You ARE an Internationalist, Darn it! Swallow This Pill!

In response to Skyla - full post here

People, I think, can value peace and justice but fully support the notion that countries are very different. Maybe they support peace and justice, but also support self-sufficiency and would thereby never want to aid another country.

Overall, I think it would be better to not force labels on other people. Especially seeing as how labels have different meanings to different people, and different implications with which some people may not actually agree. To relate it to your example, if I decided that masculism meant supporting gender equality, I could proceed to tell other people that individual x is a masculist even if that person dislikes the connotation.

As another example, I could say that any two people together are a couple of people. I could then, unfairly to those people, go around saying that person X and person Y were a couple, which obviously means something different to other people.

Personally, I do not identify as feminist. I support equal rights, and I realize that feminism, to many people means supporting equal rights. Even if that meant empowering men and women equally, I would not use that term. Feminist comes from Latin femina meaning woman. Personally, I object to this on the same grounds that some feminists might object to calling themselves masculists if masculist meant promoting gender equality. The very nature of the word is not equal. I prefer egalitarian.

Additionally, forcing labels on people negates the positive effects of the movement. Calling people internationalists against their will, may cause them to view the internationalist movement more negatively. The same thing could happen to the equal rights movement if we are not careful.