Saturday, December 8, 2012

A Rose By Any Other Name.

Names, I think, should be less important than ideas. It is more important to believe in the ideas of a religion than to identify as a follow of the religion. It is more important to believe in gender equality than to identify as a feminist, masculinist, or gender egalitarian. Names generally serve to help people draw an easy connection between and individual and what they believe. For example, when someone says that they are Mormon, in general, they are trying to communicate the idea that they believe in the ideas and goals that are associated with Mormonism.

If a person is identifying with a name that tends to hurt their goals, they may want to reconsider how they self identify. If, for instance, a gender egalitarian, feminist, or masculinist claimed to support gender equality, but found that using the terms gender egalitarian, feminist, and masculinist tends to turn many people off of the idea of gender equality, for the sake of the goal that individual should consider whether self-identifying with that term is worth the cost to the goal associated with the name.

I think it can be a problem when people start identifying with names, and history, rather than ideas and future.

Imagine this scenario: people in the abolitionist movements had accomplished much in way of making others see the rights of people of color. Laypeople, however, due to the actions of one radical abolitionist, had begun to associate "abolitionist" with "Satan-worshiping animal-sacrificing Julius Caesar-lovers." Laypeople, due to this association, decided not to support the rights of people of color, and started to protest against abolitionists. Abolitionist were too attached to their label of "abolitionist" to give up the label, even though keeping the label was working against the goal of abolitionism. Slavery has yet to be abolished.

Basically, I think this sort of thing is harming a variety of movements, including the feminist/masculinist movement.

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