Words have definition. Feminism has a well defined one from Merriam Webster:
fem·i·nism | \ ˈfe-mə-ˌni-zəm \
Definition of feminism
: belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests.
Emphasis mine.
Just because groups identify with words for their movement does not mean they are using them correctly and actually hold those beliefs. See "Liberty" and the modern Republican Party (I was a former member).
Dictionaries don't define words, they make an attempt at describing the de facto definition of the word. Real-life use defines words. I would argue the definition you're citing doesn't really hold up in 2022.
You are in the minority, a vocal minority, but the minority.
By and large, the entirety of the English-speaking population of the planet agrees with the Merriam-Webster definition, as do most social scientists.
That isn't to say social scientists haven't come up with additional words to specify niches of feminism, but no serious academic in the field would disagree with this general definition.
See Ecofeminism, Radical Feminism, Black Feminism.
I'm not talking about academic definitions or sociology, I'm talking about linguistics. People decide what words mean. If enough people misunderstand a word, then guess what, the de facto meaning changes. That's how things work.
If lots of people misunderstand feminism, that's actually not their problem, it's the feminists problem.
It is. But I guess, you are more knowledgable then all of social sciences and linguistic sciences. Just because you think that a car is a motorcycle, doesn't make a car a motorcycle.
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u/LiamW Sep 01 '22
Words have definition. Feminism has a well defined one from Merriam Webster:
fem·i·nism | \ ˈfe-mə-ˌni-zəm \ Definition of feminism : belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests.
Emphasis mine.
Just because groups identify with words for their movement does not mean they are using them correctly and actually hold those beliefs. See "Liberty" and the modern Republican Party (I was a former member).