The new Racism and Sexism: Jerky definitions for Jerks [03 Apr 2007|12:21am] [ mood | irritated ] [ music | Wham - Wake Me Up, Before You Go-Go ] Welcome, to the world of tomorrow! Your dictionary will (apparently) be useless. Earlier today Belinda and I were looking over a post that she'd happened across, on a Livejournal Community called simply feminist . The post itself was in essence the personal incredulity of a woman who learned in a Social Psychology class that partner-abuse, contrary to popular belief, was surprisingly equal between men and women, both in incidence and in harm done. Her 'counter' to this was that there are necessarily oppressive power-dynamics involved whenever a man abuses a woman that cannot necessarily be the case when women are abusing men, because... Well, 'women don't do that', would be her answer. This was a community called 'feminist' after all, so I thought to myself "All right, bit cheeky", and prepared a reply for her post intended to draw attention to some of the fallacious implications of such assumptions, particularly in regard to 'potential harm' vs. 'harm done'. I found, however, that posting in feminist  was a 'friends (members) only' privilege, so in my momentary zeal I readied myself to join this community. "After all," I thought to myself, "I am strongly in favour of gender-equality myself, what could it hurt?" Belinda drew my attention to an extensive list of membership rules that this community insisted members observe, lest they receive warnings, bannings, and so-on, so being the contract-loving fellow that I am, I began to read them over. It was here that I learned something, my friends, something that I apparently should've learned some time ago, being an almost educated sort. There were new definitions of both 'Racism' and 'Sexism' that I'd never heard of before. ( As detailed (at length) here. ) Their new definition of racism (which extends through subject and prefix substitution into sexism) focusses extensively on the concept of oppression, and intends to make the framework of oppression the central issue of racism (or sexism). Historical racial (and genderal) biases, and their modern consequences, are of course undeniable in their injustice, their impact on people's lives, and their resistance to change due to conservative mindsets. The identification of this was no doubt a great step in the right direction for addressing both racial and sexual issues. What concerns me, however, is how upon its discovery, it wasn't given a unique term (I myself think that the dichotomous phrases 'Racial Privilege' and 'Racial Oppression' would cover all of it nicely), it was instead roped, in its entirety, into the core-concept of Racism.  This was presumably due to the way in which issues of racism and sexism get discussed in the modern discourse. As the literal 'isms' by their intuitive meanings became less and less common in our (Western) society, the focus of such discussions naturally shifted in focus to the remaining issues, which would in essence be the residual effects of past (and covert contemporary) prejudices on socio-economic structure and cultural attitudes. Those who discussed racism, in the media in which they discussed racism, where now (for the sake of relevance) discussing something that wasn't encompassed in the intuitive definition of racism, so the wise thing to do would seem to be to broaden your definition to both stay on topic, and add the power of your previous works to your current ones. What could go wrong with that? What has gone wrong with that is plain to see in the comments of the post I mentioned above. The evolution of this new definition, from these origins, is approaching something both dysfunctional and ignoble. This new definition, according to its users, is now the definition for their money, and part of this vicious affirmation is the exclusion of the original (need I remind you, intuitive) definition from it. This attempted retcon of the very words 'Racism' and 'Sexism' lead to discussions characterised by this form of exchange: Person 1: This claim is racist. Person 2: That is not racism, racism is playing into the social acceptance of white supremacy, willfully or not. What you're describing is 'prejudice'. Person 1: Yeah.. prejudice, on the criteria of race. Also known as 'racism'. Person 2: NO! Your conception is ignorant and insulting to the suffering of people of colour! Racism is Prejudice + Power, so someone without social privilege and power cannot be racist!  Person 1: But I'm talking about discrimination against Africans in Asian communities. Person 2: Social privilege belongs to white people in the west. Asian people henceforth can't be racist here, they can only be prejudice. Person 1: But prejudice against other races? Person 2: Yeah. Person 1: ... ( There are genuine problems with this. ) I put it to you (and you know who you are), that these 'new' definitions are implicitly pejorative, unintuitive, non-constructive, and destroy the utility of the words in their original meanings (which remain common, rightfully so, today). Does anyone else think these terms need to be 'taken back' from the likes of feminist ?Or do we need to now invent entirely new words to represent 'racial prejudice' and 'gender prejudice' instead? Tim. (22 Polos | Marco!)

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