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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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The "we" is, uh, I guess Charles Fourier and/or the Oxford English Dictionary in 1852. The word was invented, given a definition, and then people took that definition as a label.

Fair enough, so it seems to me that, to you, the original person who wrote the first entry of a word into some particular dictionary (OED in this case) is the ultimate authority of the word's definition, and no matter how people "in the wild," so to speak, use the word to communicate to each other doesn't affect it. It's essentially the equivalent of a tablet handed down from God at that point and forevermore.

There's nothing wrong with this perspective, even if I disagree. But much like how there's nothing wrong that many people don't feel obligated to follow the 10 Commandments when it comes to how they live their lives, I hope you understand that there's nothing wrong that many people don't feel obligated to follow the OED or any similar authority when it comes to how they communicate with others.

I disagree "most of America" speak a different version of English from you; the part of America that's wrong about feminism does, and good thing I don't speak to them outside this site.

Given how general polling about people identifying as "feminists" in America goes - IIRC, every poll indicates that a majority of American women don't identify with the term, and the proportion of people who agree with some statement about men and women deserving equality or being equal is always far greater than the proportion of people who identify as feminists - I think you're likely living in a bubble.

That people take a word and try to convince others that the word means something else is the neverending creep of stupidity that, as you pointed out, interrupts the flow of communication between people.

I mean, that's precisely what you're doing in this thread though, right? You're the one trying to convince others that the word that they use to communicate to basically everyone else clearly is actually being used wrong.