t just say what feminists believe about descriptive, sociological questions. Here is a thought-experiment, to make the point clearer:
[S]uppose there were a Society of Patriarchs, comprised of evil men, controlling the world, who’s job it is to make sure society treats men more fairly than women. Assuming they succeed in this, the patriarchs would believe that society treats women less fairly.
By Caplan’s definition, the patriarchs would count as feminists since they believe society treats men more fairly than women. But, obviously, the patriarchs would not really be feminists, since they intentionally promote the unfair treatment.
If you define Christianity merely as a set of beliefs—in the existence of God, the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation of Christ, etc.—you get the problem that Satan himself would count as a Christian. (As the Book of James points out: “Even the demons believe and shudder!”) When your definition of “feminism” omits a normative component, the exact same problem will arise.
Second, it’s intuitively false that, to be a feminist, one must believe that society treats men more fairly than women. (This is the more important point, since the previous problem is easily fixable. Just add “and fights against/wants to fight against this unfairness”, or something, and you’re sorted.) To quote myself again (sorry people; sorry I’m not quoting you):
Suppose there’s another world war—I think we’re on our third—and all fighting-age men are drafted. Suppose the remaining adult men are kept at home, but ritually humiliated and beaten for their lack of bravado, and all under-age boys trained in sub-human conditions for the day they’ll eventually be drafted.
The women and girls, by contrast, are treated as they’re treated now. No unjust burdens placed on women and girls are abolished; no new ones are added, either.
In this scenario, the moral priority would be to make things better for the men and boys, and the majority of society’s attention would be on ending the war, the draft, the beatings, etc. But suppose that a group of activists got together who reasoned as follows: “Obviously, society treats men more unfairly than women. But there are still ways that society treats women unfairly. Since almost all the attention is focused on the men’s issues, we are going to prioritize women’s issues, and focus on those in our activism. Abortion, violence against women, respect in the workplace—those are our priorities.”
Question: What would this group of activists be called?
Answer: Feminists, no?
It seems bizarre to suppose that because these activists believe that men are treated more unfairly than women, the activists must not be feminists. The way we decide if a word appropriately refers to a thing in general is to apply the word to the thing, consult our linguistic intuitions, and see if it feels right to do so. And when we try applying the ‘feminist’ adjective to these hypothetical women’s rights activists, it feels right to do so and unnatural not to. The word ‘feminist’, when appropriately deployed in English, does not entail that its object believes that women are treated less fairly than men, even if nearly all actual feminists do hold that belief.
Taking these objections to be more or less decisive, I proposed a loose, working alternative:
Feminism is the view that society treats women unfairly, plus the view that that’s bad, plus a sufficiently high prioritization of women’s equality (socially, politically, etc.) among the issues one is concerned about.
Since “sufficiently high prioritization of women’s equality” is appallingly vague, and any rigid specification of what a ‘sufficient’ degree of prioritization looks like is going to be immediately bombarded with a zillion counter-examples, I’d like to add, at the end, “where ‘sufficiently’ is contextually determined”. None of this is super informative, I admit, but I think my definition is decent. (Or, more modestly, better than Bryan Caplan’s.) As I wrote towards the end:
[My] definition is as good as Caplan’s, because it predicts the data that spurred Caplan’s redefinition: If people think society treats men more fairly than women, they are more likely to give high priority to injustices faced by women and girls among the issues they’re most concerned about. And if people don’t think society treats women less fairly than men, they are less likely to rank women’s equality among the issues they’re most concerned about. So the proposed definition—like Caplan’s—explains why feminists tend to think that society treats women less fairly than men, and why non-feminists tend not to.
But the proposed definition is better in two respects: It captures the normative aspect of feminism, and allows—as seems intuitively correct—that there could be feminists who think society treats women more fairly than men.
So, that’s my preferred definition of feminism; if you have objections, drop them down in the comments. Feel free, also, to use as many F-bombs as you like—my comments sections are not to be places of reasoned and respectful dialogue.
We return, at last, to Regan Arntz-Gray. In her thoughtful and thought-provoking essay, Regan—and I use her first name not because she’s a woman, but because now that we’re dialoguing on Substack we are automatically best friends 🫶—agrees with my objections to Caplan’s definition, but not with my replacement of it. (For Regan’s original review of Caplan’s essay, by the way, check out “Do Be a Feminist: Why Sex Differences Strengthen the Case for the Feminist Movement”.)
Recall the example I gave above about the society where it’s just obvious that men are treated less fairly than women, but where women are still treated unfairly. In the example I asked (nay, begged) you to imagine a group of women who—despite recognising that men are treated more unfairly than women—form a coalition dedicated to tackling the gender-based hurdles faced by women. The intuition I expected (nay, implored) you to have was that these women are obviously feminists, despite their belief that women are treated more fairly than men.
What does Regan make of this case?
Maybe… if their reasoning is that, as women who have studied women’s issues deeply, they are, as a group, better positioned to focus their activism on women, but also recognize that men’s issues are of higher importance at that time and are glad other groups are focused on them, then yes, I’d call them feminists. But if they opposed ending the mistreatment of men, or were even neutral on solving those issues, they would not be feminists but would be female supremacists (or women-supremacists depending on how they view the importance of sex vs. gender). And in fact, the issues men face in this imagined scenario are precisely the sorts of issues that feminists have a lot to say about, rooted in rigid and traditionally patriarchal (I think its use here is justified!) gender norms.
There are certainly many female supremacists who think they’re feminists, probably most notably, at least for my audience, twitter personality RadFemHitler (RFH). But RFH is no feminist, she’s a bitter misandrist with a great sense of humor and an obvious gift for poasting. We can enjoy her content, but she is rightfully excluded from even the very broad understanding of feminism which I’m attempting to articulate here. The views she promotes are just deeply, deeply sexist.
I don’t follow RadFemHitler, so I won’t comment on that example. (Indeed, I’m good at not following people with Hitler-in-bio more generally.) But I think it’s a reach to claim that, under the ordinary English meaning of “feminism”, misandrists and people who feel indifferent towards men’s issues can’t count as “feminists” by definition!
I have a friend,
—author of the wonderful “Oatmeal Daughter”—whose Substack bio reads: “Full-time lover, part-time fighter, misanthrope, misandrist.” I have no idea how serious the misandrist part is, but assume for the sake of argument it’s as serious as the setting sun on Sundays3: under the ordinary English meaning of “feminist”, I still feel intuitively disposed to call her a feminist! (At least, based on these two posts—hyperlink, hyperlink—which I highly recommend.) Misandrists, and people who are indifferent to men’s issues, can be feminists too! To deny that, I think, is just another attempt to define “feminism” in such a way that the feminist movement can be shielded from criticism—not by way of arguments—but by way of semantic fiat.Philosophers of language distinguish between conceptual analysis, on the one hand, and conceptual engineering on the other. Conceptual analysis—a once popular practice that is now falling out of favour—is project of defining concepts as we currently have them.
For example, back in the day, philosophers spent an ungodly amount of time attempting to come up with a counter-example-free definition of KNOWLEDGE. (Note: when philosophers are talking about concepts, they put the concept in all-caps. Thus, the CONCEPT of a concept is emboldened. Philosophers claim that this is done for clarity of exposition, but I’m of the belief that it’s their way of shouting at you because they’ve had a bad day.) For an example of interest to feminists, some gender-critical feminists argue with trans-inclusive feminists about the definition of the concept WOMAN.
In these enlightened days, philosophers are increasingly interested in conceptual engineering: the practice of creating new concepts and fixing old ones. For example, suppose gender-critical feminists like Alex Byrne are right that a hard-nosed, unbiased look at the concept WOMAN—as it is currently employed by the vast majority of people—applies to adult human females and no-one else, such that trans women aren’t women as things currently stand. Very well, the thought goes: maybe we should just engineer the concept WOMAN so that it’s more trans-inclusive, assuming that’s a worthwhile goal. (It’s not clear to me exactly how the engineering process is supposed to go down: presumably, part of it will involve incanting “trans-women are women, trans-men are not women” enough times that the concept WOMAN expands and contracts in all the right places until, boom!, it’s really true that trans-women are women and trans-men are not.)
Bringing things back to feminism, “conceptual engineering” is at least an interpretation of what Regan is up to here. (If so, no objections from me!) It would probably be good for feminism if people like RadFemHitler were definitionally excluded from feminism, since their rhetoric harms men (to whatever extent that parallel rhetoric would harm women if tweeted by RadMascStalin) and brings mainline feminism into disrepute.
Since calling attention to the fact that someone is trying to table-thump a new, conceptually engineered definition into being is a sure-fire way to undermine those efforts, I’ll shut up about it at once. (If, indeed, that is what Regan is up to.)4
PS. If you want more feminist content, and want to win me brownie points, a certain Leonie is currently brewing content for her new Substack, Leonie In The World—subscribe for content ranging topics from Chadian slam poetry to colonial mimicry to culture to literature and more. She’s much smarter than me I fear, so let’s give this thing a boost! (Update: “Edgy Feminism and its Fascination with the Grotesque” is now up! The girls who get it, get it, apparently, and I think now I sort of get it, but mostly I find it unsettling.)
Quoted in: Tharoor, Shashi. 2021. Why I Am A Hindu. London: Hurst & Company: p. 42. (Confession: I did not track down the primary source. )
Note: not a real expression. I am making things up again!
In this essay, I’ve played a little fast-and-loose with quotation marks. In my capacity as an aspiring philosopher, I deserve to be shot in the market-place. If you want to know how to use quotation marks with maximum logical clarity, check out this article by my friend
, whose rhetorical style is adorably attempting to be just like mine!
I think the word "fair" already has a normative component. So the Society of Patriarchs wouldn't think what they're doing to women is unfair, they approve of it and therefore it's fair.
It’s currently 03:38 in the morning. I don’t even know what to say. It’s literally wayyyyyyy too early for me to process this