People have no idea what "socialism" or "fake news" mean, but no one tells me off for using those terms. But I feel like in this corner of Twitter people are sensitive to feminist terms, to the point they'd rather I not use them b/c they could be misunderstood. Is that accurate?
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First: I don't think "because they might be misunderstood" points at the problem well. I think there are much more specific negative associations people have with the use of feminist terminology.
Where the problem is lack of precision, I think it's not that people are worried about misunderstanding so much as that that lack of precision is deliberate. This is what people mean when they say motte and bailey: A narrow defensible usage and a broad implied usage.
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The broad implied usage is one that I think has caused a lot of problems for some people, many of whom are in this corner of Twitter. It's not a great thing to be immersed in if you're a socially awkward man with a propensity to take things very seriously/literally.
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At a personal level, I've *definitely* had a lot of emotional problems associated with internalising "men are bad" discourse, so I very much get why people are a bit sensitive to anything that seems a bit too much like that.
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Just to make sure I understand - isn't the motte and bailey one where basically no one actually believes the narrow definition? It's *exclusively* used to defend against attacks? Is that what we're referring to here too? Or is that just the archetypal example?
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Hmm. I think in my understanding of it it was the opposite. It's not that nobody believes the narrow definition, it's that virtually everybody does, and the ambiguity between the two is used to defend the broad version by claiming to only need to defend the narrow version.
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