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.

Correcting on the Internet

In response to a classmate (modified slightly to remove dependence on context) - full post here

Masculinism and feminism suffer from the same problem it seems. The definition of words can often say largely different things than the reality of a group practices. The reality is that feminism and masculinism means different things to different people. Some people call themselves feminists and fight for true equal rights, but some feminists advocate only for women's rights and could care less about men's rights.  Some people call themselves masculinists and fight for true equal rights, but some masculinists advocate only for men's rights and could care less about women's rights. Both groups often neglect the rights of non-binary folks.

It is best to provide a holistic approach, noting that both groups have goods and bads, radicals and non-radicals. Regardless of intent, understanding, and subjective opinion, I do not think it is a good idea to post, for the entire internet to see, "while both groups understand that gender inequalities exist, feminism focuses on equating women to men and masculinism seeks to keep men as the dominate group in society." This statement is largely biased in that it ignores radical feminists who don't focus on equating women and men, and it ignores masculinists who believe the best way to achieve gender equality is to equally focus on both rather than trying only to move men up. It's promoting feminism and degrading masculinism in a way that is unjustified and not consistently true. Both groups include people who are genuinely for equality and people who genuinely believe that one sex is better. Gender equality should be less about names of groups and more about the ideas. Generalizing one group as entirely bad is no way to achieve true equality. 

Leaving alone sweeping generalizations that are objectively/empirically false, I think, is not a good thing. Imagine seeing someone post on the internet, for everyone to see, "I've not met a feminist who supports men's and non-binary people's rights, therefore all feminists only support women's rights" or "I have not met, talked to, or read about a homosexual woman, therefore there are no homosexual women." I think that you would be in the right to suggest that their experiences were inadequate to leave them with a realistic impression - some women are homosexual, and others are not; some feminists support equal rights across all genders, and others do not. Their views, regardless of how many sources they have used or how many years they have had those view, do not reflect the reality, and as soon they meet a homosexual women or a feminist who actually supports equal rights they cannot say that homosexual women, and equal rights supporting feminists do not exist, unless they pretend that the homosexual woman's and the feminist's experiences are invalid.

(Wikipedia, which is not always the most accurate site (but is not always as awful as people make it out to be), gives Warren Farrell's (Ph. D in Political Science, and B.A. in Social Science) definition of masculinism, which is largely positive and also focuses on women's rights. This renders to sweeping generalization inaccurate.)

Views and experiences may be subjective, and a blog is a place to state those things, but knowledge is not subjective, and experiences help to build knowledge. People can think whatever they want about anybody, but as soon as those thoughts translate to action, such as giving a biased view on a subject matter, their thoughts are no longer protected by subjectivity. People have every right to argue with someone if they spread biased information about feminism, saying that it is only bad. However, people have the same right in regards to other misinformation.